Phenom In perspective

[thekernel]

Originally posted by: myocardia
I think one of the things that people around here are forgetting is that most people on the planet only buy dual-cores, if they can afford one. I personally think that AMD will be fine, if they can make Phenom decent, at least by the end of Q1 08.

What's really hurting them, though, are the Phenom's prices. If the price doesn't come down quite a bit, they may not sell very many Phenom's at all in Q1 & Q2 of next year, no matter how good they might or might not be.

True, but that only buys so much. Remember that Intel is rapidly lowering prices on quads and can squeeze them into the low end pretty quickly with a sub-$200 model, and further with a sub-$150. This will probably happen in the Q1-Q2 timeframe and history has shown that the "core war" is very effective with consumers. Nobody is going to buy an equivalently priced dually and quad, especially at similar clock rates.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: thekernel
True, but that only buys so much. Remember that Intel is rapidly lowering prices on quads and can squeeze them into the low end pretty quickly with a sub-$200 model, and further with a sub-$150.

Umm, Intel has only lowered prices on quad-cores once in their history. And with the fastest Phenom not even comparing with their cheapest quad, why exactly would they lower them again? Surely you're not suggesting that Intel doesn't like making profits?

This will probably happen in the Q1-Q2 timeframe and history has shown that the "core war" is very effective with consumers. Nobody is going to buy an equivalently priced dually and quad, especially at similar clock rates.

What dual-core does AMD have that's around $300? Most people that I know personally go by Mhz/Ghz, since they know absolutely nothing about computers or processors, and in their minds, a 3.0/3.2 Ghz dual-core would have to be faster than a 2.2 Ghz quad-core. Add in the fact that the 3.2 Ghz X2 is $179 now, and the cheapest Phenom is 45% more expensive, and I can't see how your argument makes any sense.

 

[taltamir]

well, even if there is not other company to compete with they still compete with themselves... people can be enticed to upgrade...
Not as good for consumers, but it should still lead to some price reduction over time for older parts as they are obsoleted and replaced with newer parts.

 

[thekernel]

Originally posted by: myocardia
Umm, Intel has only lowered prices on quad-cores once in their history. And with the fastest Phenom not even comparing with their cheapest quad, why exactly would they lower them again? Surely you're not suggesting that Intel doesn't like making profits?

What incentive did Intel have to release the Q6600? A $266 quad might not have seemed to make any sense, but as long as Intel feels like they can invalidate K10 at the low end with cheap quads, they will do so.

During this year, quad cores have gone from a high end luxury for Extreme Edition buyers to a CPU available for under $300. This happened BEFORE the release of K10 when Intel was competing with only themselves in the quad market. It looks like historical precedent is backing me up here; Intel will push lower quad models into their lineup, eventually eclipsing dual cores just as dual cores did with single cores. How many solo cores are in Intel's lineup these days?

What dual-core does AMD have that's around $300? Most people that I know personally go by Mhz/Ghz, since they know absolutely nothing about computers or processors, and in their minds, a 3.0/3.2 Ghz dual-core would have to be faster than a 2.2 Ghz quad-core. Add in the fact that the 3.2 Ghz X2 is $179 now, and the cheapest Phenom is 45% more expensive, and I can't see how your argument makes any sense.

Your own subjective experiences nonwithstanding, history has shown that we are racing towards more and more cores and there is an inevitable trend with introducing more cores, and then gradually phasing out the CPUs with less cores.

And Q6600 is already available for $266, that price will only go down as new models are introduced and it's not a stretch to imagine that Penryn based chips will fill out the entire model range. After all at 45nm there's only a minimal cost in doing so. Intel can always charge more for higher clock frequencies, greater cache, and come Nehalem more cores once again.

 

[taltamir]

@thekernel: QFT. Newer and faster for the prices of last year is par from the course, competition makes it even cheapter. But it will be replaced by better stuff anyways because they can still compete with themselves.

intel will make cheaper quads available in an effort to make C2D users upgrade to a D2Q

 

[harpoon84]

Originally posted by: bfdd
if they come WAY down in price and offer equal performance in games I could see gamers or cheap gaming systems moving towards them. I would since that's mainly what I do on my PC. I do like encoding movies though...

Personally, (and I'm speaking from an enthusiasts perspective here) I wouldn't touch a Phenom unless it offered FAR FAR better price/performance at stock speeds, like $150 for a 9500 for example. Reason being, it doesn't OVERCLOCK worth a damn. You can routinely clock a G0 Q6600 to 3.6GHz (equal to a 4GHz Phenom), meanwhile Phenom overclocks are a crapshoot between 2.6 - 3.0GHz, with monstrous power consumption and with no guarantee of absolute stability due to the TLB issues.

 

[harpoon84]

Originally posted by: myocardia

Yeah, but don't you have the P5B Deluxe? The P965 boards were awesome for Conroe's and Allendales, but most don't do very well with the Kentsfield's, it seems. Plus, they don't support the Penryn's, like almost all of the P35 boards do. You should probably look into either a Gigabyte P35-DQ4, an Abit IP-35 Pro, or an Asus P5K Deluxe. Those are the best boards out right now.

