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AMD Launches Counterstrike Against Core 2 Duo 277

Posted by Zonk from the back-and-forth dept.
DigitalDame2 writes to mention a PC Magazine article about the AMD 4x4 enthusiast platform, which is meant to counter Core 2 Duo. The article observes that AMD is now facing many of the same business practices it used in its war against Intel. From the article: "While imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, improvement can often be a slap in the face. Intel's C2D was designed with both low power and performance per watt in mind, two key design metrics that helped AMD cut into Intel's market share with the Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 X2. And, as preliminary numbers have indicated and final performance reviews now show, the C2D has learned its lesson well: its performance now tops AMD's Athlon 64 architecture by a substantial margin."
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AMD Launches Counterstrike Against Core 2 Duo More

AMD Launches Counterstrike Against Core 2 Duo

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  • 4X4 is more a marketing ploy than anything else (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Harry Balls ( 799916 ) * on Friday July 14, 2006 @02:46PM (#15720751)
    4X4 sounds more like a marketing ploy to me than like a feasible solution for Joe Average or even Joe Gamer.

    Why?

    Consider the cost of Athlon X2 processors:
    http://www.pricewatch.com/cpu/442067-1.htm [pricewatch.com]
    The least expensive Athlon X2 costs a cool 300 bucks, while the mid-range Core 2 Duo (Conroe) E6600 costs $315 (projected wholesale price).

    Now factor in a more expensive (because of 2 processor sockets) 4X4 motherboard, two Athlon X2 chips at $300, and you wind up with a $350 to $400 surcharge for being an AMD fanboy.

    The situation gets worse if you want a high-end system:
    Two FX-62 will set you back $1045 + $1045 = $2090
    http://www.pricewatch.com/cpu/992212-1.htm [pricewatch.com]
    and while this combination is expected to outperform a single Core 2 Duo at $1057
    http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=E6800&btnG=Sea rch+Froogle&lmode=online&scoring=p [google.com]
    factoring in the more expensive two-socket motherboard expect to pay a cool $1100 more than for the E6800 system.

    Personally, I'll probably buy an E6600 ($315) or an E6400 ($240) as soon as they become available.

    • Re:4X4 is more a marketing ploy than anything else (Score:5, Informative)

      by MarcoAtWork ( 28889 ) on Friday July 14, 2006 @02:54PM (#15720806)
      remember that AMD is slashing the prices of several X2 processors by about 50%, hence the price differential is mostly only the mobo differential, which I don't think will be that much...
      • Yes, but I can overclock a $300 Intel chip to 3.0 GHz..

        I could have 4 AMD cores, sure, but they'll still be 2.0 GHz no matter what I do, and cost me twice the price + extra expensive and buggy SMP motherboard. The Intel will be faster per clock and have a billion extra clock cycles per process/second.

        AMD lost me here.. They need to convince me they will continue to lower prices and maintain a competitive product. At this point I'm not convince they can catch up to Intel again.. Intel has greater market s
    • Because dual-core Opterons have been around for a while. The 2xx series will run in systems with two processor sockets, the 8xx in systems up to 8 sockets. Giving you a maximum of 4 or 16 cores.
      I think the new "4x4" processors will essentially be rebranded Opterons from the 2xx series. So if you really want it and are willing to pay up, you can have a "4x4" AMD system now.
      • That's funny.. but true. They're effectively lowering the price of their Opterons..

        But since they've just kept us consumers locked out of the SMP Opterons with their socket 939 I feel like they intentionally tried to slow progress towards multi-cpu desktops.. Now they're all for it? Hypocrites!
    • The situation IS worse, because you HAVE to use FX processors in a 4x4 system.

    • They even talked about 8x8 (2x 4 core CPUS). Just 4x4 strikes me as wasted power that the vast majority of enthusiasts would never touch. Most of the time the 2nd core is barely used even now.

      Gillette has already created a version of this overkill in shaving:

      Mach 5 [cnn.com]
      Platinum Mach 14 [jt.org]
      5 Blades! [theonion.com]

      • The apps that are going multithreaded now, though, are typically going to 4+ threads to be future ready for the next couple of years. For people who use any of those applications, they'll see an immediate boost per core.

