Intels Hyper Thread = Bad News for AMD??

[skid]

I went to Intel's website and read a little on their new Hyper Threading technology...i guess its nifty, but what does it mean for AMD? Is it a killer blow, or just another annoyance that the Claw Hammer will soon smash into irrelivence?!

 

[OnDborder]

So says Intel???
PCmag had an article on it also..Maybe a little more objective point of view..

 

[IR1]

Ya but Intels chips still cost an ARM and a LEG I cant do much gaming with one arm!

Though those new AMD chips aint exactly vagrant level cheap.

I really dont know hyperthreading sounds ya know... cool.

But being an AMD guy myself, I dont dislike intel... I just happened to get an AMD cause I got a sweet deal at the local retailer and I think that will continue to be what AMD is about, until they come out with the Hammer.

The struggle between Nvidia and ATI kinda parallels AMD vs Intel, anyone agree to this?

Of course you could say that about a lot of company battles.

SO I guess my point is... uh...

 

[NookieN]

Is it a killer blow, or just another annoyance that the Claw Hammer will soon smash into irrelivence?!

I definitely would not call it a killer blow. It is an interesting and pretty smart technology though. I think it will be more important a year from now once it has trickled down into the mainstream chips.

Since you mentioned it, I don't think "Clawhammer" and "soon" belong in the same sentence. And whenever it finally does hit the market, the only thing I would count on it smashing is AMD's low prices: those chips are going to be pricey. They _have_ to be if AMD's hopes to stay in business.

 

[Lord Moreira]

intels HT is like the performance boost of agp4x to 8x right now
sorry still not interested
nforce 2 all the way baby!!!!

 

[[OC]Lucifer]

it helps

the P4 pull away to a small majority of benchies, but the 2800+ and 3.06 are so close in most bechies, that neither is dominating. They are merely keeping up with each other, as competition requires.

 

[donny_paycheck]

Hyperthreading isn't anything for AMD to worry about. It allows two threads to occupy the CPU pipeline at once, thereby making more efficint use of clock cycles. But the threads have to be hyperthreadable and hyperthreading actually prevents a single thread from using 100% of the CPU when run by itself, so as many apps take a hit from it as the number that benefit from it.

http://www.overclockers.com/tips00167/

 

[JDXNC]

Not worth the extra cost in my mind, it should actually be implimented in the slower P4's where it would really help.

 

[NO LIFE]

Hyperthreading in essence make the single cpu into 2. While you have a single application it doesnt make any difference....however when you have multiple programs running that use a lot of the cpu power it helps quit a bit. But its not worth the money.......600 buck i think.

EDIT: Make it $720 at newegg...u could build an entire gaming comp. for that much...hell I just did it for 715 bucks.

 

[donny_paycheck]

Another article Ed wrote on the front page about hyperthreading:

http://www.overclockers.com/tips00164/

It isn't really two CPUs in one. It's just a single CPU that can appear as two CPUs in order to better utilize its own clock cycles. It's only a 3.06 P4. As such, it can only do what a 3.06 P4 could normally do without hyperthreading. There is no extra power, just a new way to efficiently utilize it. Hyperthreading is not new. It's been around in the SMP world for a long time and has proved itself noteworthy but in no way revolutionary.

 

[NookieN]

But the threads have to be hyperthreadable and hyperthreading actually prevents a single thread from using 100% of the CPU when run by itself, so as many apps take a hit from it as the number that benefit from it.

Well _any_ thread can be hyperthreadable. I think problem you're alluding to is that a single threaded application gets no benefit from hyper threading. That's true, but those apps don't get any benefit on a dual system either.

The performance hit to single threads is neglegible. I think most people would be willing to sacrifice 1-2% in one application for a 10-20% boost system wide.

Like you say, AMD ain't sweatin' bullets over HT. But a year from now they're going to have to convince consumers that a chip that kinda-sorta does 64-bits in none of the applications they use is better than a chip that acts like two chips.

 

[kevmarks]

A killer blow like MMX enabled pentiums were?

multimedia stuff runs 50% faster I think the claim was with with MMX sofware. Without was suppose to be like 20%.

In real world test it came out to something like 2% for MMX apps, and less than 1% for normal apps.

I have a funny feeling hyperthreading is MMX all over again.

 

[Ambiguous]

this is a quote from another forum from a guy i know.

"AMD is coming out with their version of it in 2003q1 called hypertransport, they were working on it before intel but they dont have the resources that intel does and it was delayed. The new k8 (8th gen amd) is the hammer. Something interesting about the hammer arch is that they will have some called dual ddr where dual ddr simms can be used to speed up performance"
[BC]Twitch

so i dont think this hyperthreadin stuff will have any affect on the chip market, its not going dominate one cpu or another.

