AT Barcelona previews are up

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: Stoneburner

Originally posted by: kknd1967
not really faster than intel clock per clock if you read this
http://techreport.com/articles.x/13176/1

This looks more and more like the k8 launch. From what I remember, at launch the k8 was trading blows with the p4c. The k8 architecture steadily improved, however, while intel dropped the ball with prescott. I doubt intel is gonna drop the ball again this time.

This is nothing like the K8 launch. The Opteron @ 1.4-1.6Ghz outperformed P4C and Xeon across the board clock-for-clock, by a huge margin. It was competitive enough out of the gates to give chips clocked 1ghz higher a serious headache. When they reached 2Ghz, they outstripped the Intel 3.2Ghz offerings.

This time around, they have the absolutely brutal combination of being SLOWER clock for clock (check the 2.5ghz performance vs stock q6600 bench) and MUCH SLOWER clock speeds.

The silver lining is that the server market is not something Intel has credibly challenged, and the HTT design works so well there, AMD has improved PPW and will remain king of that area (if they survive).

The desktop side situation is a joke .. looks like AMD may withdraw utterly from this side, or perhaps their presence will become like VIA/Cyrix.

 

[Lobsang]

That's quite disappointing considering the hype. 1.52 volts for 2.5GHz is pretty scary aswell, especially on the 65nm process.

 

[TuxDave]

Originally posted by: DuceGT
The Phenom is running off a Server board.
Registered DDR2 667 is slow.
+15% at this point isn't shabby by any means.

But but... certain members were insisting that +100% clock for clock was easily realistic because many spec's had the word "double <something>" in it.

 

[Coogcheese]

What was the speed of the K8 they compared Phenom to?

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: Coogcheese
What was the speed of the K8 they compared Phenom to?

2GHz

 

[brxndxn]

This reminds me of when the Athlon was released.. There were a TON of people saying "too little too late" or "AMD has no chance' when Athlon was released at a measly 400 and 500mhz.. It wasn't until Athlon was ramped up to 1ghz in volume while Intel was stuck without a 1ghz answer that people went, "Wait a minute.. looks like AMD has the clear lead.." - even though it was obvious months prior that AMD WOULD have the best technology.

The amount of straight-up AMD bashing I see on the Internet is ridiculous.. until I look at the Market caps of AMD and Intel.. Intel is 16x larger company than AMD.. INTEL IS 1600% LARGER THAN AMD! Yet, AMD has at least 15% of the entire market share.

So, that tells me you have a ton of investors just wishing for AMD to dissappear and go back to the pre-Athlon days where AMD could never quite catch Intel.

Over the years, I've seen Intel do desperate anti-competitive things against AMD. Hell.. when Intel's best processor was a 2.8ghz Pentium 4, it was getting the living crap kicked out of it by 2ghz Athlons.. yet somehow Intel had convinced Dell, Gateway, and a bunch of others to be 100% Intel.

I really don't want to sound like an AMD fanboy (I'm posting this on my Core 2 Duo desktop), but I gotta love AMD. They just won't go down for the count. Intel gives them blow after blow.. legal or not.. and AMD keeps on getting up.

 

[Pandaren]

There were a TON of people saying "too little too late" or "AMD has no chance' when Athlon was released at a measly 400 and 500mhz

Huh? This is historical revisionism at its worst. Athlon launched at a minimum of 500 MHz (500, 550, and 600 MHz were the launch speeds). This forced Intel to release Katmai at 600 MHz. Everyone and their dog knew that Athlon handily defeated Pentium III (Katmai).

I look at the Market caps of AMD and Intel.. Intel is 16x larger company than AMD.. INTEL IS 1600% LARGER THAN AMD! Yet, AMD has at least 15% of the entire market share.

What does market cap have to do with the # of fabs or engineering design centers a company has?

yet somehow Intel had convinced Dell, Gateway, and a bunch of others to be 100% Intel.

Intel could supply the volume of chips that big players wanted. Keeping 100% Intel also means less variety of inventory to manage and fewer platforms to support. The 2.8C Northwood was in general faster than the Athlon XP.

 

[Roy2001]

Originally posted by: brxndxn
..... Intel is 16x larger company than AMD.. INTEL IS 1600% LARGER THAN AMD! Yet, AMD has at least 15% of the entire market share.

So, that tells me you have a ton of investors just wishing for AMD to dissappear and go back to the pre-Athlon days where AMD could never quite catch Intel.

.....I really don't want to sound like an AMD fanboy (I'm posting this on my Core 2 Duo desktop), but I gotta love AMD.

AMD stock get kicked because of profit and margin, not just technology or market share.

Competition is good and I will only buy the best product.

 

[OneOfTheseDays]

It's not unlikely to think that Phenom scores will improve by at least 10%. Memory gains from using higher speed non server DDR2 667 RAM should be somewhere around 5%. Mature chipset drivers catered specifically for desktop apps should yield another 5% as well. These preliminary scores are very promising in the server arena, but if AMD wants to regain lost share in the desktop arena they better pray they can get those clockspeeds up.

