Caporegime
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 33,188
So far mixed bag, quite a few reviews.
anandtechs reviews against a penryn and kentsfield
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3153&p=11
but seems to get it wrong IMHO.
there are things like, old school apps they've benched with for years to do encoding. the only newer encoding review, the x264 one, its basically clock for clock performance for all results which is great. in the older stuff its slower, but its still very fast, more than fast enough for anyone but someone who encoded 24/7. but anandtech kept saying that intel won because their chips were priced under amds.
but in reality, we'll all overclock them so just like we prefer to pay for a E6600 and clock it up, we'll be getting the £145 chip and clocking it up as far as possible, probably to same speeds as the rest. in gaming, the benchmarks are at very low res/detail, and older games its the difference of hl2 at 153 vs 180, with amd losing, but again at high res they would give same numbers. but crysis, at low res was giving similar numbers. now being crysis i would say the gain could be gpu limited more, but i'm not so sure tbh. its still very low res and most likely very low detail meaning less gpu limited.
i tend to get the impression, theres only so much brute force you need, newer programs, newer games, newer encoding tends to do things better, smarter, to higher quality. that needs better smarter cpu's, brute force is to make older more basic programs run faster. but theres a point where you just don't need more speed on old stuff.
the 3 issue width is the same as older k8, while intel have a 4 width(i think even 5 for things like superpi, but only on very specific usage which is difficult to get to). which is fine, harder to run apps often only fill the core 2 duo with 3 instructions, less is possible on both chips. To a point had they added a 4th, it would give them more brute power, which would result in a lot of programs being faster, but newer programs, more complex, would still only routinely fill the 3 issue width rather than 4.
Its going to be seen as bad, when frankly the use in games will not be any different to intels(at normal resolutions), even dual core intel/amd. i thinka phenom + board will end up cheaper than an intel equivilent, a quad crossfire top end 790fx is as cheap/cheaper than a sli/dual crossfire x38, let alone how much a x48 will cost.
It all feels like a stop gap to the next big jump from both big companies to 8/16 cores with a few of those specific cores, basic gpu, maybe ppu, maybe split up the cores a bit more sony/cell like, so you can choose a fpu or int beast should you want.
the other issue would be a fairly damn new chipset for amd, vs a x38/p35/965 that have changed very very little and had a long time to get the most performance possible out of it. wonder if mobo's will improve much.
[h] are saying the black edition 2.3Ghz will be the same price(well probably bumped up £5 in stores i would think) for an unlocked core that h reckons they can get to 2.8-3Ghz easily, i would think that will be on air aswell. personally i've never had a chip on air/water thats needed a higher multiplier in the past 5 years, fsb and lower multiplier has always been the case for me. but its a nice touch to make it same price and offer the enthusiast the option should we want it. £145 for the 9400 and 9500 apparently in both black and normal edition at £159.
also, their overclocking tool looks god damned brilliant tbh. it seems to basically have every single option every little tweak program has offered us, memset, cpuid, clockgen and the rest all in one app supported by them.
i think every, or almost every single bios option is available in windows. though obviously, if thats more stable than bios is yet to be seen, anandtech decided to only overclock through the tool which might have affected their top stable overclock(2.6Ghz despite being able to get into windows at 3Ghz). not sure.
anandtechs reviews against a penryn and kentsfield
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3153&p=11
but seems to get it wrong IMHO.
there are things like, old school apps they've benched with for years to do encoding. the only newer encoding review, the x264 one, its basically clock for clock performance for all results which is great. in the older stuff its slower, but its still very fast, more than fast enough for anyone but someone who encoded 24/7. but anandtech kept saying that intel won because their chips were priced under amds.
but in reality, we'll all overclock them so just like we prefer to pay for a E6600 and clock it up, we'll be getting the £145 chip and clocking it up as far as possible, probably to same speeds as the rest. in gaming, the benchmarks are at very low res/detail, and older games its the difference of hl2 at 153 vs 180, with amd losing, but again at high res they would give same numbers. but crysis, at low res was giving similar numbers. now being crysis i would say the gain could be gpu limited more, but i'm not so sure tbh. its still very low res and most likely very low detail meaning less gpu limited.
i tend to get the impression, theres only so much brute force you need, newer programs, newer games, newer encoding tends to do things better, smarter, to higher quality. that needs better smarter cpu's, brute force is to make older more basic programs run faster. but theres a point where you just don't need more speed on old stuff.
the 3 issue width is the same as older k8, while intel have a 4 width(i think even 5 for things like superpi, but only on very specific usage which is difficult to get to). which is fine, harder to run apps often only fill the core 2 duo with 3 instructions, less is possible on both chips. To a point had they added a 4th, it would give them more brute power, which would result in a lot of programs being faster, but newer programs, more complex, would still only routinely fill the 3 issue width rather than 4.
Its going to be seen as bad, when frankly the use in games will not be any different to intels(at normal resolutions), even dual core intel/amd. i thinka phenom + board will end up cheaper than an intel equivilent, a quad crossfire top end 790fx is as cheap/cheaper than a sli/dual crossfire x38, let alone how much a x48 will cost.
It all feels like a stop gap to the next big jump from both big companies to 8/16 cores with a few of those specific cores, basic gpu, maybe ppu, maybe split up the cores a bit more sony/cell like, so you can choose a fpu or int beast should you want.
the other issue would be a fairly damn new chipset for amd, vs a x38/p35/965 that have changed very very little and had a long time to get the most performance possible out of it. wonder if mobo's will improve much.
[h] are saying the black edition 2.3Ghz will be the same price(well probably bumped up £5 in stores i would think) for an unlocked core that h reckons they can get to 2.8-3Ghz easily, i would think that will be on air aswell. personally i've never had a chip on air/water thats needed a higher multiplier in the past 5 years, fsb and lower multiplier has always been the case for me. but its a nice touch to make it same price and offer the enthusiast the option should we want it. £145 for the 9400 and 9500 apparently in both black and normal edition at £159.
also, their overclocking tool looks god damned brilliant tbh. it seems to basically have every single option every little tweak program has offered us, memset, cpuid, clockgen and the rest all in one app supported by them.
i think every, or almost every single bios option is available in windows. though obviously, if thats more stable than bios is yet to be seen, anandtech decided to only overclock through the tool which might have affected their top stable overclock(2.6Ghz despite being able to get into windows at 3Ghz). not sure.
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