IDF 2006 - Conroe Merom and Woodcrest info

[Steelski]

there is still a long way till this gets released.
AM2 does smell like a stop gap for AMD though.
I am also very interested in what exactly is in those X1900 drivers? could it be a bet a or a newer version? the registry could be tweaked to have AI on?
Personally if all these benchmarks are real(most probably) then i am not too suprised at all. like many say, this has been a long time coming. I also think that AMD have not just been sitting idle. they have their 4-8meg cach coming on AM2, amongst other things. but certainly i would expect Intel to take the crown and keep it for a little while, at least 8 months before the new architecture from AMD comes along........ this was always on the cards when you consider the advantage the A64 got from having an on board memory controller, whilst the p4 was chuging along without.

 

[LumbergTech]

theres no doubt that those benchmarks are impressive, but im not convinced that AMD is out of the picture just yet..lets wait and see before claiming victory

 

[slash196]

To be frank, I'm a little bit disappointed in AMD. Looks like they're just gonna sit there and get beat. Maybe I'll be putting together an Intel system when the time comes for a full reconstruction of my rig (granted, this won't be for a little while, my rig is holding up just fine at the moment).

 

[allies]

Originally posted by: Duwelon
And probably why Dell has been holding on to intel for dear life. Something tells me we know what to expect in 6 months but I bet Dell has known for much, much longer.

Bullsh!t. Intel has been matched or stomped for the past half decade. Dell didn't go with AMD because intel offers them:
a) ridiculously low prices for bulk ordering, and won't if Dell used AMD as well
b) Sexual favors.

 

[hans007]

Originally posted by: Steelski
there is still a long way till this gets released.
AM2 does smell like a stop gap for AMD though.
I am also very interested in what exactly is in those X1900 drivers? could it be a bet a or a newer version? the registry could be tweaked to have AI on?
Personally if all these benchmarks are real(most probably) then i am not too suprised at all. like many say, this has been a long time coming. I also think that AMD have not just been sitting idle. they have their 4-8meg cach coming on AM2, amongst other things. but certainly i would expect Intel to take the crown and keep it for a little while, at least 8 months before the new architecture from AMD comes along........ this was always on the cards when you consider the advantage the A64 got from having an on board memory controller, whilst the p4 was chuging along without.

4mb am2 cant happen until 2007 with 65nm. it probably wouldnt be for the general consumer anyway. the normal 2mb 2x1mb am2 that will come out in june is supposed to already be a 220 mm^2 die, when the supposedly sweet spot for cpus is like under 150mm^2.

if you have a really big die, the chance of defects is exponentially higher so maybe a 4mb one with 65nm, but that is still probably nearly a year away. plus cache is only good for reducing latency which is why intel puts on so much of it and amd doesnt (sicne their latency is already pretty good with the memory controller onboard)

itll be tough to see what amd does, they could maybe unify the current seperated caches

but i think they will have to do something like microops fusion and macro ops fusion as well as a few other things to really catch up.

 

[CP5670]

whoa, that increase in FEAR is incredible for a processor. That's the kind of thing you see with a new generation of video cards. Looks like this could be a real monster CPU.

 

[dexvx]

Wow look at all the apologists go... it must be HAXXED ATI drivers.

---

Originally posted by: hans007

Originally posted by: kknd1967
4-way server Opteron may still have some lead even in light of intel's new platform
but the gap is closing and AMD may lose performance/watt crown at any time

yeah but the majority of servers are 1 or 2 sockets.

a 4 way with only dual core chips ... might not be completely awful, but a 4 way with 4 quad core chips probably will be seriously bus constrained. oh well, its not a huge part of the market for amd, mostly just the hpc , i am modeling a nuclear explosion / weather research types.

I think by 4 way, he means 4 or more physical cores.

Anyways, I doubt it'll be contrained. 2 Cores is fine with the current 1066/1333 bus. 4 Cores will do fine with the dual 1066/1333 bus. 8 cores and above is when it'll become bad with the current technology. But even then, there are still server platforms (albeit in the niche) that can fulfill the bandwidth requirements.

Originally posted by: allies

Originally posted by: Duwelon
And probably why Dell has been holding on to intel for dear life. Something tells me we know what to expect in 6 months but I bet Dell has known for much, much longer.

Bullsh!t. Intel has been matched or stomped for the past half decade. Dell didn't go with AMD because intel offers them:
a) ridiculously low prices for bulk ordering, and won't if Dell used AMD as well
b) Sexual favors.