        Personally, I'm dying to get my hands on an 8+ core workstation.
      • I like my dual core system but really, had I not needed a new motherboard to get PCIe, I'd still be running a single core P4 2.4GHz and doing fine. I'm not opposed to the push to mroe cores, I think software makers need to start thinking mroe multi-threaded, but I don't think it's worth going overboard on it until the software starts catching up. Give it another 6-12 months. Between the dual core PCs, the 3 core X-Box 360 and the Cell in the PS3, I'm seeing multi-threaded thinking taking a huge upswing. The
    • Bingo. The price is what is killing AMD.

      Not sure if Intel is trying to salt the fields here, but AMD did not drop prices at all until they were forced to over the last couple years. Benchmarks can be somewhat unreliable, but with enough reading you can find how the midrange CPU's compare to each other. Since AMD also dropped the 939 socket, I'm going to look real hard at Intel as I have to update RAM and mainboard the next time I do a major update. Were I buying today, it would be Intel - that has not been the case for me since I replaced a 450 mhz slot 2 xeon with a 700mhz slot A thunderbird. I'm not the type of guy to buy an FX or Extreme! Edition of anything, but when I stack up what kind of bang for the buck I can get between $200-500, AMD has a real problem on their hands. Both the X2 and Core 2 Duo are solid technology, but I will not pay for 'brand'. The AMD kit is going to have to drop a fair bit more to be competitive in the landscape I buy in.
      • that has not been the case for me since I replaced a 450 mhz slot 2 xeon with a 700mhz slot A thunderbird.

        Same here. Oh, well, what's one less AMD fanatic? They'll never miss us.
      • You've touched on exactly what makes this so hard to understand. AMD used to be the ultimate value buy. Two of my college roommates and I had, between us, an Athlon XP 1800+, 2100+, and 2500+. I've also got a Sempron 2200+ machine. All four of those computers were relatively cheap and offered a lot of bang for the buck. But the Athlon 64 and X2, while fast, are way too expensive for any of us to consider, and this coming price cut by AMD is too little, too late.

        I have an Intel machine now, and both of
    • I would have been a whole lot more impressed if they had actually made a "four by four" machine, instead of just making up a nonsense term for what's nothing but a regular dual-socket, dual-core setup. At most, I'd call that a "2x2." Four-by-four? It doesn't have four of anything in it, certainly not four of anything by four of anything else. That's just misleading.

      Two cores per processor times two processors ought to be called a 2x2, and a 4x4 ought to mean a four-socket mobo with four quad-core processors, for a total of 16 cores. Similarly, what they're calling an "8x8" ought to be called a 2x4, or maybe a 4x2, since it's four processors times two processors per core.

      For an 'enthusiast' product -- which they're apparently hoping to sell to people who have a clue -- that's a stupid way to name it. Plus, as multi-processor, multi-core systems become more prevalent in the future, it would be nice to have some clear nomenclature to describe them. AMD is just starting everyone off on the wrong foot by calling their dual-core/two-way systems "4-by-anythings".
      • Before somebody jumps in and responds to this line: "Four-by-four? It doesn't have four of anything in it, certainly not four of anything by four of anything else." and says 'but it has four cores total in it!', yes, I realize that.

        What I should have said was that it doesn't have any single part with four of anything in it, so it's not as though they're doing a "four-way" something times four of them, which is what "4x4" logically suggests, IMO.
      • >actually made a "four by four" machine, instead of just making up a nonsense term
        I completely agree with your post. but I will point out a 4x4 pickup has 4 driving wheels out of 4 wheels, and a 2x4 has 2 driving wheels out of 4.
        so a 4x4 processor (uses a stupid analolgy but..) has room for 4 cores, all 4 supplied. so the 2x4 would be a dual core in one slot, or 2 single cores thus room for 4 "cores" but only 2 supplied thus 2x4. the 8x8 thus the first 8 describes the number of "cores", the second 8 w

      • Re:Wake me up when it's really a 4x4. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Friday July 14, 2006 @05:43PM (#15721864) Journal
        Look, the name is perfectly simple to understand. It's 2 AMD Althlon 64 X2 CPUs. Put that together, and you get...uhhh...

        Anyway, ummm, I'm sure it does make sense really...

  • umm? comparison to Intel please... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sofar ( 317980 ) on Friday July 14, 2006 @02:46PM (#15720757) Homepage
    but does it perform better than core 2 duo? I fail to see any performance test between them, and it's also AMD having the bigger market share right now, not intel. Seems like a lot of AMD FUD nowadays... AMD is no longer the underdog here.