 

[covert24]

i love how people are making assumptions on phenom before it has even came out. hope everyone know as people have said that they are using a barcy proc to give a general performance idea, so all you people saying phenom is gunna blow need to chillax and lay off the keyboard since apparently you have no idea what day it is.

 

[nonameo]

Originally posted by: OneOfTheseDays
It's not unlikely to think that Phenom scores will improve by at least 10%. Memory gains from using higher speed non server DDR2 667 RAM should be somewhere around 5%. Mature chipset drivers catered specifically for desktop apps should yield another 5% as well. These preliminary scores are very promising in the server arena, but if AMD wants to regain lost share in the desktop arena they better pray they can get those clockspeeds up.

I don't think these changes will make blanket improvements. I think we'll see a little here and a little more there, and none in some places.

 

[fishmonger12]

Someone may have already said this, but on the desktop side, few people really NEED the power of a core 2 duo cpu. I would say gamers and other enthusiasts are the only ones that actually take advantage of a chip like that, and they make up what, like 10% of the market? I just bought my girlfriend a laptop with a 1.9 ghz turion x2 and 1 gig of ram, and it plows right through vista, multitasking, movies, etc. Which is what most of the market uses a pc for.

So I don't think this as big of a disappointment as people paint it to be, nor will it have a large effect on the business side of amd in the desktop space. It will matter in the server space, and guess what, it's actually competitive there.

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: fishmonger12
Someone may have already said this, but on the desktop side, few people really NEED the power of a core 2 duo cpu. I would say gamers and other enthusiasts are the only ones that actually take advantage of a chip like that, and they make up what, like 10% of the market? I just bought my girlfriend a laptop with a 1.9 ghz turion x2 and 1 gig of ram, and it plows right through vista, multitasking, movies, etc. Which is what most of the market uses a pc for.

So I don't think this as big of a disappointment as people paint it to be, nor will it have a large effect on the business side of amd in the desktop space. It will matter in the server space, and guess what, it's actually competitive there.

Yeah, because everyone wants to buy the 2nd best processor :roll:

With C2Ds already so affordable (quad-core for under $300, top-notch dual-core for $100ish), I don't see the point of bringing out something worse than what they already have (3.2Ghz K8).

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: covert24
i love how people are making assumptions on phenom before it has even came out. hope everyone know as people have said that they are using a barcy proc to give a general performance idea, so all you people saying phenom is gunna blow need to chillax and lay off the keyboard since apparently you have no idea what day it is.

Huh? I thought Opteron and Phenom were both "Barcelona" cores? With Opteron having extra HT links for MP systems. ?? Is this wrong?

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: Arkaign

Originally posted by: fishmonger12
Someone may have already said this, but on the desktop side, few people really NEED the power of a core 2 duo cpu. I would say gamers and other enthusiasts are the only ones that actually take advantage of a chip like that, and they make up what, like 10% of the market? I just bought my girlfriend a laptop with a 1.9 ghz turion x2 and 1 gig of ram, and it plows right through vista, multitasking, movies, etc. Which is what most of the market uses a pc for.

So I don't think this as big of a disappointment as people paint it to be, nor will it have a large effect on the business side of amd in the desktop space. It will matter in the server space, and guess what, it's actually competitive there.

Yeah, because everyone wants to buy the 2nd best processor :roll:

With C2Ds already so affordable (quad-core for under $300, top-notch dual-core for $100ish), I don't see the point of bringing out something worse than what they already have (3.2Ghz K8).

His point (I think) was that a rather large percentage of PC users do not need the best of the best. For what most people do with their PC's, a Celeron or Sempron is waaaaay more than enough and perhaps overkill. Depends on what they do. If all they do is browse the web and watch movies, Play their mp3's, burn CD's DVD's, etcetera, they don't need crazy super powered juggernaut CPU's. Gamers "might" have an occasion to need such power.
Distributed Computing folks like Mark, Duvie and others may need the most power they can get their hands on. Points are points after all .

 

[Amaroque]

'Phenom' will have alot faster RAM. I don't think that will make too much difference though.

 

[Markfw]

In response to keys post (forgot to quote)
Its getting tough now a days to sell my old hardware, as I rarely use FS/FT, but sell to friends and family. They almost all now have 1 ghz or better, and except for the 5 of the 50 or so that I help out, thats enough. The others are gamers, and they need video card upgrades the most. Several are WOW players, and a good video card with an Athlon XP 1800 and one gig of ram keeps them happy.

As keys said, I can use all I get.... 3 quads, going for a fourth.

 

[Viditor]

Originally posted by: Pandaren

There were a TON of people saying "too little too late" or "AMD has no chance' when Athlon was released at a measly 400 and 500mhz

Huh? This is historical revisionism at its worst. Athlon launched at a minimum of 500 MHz (500, 550, and 600 MHz were the launch speeds). This forced Intel to release Katmai at 600 MHz. Everyone and their dog knew that Athlon handily defeated Pentium III (Katmai).

Quite correct...

