Who will buy an Athlon64 in the first week?

[Toscani]

I would like to see how they run, but I dont think it'll have any advantage over 3.2 P4.

 

[JungleMan]

I think they will show the P4 3.2 the way to the exit

 

[altec]

Hopefully they will, that way AMD isn't totally shut out by the new 800Mhz FSB new intel chips.

 

[efini]

My decision will be based on how well it overclocks

(Hopefully a 25-33% increase)

-efini

 

[Sir Barton]

the A64 has on on-chip memory controller doesnt it? if it does that 800FSB P4 may not match up well to the A64. who knows....only time will tell....BTW, when is the A64 supposed to debut?

 

[Toscani]

BTW, when is the A64 supposed to debut?

haha, I've learned not to ask that question again.

 

[Severian]

Officially September, probably in the latter part.

Personally I believe that the A64 will be far ahead of the 3.2 GHz P4, but then again that's not the competition.

In October, Intel is releasing a Prescott-based chip, which may (or may not) be called the Pentium 5, but will certainly be running at 3.4 GHz. In addition to the higher clock speed, it will have more cache, enhanced hyperthreading, and a few other goodies ( www.chip-architect.com has a lot on this). As for how much this will help it's speed...but either way, it's going to be that which the A64 has to match up to.

Can it do it? Personally I don't think so. I'm going to wait for the 90nm (Athens?) version to come out, in spring 2004. Hopefully, this will have 1MB of Cache instead of 512KB, and possibly even DDR-2. Either way, I think that Athlon architecture and 130nm processes have almost reached their limits. I think we might see about 2.6 GHz on air for the A64 - slightly more than the Bartons of now, but not much. But for the next version...well over 3 GHz, and that will be worth buying.

 

[katka]

Unless I come upon a large sum of money I doubt I'll be getting a Athlon 64 any time soon.

 

[youthemandan]

A64's will have a 1mb L2 cache

 

[xcelerator]

wen is the AMD64 comming out?

 

[zabomb4163]

i hope amd doesn't get the crap kicked out of them by the prescott

 

[Toscani]

Alright, this is NOT an AMD v. Intel thread, please keep it that way.

 

[Severian]

A64's will have a 1mb L2 cache

Nope, sorry.

To quote from AMD's A64 FAQ page: http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_4699_7980^7986,00.html

The upcoming AMD Opteron and AMD Athlon 64 processors are designed for different markets. For the server/workstation market, the AMD Opteron processor will undergo more stringent validation and reliability testing. Another difference will be in the number of HyperTransport links embedded on the chip. The AMD Athlon 64 processor will contain one HyperTransport link offering 6.4 GB/s data transfer while the AMD Opteron processor will offer three links. The processors will also contain different amounts of cache.

Since the Opteron has 1MB of Cache, if you'd said anything else you could be right.

In my opinion, for the sake of both speed and affordability, I would expect 512KB, it's just the obvious choice. However, that is speculation.

 

[arnoldma]

what the expect price for one of these beauties?

 

[OC-Master]

The Athlon64 features the world's first full speed on-die FSB which means your FSB runs at the same MHz as the CPU. The Athlon64 will feature 1MB of L2 cache and 256KB if L1 cache. The bottleneck of the Athlon64 is just too obvious,, the memory of course. AMD still has not changed the design of the memory controller and they say that DDR333 memory is still the standard design with the CPU being capable of supporting DDR400.

AMD needs to get there act together and allow support for Dual channel, not single channel so that memory bandwidth can be effectively doubled.

Dual Channel DDRII 533 would also be nice!

According to there PR ratings, even the slowest Athlon64 is supposed to be on par with the P4 3.20GHz. Athlon64 flavours so far are,

3400+, 3800+ and 4200+


OC-Master

 

[OC-Master]

Well I take back the dual channel support,,,

http://www.tbreak.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=17343

The nForce3 Pro is already offering this using DDR333 modules on the Opteron. Hopefully by time the Athlon64 is released, Dual Channel DDR400 will be available.


OC-Master

 

[anvil82]

I will probably get one after I see how fast they overclock, and when there is 64bit windows.

 

[Severian]

The Athlon64 features the world's first full speed on-die FSB which means your FSB runs at the same MHz as the CPU. The Athlon64 will feature 1MB of L2 cache and 256KB if L1 cache. The bottleneck of the Athlon64 is just too obvious,, the memory of course. AMD still has not changed the design of the memory controller and they say that DDR333 memory is still the standard design with the CPU being capable of supporting DDR400.

AMD needs to get there act together and allow support for Dual channel, not single channel so that memory bandwidth can be effectively doubled.

Dual Channel DDRII 533 would also be nice!

According to there PR ratings, even the slowest Athlon64 is supposed to be on par with the P4 3.20GHz. Athlon64 flavours so far are,

3400+, 3800+ and 4200+


OC-Master

Ok, care to tell me where you got these wonderful facts from?

Facts which you somehow believe are more reliable than the ones posted on AMD's own website?

Stop preaching speculation unless you can support it. There is a quote on AMD's website, on their roadmap, which shows that in H1 2004 when the 90nm version of the A64 comes out, there will be two different kinds. The "San Deigo" and the "Paris".

Scaling the cache up from 512KB to 1MB with a process move sounds sensible (but again, I might point out that the 512KB is only specualation on my part), while it has been said that the 256KB version is what will hopefully fill in the low end, where the Duron once was.

 

[OC-Master]

Ok, care to tell me where you got these wonderful facts from?

Facts which you somehow believe are more reliable than the ones posted on AMD's own website?

Stop preaching speculation unless you can support it. There is a quote on AMD's website, on their roadmap, which shows that in H1 2004 when the 90nm version of the A64 comes out, there will be two different kinds. The "San Deigo" and the "Paris".

Scaling the cache up from 512KB to 1MB with a process move sounds sensible (but again, I might point out that the 512KB is only specualation on my part), while it has been said that the 256KB version is what will hopefully fill in the low end, where the Duron once was.

Easy,

First off, you obviously dont know what your talking about. AMD has stated the Athlon64 would come with 1MB of L2 cache. MY PR ratings come from an unofficial japaneese website's techy chart that actually has tested all three of those models that I have stated.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/athlon64.html

At Xbit, they reviewed a underclocked Athlon64 at 1.60GHz with 1MB of L2 cache.

The only difference between Clawhammer and Sandiego will be the die size. To gain additional MHz, AMD is going to have to shrink the core.

Paris is going to have 256KB of L2 cache and will be the Duron64 (unofficial still) but we know one thing for sure that this thing will be for value!


OC-Master

 

[OC Detective]

Well as you know the XP ratings that the Athlon 64 will be launched at are entirely speculative at the moment as until they have some full scale production they will not exactly know the potential of the cpus. That said the Xbit labs link you posted also had a XP2800+ with 1Mb of cache and a speed of 1.6ghz this has also appeared on Chinese websites. However I tend to think that the PR rating will be higher than that for launch and more in line with the XP3400, XP3800 etc you quoted. Though I really dont believe that this Japanese site who claims to have tested ALL 3 cpus from XP3400 to XP4200 (dont believe everything you read!) as it would appear that no other mainstream website has referenced it.