  • Counterstrike (Score:4, Funny)

    by m_chan ( 95943 ) * on Friday July 14, 2006 @02:46PM (#15720759) Homepage
    I tried to read this article and all I could think of was that AMD is mad that strafe jumping got patched and that Intel learned how to bunny hop. I'm hung over. Need sleep.

  • Performance improvement? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Atroxodisse ( 307053 ) on Friday July 14, 2006 @02:48PM (#15720767) Homepage
    Not if you ask hard OCP http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTE wOCwxLCxobmV3cw==/ [hardocp.com]
    • How big an issue was the GPU in that test? None, or some? When they dropped a quality level down, the gap increased.

      Another OCP comparison [hardocp.com], without GPU limitations.

    • Only problem is that article basically shows that the CPU isn't the bottle neck in what they were doing. It's like saying there isn't a performance improvement from an original K6 to an opteron and to prove it I'm going to time how long it takes to transfer a 100mb file over a modem with the different CPU's and prove to you how the performance difference is minimal.

      • It was all GPU (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Atroxodisse ( 307053 ) on Friday July 14, 2006 @03:07PM (#15720903) Homepage
        The point was that Intel is hyping the new processor for gaming but you really don't need the best processor for gaming. Might as well drop $180 on a good processor instead of $800 on the best because it won't make a difference.
        • Right, you don't need the $1000 CPU. But a $300 Intel CPU would apparently go a lot further than a $300 AMD.
          • Right. As someone was saying in the other article, they didn't test 800x600 (where you would have seen the difference) because most people who spend $500 on a CPU and $500 on a GPU wouldn't play at that resolution.

            But my opinion is that if they're testing the CPU, they should test at 800x600, simply to factor the GPU out of the equation. If they're testing for a particular game that's one thing, but they're supposed to be testing the CPU. Even if they pulled the 800x600 out into a separate table for compari
    • But then, if you trusted HardOCP, you'd have to be stupid, so why should we care if you're misinformed?

  • Performance number? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Soybean47 ( 885009 ) on Friday July 14, 2006 @02:50PM (#15720782)
    FTFA:
    AMD also plans to push a sort of "performance number" into the market to redefine how consumers should think about power, they said.

    Doesn't AMD already label their processors with a relatively meaningless number designed to... say... redefine how consumers think about processor speed?

    Was that a highly effective marketing technique? I mean, I guess it did get people to think about speed, and it helped convince many people that GHz isn't the be-all and end-all of processor comparison. But at some point won't people just be annoyed by the mess of pretend numbers AMD is throwing around to "make us think?"
    • I think they mean power, as in Watt usage. Currently they just rate the maximum usage which is not really that usefull.

      • I got that. It just seems kind of odd to me that they're trying to convince people to measure speed in magic AMD numbers instead of GHz, and now apparently power consumption in some different magic AMD numbers instead of Watts. It's good to get people thinking, but after a while it just seems like you're trying to fudge things to make yourself look better.
        • It was a brilliant move by AMD marketing to get people to think outside the GHz box because it's how much work a processor can do per cycle that counts, not how fast its internal clock rate is. They proved, with the Athlon64 chips, that a lower-clocked chip can perform as well as, or outperform, a chip with a higher clock rate.

          The old timers, such as yourself, that think GHz ratings mean anything anymore are just wandering around blind. Intel proved that themselves with the switch from Pentium 4 to
    • I find normal consumers have a great deal of difficulty figuring out what the performance level of a given Intel chip is compared to others given how their model numbers jump around. AMD's numbers are more straightforward, though they still don't always tell the right story.

  • Fanboyism... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TripHammer ( 668315 ) on Friday July 14, 2006 @02:51PM (#15720793)
    is wasteful. I'm glad to see Intel back in the mix with some good offerings. I think those of us whom are fickle come out on top: you buy what makes sense. Fanboys step back!

  • It's about Goddamn time! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    AMD Launches Counterstrike Against Core 2 Duo

    We need corporate wars to thin things out. Fuck'n A! The Governments of the World are just too incompetent! It's obvious that the MBAs of the World need to unite and show these Bozoes how to fuck'n do it!