The P5B Deluxe supports Penryn. http://event.asus.com/mb/45nm/

I don't recall seeing overclocking results on a C2Q with the P5B Deluxe, do you have links to any?

 

[Duvie]

I can get my qx6700 up to 3.5ghz albeit not 100% stable on the p5B deluxe...so it aint a bad ocer....The quirks I see are just overall quality in my opinion

 

[harpoon84]

Originally posted by: Duvie
I can get my qx6700 up to 3.5ghz albeit not 100% stable on the p5B deluxe...so it aint a bad ocer....The quirks I see are just overall quality in my opinion

What quirks would they be? I have a P5B Deluxe too, and if it holds up to QC overclocking then I can't be bothered upgrading to a newer mobo. Have you done any testing to see what the highest stable FSB speed is?

 

[soccerballtux]

I'm confused about the OP. Can someone rephrase? B3 or whatever this is (?) is bottlenecked by motherboards not supporting a faster L3 cache or something, and that when they support it we'll see the chips running much faster?

 

[bfdd]

Originally posted by: harpoon84

Originally posted by: bfdd
if they come WAY down in price and offer equal performance in games I could see gamers or cheap gaming systems moving towards them. I would since that's mainly what I do on my PC. I do like encoding movies though...

Personally, (and I'm speaking from an enthusiasts perspective here) I wouldn't touch a Phenom unless it offered FAR FAR better price/performance at stock speeds, like $150 for a 9500 for example. Reason being, it doesn't OVERCLOCK worth a damn. You can routinely clock a G0 Q6600 to 3.6GHz (equal to a 4GHz Phenom), meanwhile Phenom overclocks are a crapshoot between 2.6 - 3.0GHz, with monstrous power consumption and with no guarantee of absolute stability due to the TLB issues.

150 was the range I was talking about. I could see gamers building using the Phenom if they were price that low. They perform almost on par in games.

 

[AlabamaCajun]

I may not be the first but I just order a Phenom 9500 today. I'll be putting it against a 5600X2 at 2.8G stock vs stock.
I will OC it later but I just I first need a stable four core setup. Later next year, I will get a couple of Barcelonas to run in a server but first I want to see where the boards and chips go.

I was considering a pair of xeons but then I saw that I had to buy matching active/passive chips. With the Optis, I can upgrade one at a time to 3.0G as they become available. I don't know if that would work with the zeon platform. I do understand that I the FSB on both platforms has to match. On AMD it's 1000 and Intel it 1333 or 1666.

 

[taltamir]

Alabama.... you just downgraded your machine. You will achive slower performance on everything. With the only exception being crysis, maybe.

unless you want to tell me that you are encoding video IN THE BACKGROUND while playing a game. (just encoding video and audio is ONLY two streams. Thus it can only use two cores at most. A faster two core processor is better for video encoding then a slower 4 core one)

 

[harpoon84]

Originally posted by: bfdd150 was the range I was talking about. I could see gamers building using the Phenom if they were price that low. They perform almost on par in games.

TBH, if gaming was all I did, I'd probably just get a sub $100 CPU and put the savings into a faster GPU instead. Don't get me wrong, a $150 quad would be awesome, but games are hardly taking advantage of QC, and even those that do only show benefits at lower resolutions, as soon as you crank the resolution and details up most games become GPU bound.

I wonder though, if AMD *does* cut prices of quads down to the $150 mark, would Intel respond? If they do, it would definitely cut into their dual core sales. AMD doesn't have this problem as most of their dual cores are below $150 anyway.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: AlabamaCajun
I may not be the first but I just order a Phenom 9500 today. I'll be putting it against a 5600X2 at 2.8G stock vs stock.

How much did you pay for it? Why did you choose it over the Q6600?

Also, what motherboard are you going to run it on?

I dunno...if you want a stable chip, wouldn't it make more sense to go with a more mature platform like the Q6600?

 

[rchiu]

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: AlabamaCajun
I may not be the first but I just order a Phenom 9500 today. I'll be putting it against a 5600X2 at 2.8G stock vs stock.

How much did you pay for it? Why did you choose it over the Q6600?

Also, what motherboard are you going to run it on?

I dunno...if you want a stable chip, wouldn't it make more sense to go with a more mature platform like the Q6600?

Heh, if you read his post, you wouldn't expect him to make logical decision like you suggested. But hey, it's his money and his system, if he wanna pay more for less performance, it's up to him. As for me, I am gonna try my luck at Frys to see if I can get my Q6600 for $200 tomorrow.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: taltamir
(just encoding video and audio is ONLY two streams. Thus it can only use two cores at most. A faster two core processor is better for video encoding then a slower 4 core one)

Actually, video encoding/converting/editing has the highest percentage of software that's quadcore enabled (uses all four cores @ 100%), than any other type of software you can buy, except OS's.

 

[AlabamaCajun]

Ok, so if I cancel my order. Which one of my mobos with a Q6600 fit into. Will it work in a 478 and can the 875 chipset handle that much CPU?
J/K but would a Q6600 work in a 965 Intel mobo because I have a E6400 in it that is mediocre because the board has no overclock or tweaking.