I look at the Market caps of AMD and Intel.. Intel is 16x larger company than AMD.. INTEL IS 1600% LARGER THAN AMD! Yet, AMD has at least 15% of the entire market share.

What does market cap have to do with the # of fabs or engineering design centers a company has?

1. You are absolutely correct, Market Cap has nothing to do with anything except investing.
2. Actually, AMD has 22.9% of the market, and Intel has 76.3%
Marketshare Report Q2 2007
3. While Intel has many more Fabs, only 3 of them can make modern CPUs...and none of those has the capacity of AMD's Fab 36.

yet somehow Intel had convinced Dell, Gateway, and a bunch of others to be 100% Intel.

Intel could supply the volume of chips that big players wanted. Keeping 100% Intel also means less variety of inventory to manage and fewer platforms to support. The 2.8C Northwood was in general faster than the Athlon XP.

I would disagree with your conclusion here...Intel (rather blatantly) used their dominant position to prevent OEMs from using AMD as a second supplier for many years. This is what the anti-trust suit is all about.

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: Arkaign

Originally posted by: Sunrise089

Originally posted by: SexyK
you assume AMD's yields will improve to the point that 3.0 will be commonplace, but intel's yields will not.

Not at all - if that's the impression I gave then it was unintended. I specifically intended to suggest that Intel may be able to offer 4.0ghz chips all day, but NOT do so within a thermal envelope that the retail market will accept. I think Intel will offer the better chip on the high-end enthusiast crowd who provides aftermarket cooling and lots of case airflow when they overclock, but they may not be able to offer a faster chip than a 3.0ghz Phenom in the retail space.

That's grossly ignorant of existing performance of newer stepping Q6600s on even moderate air cooling (nothing exotic). Given that K10 probably won't exceed K8 by more than 20% (best case scenario, probably) clock for clock, AMD would need a 3.4Ghz Phenom to match the EXISTING Q6850.

AMD is down for the count on the desktop. But Barcelona is a nice way of keeping their well-earned lead in the Server arena. If AMD can combine this with a decent offering in their GPU division (read : 2950Pro/XT/XTX), then they can claw their way back to profitability.

Odds? 40/60?

I hate to agree with nemesis, but I think that 10/90 is much more realistic...

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: sdsdv10

Originally posted by: Regs
In Viditor's defense AMD does have a few excuses.

Anand used a hack'ed motherboard to use PCI-Express graphics.

In Anand's defense, he had no choice as it was AMD itself that sent server MBs to preview/test a desktop CPU.

AMD was kind enough to send us two servers, identically configured, from Colfax.

]

that is not correct. amd sent anand a SERVER board to test in SERVER applications. Anand just knew that most of us don't give a crap about servers and care much more about desktop systems.

 

[Viditor]

Originally posted by: covert24
i love how people are making assumptions on phenom before it has even came out. hope everyone know as people have said that they are using a barcy proc to give a general performance idea, so all you people saying phenom is gunna blow need to chillax and lay off the keyboard since apparently you have no idea what day it is.

Thank you...this is exactly what I've been saying for awhile now. There are so many differences between Phenom and Barcy that I honestly think it was a mistake for Anand to post the article (though I do understand the pressure to do so...and AMD has been anything but forthcoming).

1. Phenom must necessarily be a new revision because it will be HT 3.0. That can introduce many other variables besides just the HT bandwidth (for instance they must have a different memory controller).

2. They already have a 2.5 GHz Barcy, so a 3 GHz Phenom is quite likely...

3. The chipsets and platform will be quite different as well

4. Launch is in 2 months, not 6 months...so it will coincide with Penryn's launch.

5. We are seeing a review of Engineering Samples of Barcy using a first generation bios. Those of you who have worked in the server world know exactly what I mean here...
It's true that AMD is rushing this out and this is probably their worst marketed launch ever, but drawing conclusions about the technology because of that is a BIG mistake.

6. None of the review sites has had much of a chance yet to work on these new systems (they only arrived a few days ago). Think back to previous reviews and recall how many "gotchas" they have found after running their initial series in the past...

 

[Amaroque]

Anand just knew that most of us don't give a crap about servers and care much more about desktop systems.

That's not true. Their is alot of IT professionals that read AT.

 

[bryanW1995]

I didn't say that there were't "a lot" of IT pros reading AT, I just said "most" of us aren't. I think that the number is probably 75% + are not IT pros. Saying that we don't give a crap about servers is probably harsh b/c many of us care in a "huh, that's nice to see" kind of way, but how many of us are ever going to even see an 8 processor server with 4+cores per processor in real life? Out of those, how many will actually use, purchase, or work on a system like that? I personally think that it's pretty cool, but it's cool to me in the same way that big blue is cool: from a distance.

 

[Amaroque]

Many of us 5ys ago thought that Dual, much less Quad systems were ?server? only.

Enthusiasts may post the most, but that is not truly indicative of reader percentages.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: Amaroque
'Phenom' will have alot faster RAM. I don't think that will make too much difference though.

It does make a difference to the RAM sellers. They loves themselves some profits!