    Yes siree, profit above all else! Fuck these Goddman bald monkeys!

    Hey, I'm not done yet! Put those fucking jackets away!!! Hey!!! Mmmmmmmm!mM!M!M!M

    Put in straight jacket and sent to a Ph.D business program.

    • AMD Launches Counterstrike Against Core 2 Duo We need corporate wars to thin things out. Fuck'n A! The Governments of the World are just too incompetent! It's obvious that the MBAs of the World need to unite and show these Bozoes how to fuck'n do it! Yes siree, profit above all else! Fuck these Goddman bald monkeys! Hey, I'm not done yet! Put those fucking jackets away!!! Hey!!! Mmmmmmmm!mM!M!M!M Put in straight jacket and sent to a Ph.D business program.

      That is funny, not flamebait. Mod Parent u

  • "well.. my dad can beat up your dad!" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Churla ( 936633 ) on Friday July 14, 2006 @02:55PM (#15720814)
    This smacks to me of AMD realizing Intel had actually landed a well placed shot into thier gut and needing a fast "get positive attention back on up" spin.

    So we'll have to buy TWO processors to compete with what Intel is doing with one? If they're aiming for the Enthusiast market they have to remember that "enthusiasts" have price constraints (usually referred to as "wife")

    I could be wrong. But I really don't think I am.

  • I for one... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by rowama ( 907743 )
    am happy that I finally know what will be in my computer 5 years from now, when I swap out my pentium III based system. Us poor folk at least get to enjoy the anticipation longer.

    • Re:I for one... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by doti ( 966971 ) on Friday July 14, 2006 @03:10PM (#15720916) Homepage
      Well, a pIII can play movies and run quake3.
      That's the two most demanding uses for a computer.
      The rest is futile.
      • You forgot the other one:

        It can, in fact, run Linux.

      • I hope you get some 'insightful' points for that in addition to the one 'funny' point you've already got. I'd like to see more computers moving towards small/efficient/quiet, like the Mac Mini. I just got a Dell Dimension 3100 and it's huge and heavy for what it does. It might be 2x or 4x faster than my G4 Mini, but it's also got to be at least 30x larger. Hell, I could put the Mini into one of the Dell's drive bays and tuck the power supply inside as well. And maybe add a tiny toaster-oven door and shelf t

    • Re:I for one... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by fotbr ( 855184 )
      Not poor, but still happily running my dual P-III 1Ghz setup I built 5 years ago. I've upgraded from the original GeForce Pro to an ATI Radeon 9800Pro last year, swapped out the CD burner for a DVD Burner the year before that, and added two 400GB drives 6 months ago to complement the two 80GB drives that I originally had. The thing that'd really help me would be more RAM, but from day one it was maxed out with 2GB.

      Until I meet anything it can't do that I really want to do, I don't see the need to replace

  • Forget the small details... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pieterh ( 196118 ) on Friday July 14, 2006 @02:56PM (#15720826) Homepage
    It does not matter how much these processors cost today, nor whether AMD's 4x4 is real or a maketing ploy.

    What matters is that AMD has captured sufficient marketshare over the last years to become a real competitor to Intel. Opterons have become the CPU of choice for large servers, the niche that Itanium was meant to capture.

    Now Intel's comeback means we're seeing the start of a new growth of CPU power, this time into multi-core land, a nice solid metric on which to compete. You can fudge the Ghz but you can't really fudge the number of cores. This means we have the perfect conditions for an explosion of growth, until the numbers get into meaningless territory. Within 3-4 years, common desktops will have 8 to 16 cores, and high-end workstations will have 128 or more.

    I'm just very glad my company made the move to writing multithreaded code so we can get the best from this new landscape.
    • ... as did Intel with their previous round of patched-up dual-core machines. The reason AMD's multicore is so much better than Intel's is because AMD provided a much better caching architecture. Intel's 64-bit multicores could be compared to a large V-8 engine stuck behind a tiny VW carburetor -- totally starved for data. AMD's multicores effectively shared one anothers' L2 caches (a big win), and achieved lower latency on RAM fetches (another big win).

      If the two giants start to compete on core count, y
    • Now Intel's comeback means we're seeing the start of a new growth of CPU power, this time into multi-core land, a nice solid metric on which to compete.