I actually though about it but then that would be no fun. These Phenoms are new and uncharted territory and worth the extra 60 bucks to find out. Maybe it was those massive heatsinks on the 775 boards that scared me away. I have a MATX board to drop this chip into to work with the 5600 so no it's not a downgrade. I won't have the video power to run Crysis or any games on it but it will be nice to see it returning massive amounts of float calcs for rendering. I doubt that I'll be running any standard benches on it but I may run some SPI and post up my thoughts.

I still have a Quad socket server on the list of rigs to build, any suggestions before I plunk down on that?

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: AlabamaCajun
I still have a Quad socket server on the list of rigs to build, any suggestions before I plunk down on that?

Yes, give the platform a little more time to mature. Not only will AMD get better at making the processors, but the motherboard manufacterers will get better at making boards, and writing BIOS's for them. Servers are too expensive of an item to be buying parts that aren't completely stable, as opposed to a cheap desktop, where you're only out the cost of the processor, in this instance.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Originally posted by: AlabamaCajun
I have a MATX board to drop this chip into to work with the 5600 so no it's not a downgrade.

You got a BIOS that will support Phenom yet? It looks like Abit is refusing to release a BIOS update for my board, so it's plug-n'-pray or nothing on my end. Stupid Abit.

 

[AlabamaCajun]

I've checked and ECS has not released one, I may be getting another board. I too wanted to test the plug and pray. If it works then I should be able to get in and check voltages. The VCore is pegged at 1.4V on these MATX boards so I don't fear an overvolt but will I see all four cores?

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: taltamir
(just encoding video and audio is ONLY two streams. Thus it can only use two cores at most. A faster two core processor is better for video encoding then a slower 4 core one)

Actually, video encoding/converting/editing has the highest percentage of software that's quadcore enabled (uses all four cores @ 100%), than any other type of software you can buy, except OS's.

OH most definatly, almost every quad core enabled software out there IS video audio encoding... seeing as how the only two quad core programs I know of is adobe and crysis...

But there are other encoding programs (especially the ones that don't cost thousands per license) that are still dominated by C2D processors. and a rare few are still limited to one processor...

That being said they are adopting quad cores faster then anything else on the market, so if you got a quad there is a good chance you will see much benefit in video encoding... For the extra price ofcourse...

Still the only reason someone should buy a quad right now is:
1. If money is coming out the wazoo and they are gonna buy an extreme one for the little benefit it will give in crysis. or that one time (per life of computer) you recode a wedding video to DVD using nero.
2. If they are a business that encodes video / otherwise uses 4 cores. And faster CPUs are cheaper then paying employees to stare at a progress bar.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: taltamir
OH most definatly, almost every quad core enabled software out there IS video audio encoding... seeing as how the only two quad core programs I know of is adobe and crysis...

You'd be surprised at how many apps can completely "saturate" a quad these days. These are the ones that I know of: Adobe Premiere, Adobe Photoshop (last version or two), TMPGEnc (very, very popular video transcoder), Crysis to some extent as long as you own SLI'd 8800 Ultra's , and M$'s Flight Simulator X. My FSX framerates roughly doubled when I upgraded from a 2.8 Ghz Opteron 170 to a Q6600 @ stock speed, using the same video card, same resolution and same in-game settings.

Still the only reason someone should buy a quad right now is:
1. If money is coming out the wazoo and they are gonna buy an extreme one for the little benefit it will give in crysis. or that one time (per life of computer) you recode a wedding video to DVD using nero.
2. If they are a business that encodes video / otherwise uses 4 cores. And faster CPUs are cheaper then paying employees to stare at a progress bar.

Actually, I'd recommend a quad to anyone who plans on buying/building a system, and not upgrading it again for a few years. For those of us who swap processors on almost a monthly basis, a dual-core will do just fine, at least for now. But, I can promise you that the number of apps that support quads won't be lower in 2 or 3 years.

 

[taltamir]

Ah, but if anyone told me they aren't gonna upgrade for several years I will not be recommending processor selections... but convincing them to spend half the amount per system and upgrade twice as often.

You should get a new computer every year and a half at LEAST. Every year is ideal. You get much much more for your money.

 

[bfdd]

Originally posted by: harpoon84

Originally posted by: bfdd150 was the range I was talking about. I could see gamers building using the Phenom if they were price that low. They perform almost on par in games.

TBH, if gaming was all I did, I'd probably just get a sub $100 CPU and put the savings into a faster GPU instead. Don't get me wrong, a $150 quad would be awesome, but games are hardly taking advantage of QC, and even those that do only show benefits at lower resolutions, as soon as you crank the resolution and details up most games become GPU bound.

I wonder though, if AMD *does* cut prices of quads down to the $150 mark, would Intel respond? If they do, it would definitely cut into their dual core sales. AMD doesn't have this problem as most of their dual cores are below $150 anyway.

Crysis, Supreme Commander, UT3. More and more games are going to start taking advantage of Quad Cores because they can run extra cores to do more physics processing. They're not by all means a bad idea when it comes to gaming it will help with your FPS.