Fanboism at the extreme folks.

AMD had nothing to answer when the Northwoods came out. That was about 2 years of dominance over the original Athlon XP's.

 

[SlitheryDee]

Originally posted by: slash196
To be frank, I'm a little bit disappointed in AMD. Looks like they're just gonna sit there and get beat. Maybe I'll be putting together an Intel system when the time comes for a full reconstruction of my rig (granted, this won't be for a little while, my rig is holding up just fine at the moment).

No reason to be disappointed, the processor industry isn't like the graphics card industry where competitors can one-up each other on an almost weekly basis. Processors are hand-designed, and therefore the time between major architectural changes is much greater. When one company gains a considerable lead you can bet they will be ahead for a while. Intel will be ahead for at leat a year I think. We can only hope for the sake of competitiveness that AMD's next architecture will measure up.

 

[allies]

I've been telling people for a while 2006 is going to be strong for Intel. It looks like it will be. Although, since the majority of the market will be moving to multithreading, and AMD's architecture is seemingly more efficient from the benchmarks, we'll see how AM2 stacks up.

 

[hans007]

Originally posted by: dexvx
Wow look at all the apologists go... it must be HAXXED ATI drivers.

---

Originally posted by: hans007

Originally posted by: kknd1967
4-way server Opteron may still have some lead even in light of intel's new platform
but the gap is closing and AMD may lose performance/watt crown at any time

yeah but the majority of servers are 1 or 2 sockets.

a 4 way with only dual core chips ... might not be completely awful, but a 4 way with 4 quad core chips probably will be seriously bus constrained. oh well, its not a huge part of the market for amd, mostly just the hpc , i am modeling a nuclear explosion / weather research types.

I think by 4 way, he means 4 or more physical cores.

Anyways, I doubt it'll be contrained. 2 Cores is fine with the current 1066/1333 bus. 4 Cores will do fine with the dual 1066/1333 bus. 8 cores and above is when it'll become bad with the current technology. But even then, there are still server platforms (albeit in the niche) that can fulfill the bandwidth requirements.

Originally posted by: allies

Originally posted by: Duwelon
And probably why Dell has been holding on to intel for dear life. Something tells me we know what to expect in 6 months but I bet Dell has known for much, much longer.

Bullsh!t. Intel has been matched or stomped for the past half decade. Dell didn't go with AMD because intel offers them:
a) ridiculously low prices for bulk ordering, and won't if Dell used AMD as well
b) Sexual favors.

Fanboism at the extreme folks.

AMD had nothing to answer when the Northwoods came out. That was about 2 years of dominance over the original Athlon XP's.

i think 8 cores on the dual independant bus 1333mhz could maybe be ok.

thats 2 x 1333 buses

and the yonah gets by with 2 cores on a 667mhz bus. granted the conroe is a much more high throughput chip, but thats about the same bandwidth per core.

since 4 x 667 is the same as 2 x1333. but well, i'm sure itll still bea little bit constrained, though i dont think the end of the world. 16 cores 4sockets will be real bad though i'm sure unless they go insane with caches and even then it'd be bad.

though i could see some crazy server version by intel with say 16mb l3 cache for 4 socket quad core 16p systems, as just a standby until CSI or some other bus comes out.

 

[TuxDave]

Originally posted by: dmens
Absolute kudos to IDC. The merom team is on site at IDF, now we know why they're all smiles.

The IDC are all hackers who use fairy dust on their designs. It's all black magic I tell ya!

 

[Faikius]

I felt a great disturbance in the forums....As if a thousand AMD fanboys cried out in unison...

 

[Hanpan]

I felt a great disturbance in the forums....As if a thousand AMD fanboys cried out in unison...

:laugh:

 

[Stoneburner]

Originally posted by: Faikius
I felt a great disturbance in the forums....As if a thousand AMD fanboys cried out in unison...

So unnecessary. Here's a newsflash: Doesnt matter what comes before the "fanboi" as long as you are a"fanboi" you are an idiot. I hope you aren't an intel groupie. ANyway, why dont you keep this relevant. While you may be an intel fan, from my point of view AMD needs to close the gap on intel's finances a bit more before I want intel coming back. I fear the day AMD goes out of busienss.

 

[allies]

Originally posted by: dexvx

Uhm.. I said matched or stomped. The XPs hung with P4s... and Look at my next post in the thread. I'm not a fanboy, part b was a joke. STFU. Thanks.

 

[Commodus]

Seriously!