      Look, we have hyper-threading/SMT/whatever, so our 2 cores are as good as 4 of your cores. Besides each of our cores are faster than your cores. And nobody needs more than 4 cores anyway. With our supercallifragilisticexpiallidotious memory bandwidth, even our dual core processors will beat your 16-core processor, because memory bandwidth is what really ma

    • Nice prediction, but you are wrong. While MS sits firmly on desktop market it's going to be hard going beyond 2 cores unless you do your stuff on linux. Granted some of us are going to buy the multicore setups, but thats because we need the power and feel at home with linux.

      On top of that, last time I checked the cache wasn't shared, which means we won't get anything really usefull with more cores unless they start doing crossbar switching in the cache (expensive, but damn its nice).

  • And in other news (Score:5, Funny)

    by plusser ( 685253 ) on Friday July 14, 2006 @02:58PM (#15720835)
    Mayor of London Ken Livingston introduces a GHz charge on microprocessors used in London as he gets confused by the fact that AMD are to launch 4x4, as he thinks that they take up too much space and are bad for the environment.

  • Intel leading with heat and watts (Score:5, Insightful)

    by minion ( 162631 ) on Friday July 14, 2006 @03:01PM (#15720854)
    People are forgetting though that its not just desktop CPUs that AMD took such large pieces of marketshare away from Intel.
     
    There have been a few benchmarks (I believe one was on Anandtech's site) that have shown Intel Xeons running in 64bit mode performed slower than the same processor running in 32bit mode. Now, I know, we're talking about copying larger data segments around, because the address space is larger, so a bit of a slowdown in some areas are expected. But when they're talking 5% slower, thats a bit.
     
    We replaced 3 Dual Intel Xeon servers (2.8GHz Xeons) with 4G of RAM each, with a single AMD Dual Opteron server, running in 64bit mode for MySQL. This system is immensely faster than the old Xeon systems. MySQL shows upto 23% performance increases in SELECT commands on 64bit vs 32bit on the AMD. On the Intel, it was a performance loss.
     
    As far as heat output, the air coming out the back of this server feels cooler, not to mention that it replaced 3 servers with one.
     
    People need to focus on the server market, and not the desktop market to see the real king in the (x86) CPU wars. Lets not forget hypertransport, and seperate data paths for memory and IO, whereas the Xeon has a shared 800MHz FSB (now 1066 with the newer rendition).

    • Re:Intel leading with heat and watts (Score:4, Interesting)

      by C_Kode ( 102755 ) on Friday July 14, 2006 @03:27PM (#15721037) Journal
      You noted how you changed (3) Intel servers with (4) GBs of ram for a single AMD server yet you left out a TON of information about the AMD. What and how are the disk connected compared to the Intel boxen. Secondly, how much ram does this 64-bit AMD have? (16GB?)

      We had (2) IBM servers (Dual AMD 64-bit Opteron) with 12GB ram each running 32-bit RHEL3 and Oracle 10g. Because it was 32-bit RH it was only using 4GB in each server. We upgraded the RHEL3-64 and Oracle 10g 64-bit (using all 12GB of memory in each box) and we got about 140% improvement on the same hardware.

      What was the difference? 8 more GB of ram each. The fact that a single server has 12GB of ram and all queries happen on a single server makes a HUGE difference than have (3) servers with only 4GB of ram as the database can cache more data in memory.

      While I don't know your *true* setup, I can say that a single server with a TON of ram will kill many servers with only a little bit of ram on simple select statements. CPU doesn't do a whole lot on select statements compared to what it will do on say stored procs or all kinds of subselects/joins/aggregate functions in your select statements.
      • Sorry if my post was too vague earlier.

        The boxes we were using were Dual Xeon 2.8GHz servers, 4G of DDR RAM, and 4 x 73G 15K SCSI disks in a 0+1 RAID array. We had 3 of those servers running like that.

        The new Dual Opteron server is 2 x model 252s, with 8G of DDR RAM (4G per proc), using node-interleaving memory configuration, with 6 x 73G 15K SCSI disks in a RAID 0+1 array, with 2 x 73G 10K SCSI disks mirrored for binlogs.

        Our application for MySQL is an ASP app, with each cu
    • That would be an insightful comment..if it were made 1 month ago.

      Woodcrest changes your equation completely.