 

[SemiCycle]

So you get a 3+ Ghz cpu that can accept dual threads and still doesn't win in all benchmarks. Maybe we should be getting a clue to how **ineffencient** the core of the P4 has been all this time.

Intel has an ok job of hiding that problem with brute force (more mhz), but now they are finally starting to do things that should have been done in the first place.

This is just more fuel for AMD's fire that a more effecient design is the way to go. Anyone ever take a look at an Alpha CPU. What about IBM's new Power4?

 

[daS_mAgg0t]

Was it a killer blow with the release of the 3.06ghz with HT ? NO

Is it a killer blow to re-release your whole product line to coincide with your latest price cut, and offer HT enabled Chips ranging from 1.8-3ghz as of Monday, which now outperform the closest rival chips even more ? yes

"or just another annoyance that the Claw Hammer will soon smash into irrelivence?!"

judging by AMD releasing the 2400+ and it being availible in shops 3 months later, i'd think it fair to say that the only thing the hammer will be smashing this christmas is alot of hope Expect the chip after july 2003 IMO

 

[donny_paycheck]

Hypertransport is not similar to hyperthreading. What AMD refers to when they talk about "Hypertransport" is the dedicated bus between the DRAM and CPU in Hammer systems, controlled by the integrated DRAM controller in the Hammer. Basically, the FSB is the AGP and link to the southbridge. The HTB (hyper transport bus) is the DRAM.

Hyperthreading isn't like MMX in that it's not an Intel trademark. Maybe the word is (I don't know but I doubt it) but the technology will be implemented by AMD if it ends up being worth a damn. Hyper transport, on the other hand, is like MMX. It's a word copyrighted by AMD as the nomenclature for their integrated DRAM controller and subsystems.

 

[EluSiOn]

Hmmm...

First, AMD didn't invent Hypertransport, It is Digital, maker of Alpha Chip. Hypertransport is no BS technology like MMX.

Second, Intel didn't invent Hyperthreading, It is Digital again, maker of Alpha Chip. Hyperthreading does not taking any two thread into the CPU like SMP.

Alpha Chip is 10 yr advance in the time when it was introduced. The Digital Engineers are smart, however, the chip was too advance and the industry was not ready for them. Marketting failure (like many great tech companies). Compaq bought Digital, however the smart engineers of Digital went to different companies. Some went to Intel, some went to AMD and some went to IBM and Motorola.

CPU has two calculation units. Integer and Floating point. CPU w/o hyperthreading can only do one type calculation at one time, but CPU with hyperthreading can do 1 integer calculation and 1 floating point at the same time. Hyperthreading would kick off if the application is optimized for hyperthreading. However, the real world's performance of hyperthreading cannot be measure by benchmarks. Hyperthreading is fast. Not faster than SMP, but definately it is fast.

Then, what happened to those engineers who went to IBM and Motorola? their idea is multi-die on a single CPU, making a single CPU act like a quad CPU. (and they have not yet succeeded) They saw the limitation of hyperthreading as it requires programmers to optimize their application to take the advantage of HT. How many programmer will actually busting their *** just to take the full advantage of hyperthreading? Not many, sure they all going to optimize for hyperthreading , but fully optimized for HT? I am very doubtful. So that is why you will not see a boost of 50% performance gain but a moderate performance gain like 10%~15%

 

[TinMan]

The only real problem I can see that AMD will have with this new PIV HT is if and when the mass overclockers figure out how to enable it on the non HT chips.

Somepeople have claimed to have a non HT PIV and out of luck or modding the chip in some way that have enable HT.

So it this is right, I would think about getting a nice 2.2B Chip from intel and modding it to HT capable. Or wait for the hammer and watch the war start all over again.

 

[Lord Moreira]

The majority of consumers don't go for the best\fastest most of us just go for the bang for the buck product.
U can build AMD systems much cheaper and not slower , not less reliable or stable.
Almost 2 AMD systems for 1 INTEL.
I don't know why customers of INTEL like to pay for their TV comercials ... personally i don't....
And beeing the nvidia fan that i am, with the lauch of the nforce 2 chipsets they have proved that all though amd is the underdog there is plenty of potential and future for AMD.
AMD & NVIDIA FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!!!
Comdex opens today
stay alert for the Geforce FX and the hammers baby!!!!!!

For the record ...
if intel wasn't so expensive to build (not so much now since they turned to DDR mem) i would have a P4 in my house.

Just so my XP could crush it!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[daS_mAgg0t]

LOL@elusion, I thought it was the early 486 dual CPU servers that first brought Hyper threading onto the scene

Hyperthreading is indeed a freely usable term, asn is often applied to Dual-CPU systems aswell.