I regularly laugh at the people who insist that Apple should have used AMD chips, and that anyone getting an Intel-based system in 2006 would be foolish. A simple reality of any market involving processors, whether they're CPUs or graphics chipsets, is that competitors tend to leapfrog each other. Sometimes that lead will be a great one, and sometimes it will last for longer, but it's very hard to remain at the top of your game the entire time.

I, for one, am looking forward to a Merom-based 2.33 GHz (or faster!) Core Duo in a MacBook Pro.

 

[Faikius]

Originally posted by: Stoneburner

Originally posted by: Faikius
I felt a great disturbance in the forums....As if a thousand AMD fanboys cried out in unison...

So unnecessary. Here's a newsflash: Doesnt matter what comes before the "fanboi" as long as you are a"fanboi" you are an idiot. I hope you aren't an intel groupie. ANyway, why dont you keep this relevant. While you may be an intel fan, from my point of view AMD needs to close the gap on intel's finances a bit more before I want intel coming back. I fear the day AMD goes out of busienss.

So unnecessary, but so entertaining

Anyways, I was just poking a bit of fun at the few fanatical AMD fans that seem to inhabit this particular forum. You know the ones...Usually with "AMD for life!" in their sigs...

 

[Stoneburner]

Originally posted by: Commodus
Seriously!

I regularly laugh at the people who insist that Apple should have used AMD chips, and that anyone getting an Intel-based system in 2006 would be foolish. A simple reality of any market involving processors, whether they're CPUs or graphics chipsets, is that competitors tend to leapfrog each other. Sometimes that lead will be a great one, and sometimes it will last for longer, but it's very hard to remain at the top of your game the entire time.

I, for one, am looking forward to a Merom-based 2.33 GHz (or faster!) Core Duo in a MacBook Pro.

This is a specious argument. THey can use both easily. The only reason they dont is for non economically efficient reasons for consumers.

 

[mamisano]

So funny how many people are digging in on their respective processor picks when the Conroe is not even available yet. Seem like the ATI vs Nvidia crap in the Video forums. Wait until a production part is fully evaluated by an independant party before you all start shouting allegance to one company or the other. Some of you guys need to step away from the computer for a bit and experience life. There is more to it than arguing about which CPU is better.

 

[HurleyBird]

Impressive, kind of weird that the BIOS did not recognize the FX though. On the other hand, Intel did not need to use such tight timings on the AMD system.

 

[Ichigo]

Originally posted by: Stoneburner

Originally posted by: Faikius
I felt a great disturbance in the forums....As if a thousand AMD fanboys cried out in unison...

So unnecessary. Here's a newsflash: Doesnt matter what comes before the "fanboi" as long as you are a"fanboi" you are an idiot. I hope you aren't an intel groupie. ANyway, why dont you keep this relevant. While you may be an intel fan, from my point of view AMD needs to close the gap on intel's finances a bit more before I want intel coming back. I fear the day AMD goes out of busienss.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but he made a joke. Now, get a sense of humour before assuming every statement is that of a troll.

And it was damn funny anyways.

 

[BassBomb]

Originally posted by: slash196
To be frank, I'm a little bit disappointed in AMD. Looks like they're just gonna sit there and get beat. Maybe I'll be putting together an Intel system when the time comes for a full reconstruction of my rig (granted, this won't be for a little while, my rig is holding up just fine at the moment).

guys guys relax intel has way more marketing money than AMD, and anyways this is the first real benchmark we see of intel , which we got TODAY so dont expect AMD to within hours post some revolutionary stats

i am an amd fanboy, i wasnt even until my 2nd AMD chip (1400 T bird -> 2500+ barton -> current one)

i await the new amd

im not one of those guys like 80% of the people here who jump ship always... price is my most important categeroy

any idea when the conroes are out?

 

[kyparrish]

daaaaaaaaaaaamn

 

[AdamK47]

Originally posted by: Faikius
I felt a great disturbance in the forums....As if a thousand AMD fanboys cried out in unison...

Ha! I'm no AMD fanboy, but many here are. It's almost comical. I knew the performance crown would eventually go back to the Intel side. It's been going back and forth for a couple decades now.

People, just buy whatever is the best out there for you. That's what I have done since the eary 90s.

 

[cmrmrc]

i don't know but amd seems to rely to much on their amd64 architecture...amd64 was to defeat netburst but i don't see why they want to use amd64 against conroe...its 2 completely different generations...

let's hope K10 or wtv will make amd competitive again if those benchmarks are real...