    • How are you measuring your performance? Total query bandwidth database SELECTS are inherently bound by the speed of a single processor. More agressive multi-processor design often increases throughput, but for sheer performance a 2-way machine with faster chips beats a 64-node beowolf cluster of slightly slower ones 99.9% of the time. Databases are also often secondarily (or even primarily) disk bound. If you replaced 3 machines with 1, I'm betting that you moved from a network-based disk system to a l
    • Let us not forget clock multiplier locks, single CPU desktop locks, and extremely high price deltas for very very little performance gain between chips.

      AMD has not made a friend of this customer. They would have to beg me to stick with them now. They will truely have to beat Intel on price/performance AND overclockability. A C2D 2.4 can overclock well above 3.0 for around $320. At 3.0 the C2D beats the best Opertons for 90% of desktop workloads. I'm interested in video encoding, gaming, compiling and a

  • This is just dual dual-core (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ArcherB ( 796902 ) on Friday July 14, 2006 @03:05PM (#15720889) Journal
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this just two dual-core AMD processors on a single board? What's to stop Intel from releasing a dual-socket board and slapping two Conroes in it (provided the chip supports it)?

    • appears on the surface to be as you have described, but from what i've read they are also going to support 3rd party co-processors in the extra slot ... for say ... a dedicated physics or encryption engine. not that i think either of those are particularly useful except in overspecialized situations...

      i'm not an intel fan ...but i've got to tip my hat to them. they've put out a chip that actually looks "worth buying" for a change. amd needs to update their fab to 65nm and increase on-die cache sizes ...
    • I believe that the difference would be AMD chips support hypertransport while Intel's don't. The theory is that with the hypertransport bus the communication between processors will be almost as fast as if they were on the same die. If Intel had to use the FSB, then they'd be limited by the available bandwidth.
    • They're doing it with upcoming Mac Pro from Apple. Two Woodcrest based processors in the same computer in the high-end configuration.

  • FINALLY! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sebastopol ( 189276 ) on Friday July 14, 2006 @03:07PM (#15720898) Homepage
    ...us Intel fanboys get to see AMD scrambling to polish a turd, the same way Intel had to with the P4 core for the past 4 years.

    AMD CEO to Marketing: "Attention marketing team: Full Steam Ahead with the scrambling and spinning in place!"

    I'm going to take a few moments to enjoy AMD's panic. Because: a) its been a long time, and b) it probably won't last long.

    • Re:FINALLY! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by groundround ( 962898 )
      I'm just curious what you get out of being a fanboy. I mean, it is a corporation we're talking about. So, unless you work there, cheerleading a group of people employed to create company profits is meaningless.

  • Let me be the first to say to AMD (Score:3)

    by Jakhel ( 808204 ) on Friday July 14, 2006 @03:12PM (#15720932)
    Go! Go! Go!

  • Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14, 2006 @03:23PM (#15721002)
    Begun these core wars have

    *ducks*

  • Misleading title... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dtjohnson ( 102237 ) on Friday July 14, 2006 @03:28PM (#15721042)
    There doesn't seem to be any AMD counterstrike yet other than hot air. It would be a shock if AMD spokespeople said anything other than that they were 'supremely confident.' What else can they say...that they are facing several quarters of deep price cuts, low margins, and they're scared to death about their stock options? The original P4 delivered a pretty big smackdown on AMD that took them two years to come back from and the Conroe Core 2 Duo looks like it's going to do the same thing. AMD still has the better fundamental architecture, though, just like they did against the P4 with its 26 pipeline stages and power-sucking 'netburst' architecture, so in the long run the AMd direct connect stuff should win out but that's not going to put food on the table for the next year or so.
  • Why do they call it an "AMD 4x4 enthusiast platform"? It seems to me that the 4x4 motherboard would be excellent for servers.

  • Title (Score:2, Funny)

    by PuppiesOnAcid ( 792320 )
    After reading the title, I was expecting to see projectile CS:Source CDs shattering Intel processors.

  • 65nm (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Azarael ( 896715 ) on Friday July 14, 2006 @03:48PM (#15721186) Homepage
    My question is, how would the comparison stackup once AMD finally releases 65nm chips? Everyone knows that Intel has the best fabs, but I'm curious to see what happens when AMD catches up further in that area.
    • Well, on a guesstimate based on Intel's 90->65nm chips, I would say it could bring the Athlon64s closer but the Core 2 architecture is a winner in itself. Anandtech showed that the new chips could hit 4GHz on air cooling. The K8 architecture, even on 65nm is probably out of headroom and needs an upgrade.

    • Re:65nm (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Aadain2001 ( 684036 )
      About the time AMD does, Intel will be moving towards their 45nm or 40nm or whatever their next smallest size is. Intel has the best fabs for a reason: they invested a LOT of money into fab R&D just after the bubble burst. They called is their One Generation Ahead strategy. While everyone else was trying to cope with the loss of capital and drop in stock prices, Intel want to make sure that they came out one generation of silicon manufacturing ahead and stayed that way. While they have in some respe
  • Affordable dual processor boards would be very tempting. Unfortunately, I suspect most will be gimped, and only have memroy and a northbridge hanging off one processor. A $250 dual processor board with a memory and a PCI 16x off each processor would have a huge impact on countering Inte's Duo2 strike.

  • Healthy Competition (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Stompp ( 987549 )
    All I can say is, "keep one-upping each other!" The more competition (not marketing!) we see, the better we, as consumers make out. So what if the performance gains are negligible (in certain areas) the more they release, the cheaper some of these older (still extremely viable) chips get!

    Age old fight: Intel vs. AMD... you want to know who wins? Us.

  • Not really that great (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bberens ( 965711 ) on Friday July 14, 2006 @04:13PM (#15721356)
    It depresses me that innovation in the processor market is adding additional cores. The geek in my loves it, but the consumer in me isn't impressed. What I (and I presume most other regular users) want is the ability to double-click on my Word/Evolution/Eclipse/Firefox/IE/etc icon and have it instantly display on the screen. What I don't need is to be able to run multiple programs just as slow as I could run one program 2 years ago. What's the holdup? Is it bus speed? Hard drive speed? Memory speed? Will I ever have zero (apparent) latency between running apps and seeing the result? The problem with PC makers is that if they ever do reach the holy grail of zero (apparent) latency, then they will have to decrease the life expectancy of their products in order to continue to make a profit. Maybe I'm slightly off topic and maybe I'm just bitter, but the latest and greatest PC today just doesn't seem to massively outperform the latest and greatest 3 years ago in any way meaningful to the end user. My compile times are faster, but for the most part, users simply can't/don't tax their processor.

    • Sure you can (Score:2, Funny)

      by wbean ( 222522 )
      Sure you can. All you have to do is dig out those Dos 6.0 disks. Both your boot and application startup times will be blindingly fast. I've been tempted to try it :)
  • ..isn't competition grand! Look at the innovation these two companies are making at a breakneck pace! Woohoo!
  • AMD Launches Counterstrike Against Core 2 Duo, but is defeated, citing lag problems as the cause of death.

  • AMD Launches Counterstrike Against Core 2 Duo (Score:3, Funny)

    by zaphod_es ( 613312 ) on Friday July 14, 2006 @04:29PM (#15721453)
    Tut tut! Another sloppy editor. What is wrong with the industry standard:
    AMD launches Core 2 Duo Killer

  • A single (single or dual core) super-duper fast processor may be good at some benchmarks but consider this.

    Plugging in two Athlon 64s/Opterons doubles the memory bandwidth due to the NUMA (Hypertransport) architecture. That intel processor is choking on an old-fashioned 1980's-vintage front side bus. If you have two, they're both fighting over that bus.

    This is why Pentium multiprocessor systems don't scale well. You get a bit of a benefit with a second processor, with very small and diminishing gains wit

  • Everyone not getting it (Score:5, Interesting)

    by charnov ( 183495 ) on Friday July 14, 2006 @07:23PM (#15722408) Homepage Journal
    Okay, I'll give it the Slashdot norm, but nobody gets what this is. It a hypertransport socket for not just another CPU, but ANYTHING you would want to connect directly to memory and CPU. No PCI or other slow bus.

    There are already Xilinx cards available because this has been used in Cray supercomputers for a while (the Opteron ones anyways). This means AMD can counter ANYTHING Intel puts out because you can just slap a $20 speciality DSP on the mobo which could easily be 100x faster than that Intel chip at whatever small set of functions it needs. Video cards are already in the works for this along with all kinds of audio and video stuff. I seem to remember one manufacturer has a RAID processor. The possibilities are endless.

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