amd new core is going to rock your world !

porkrind · 11 Feb 2007 at 07:16

linky

if true its going to be an intresting year ahead, I might wait untill we get some scores before going c2d.

musx64 · 11 Feb 2007 at 07:27

I believe it when I see it !

PinkFloyd · 11 Feb 2007 at 08:09

Will be looking forward to this, I just hope its as good as thy say it is

FrankJH · 11 Feb 2007 at 08:31

I really hope it works out in practice - bring the real competition back otherwise Intel will get lazy again

NathanE · 11 Feb 2007 at 09:35

I'd hardly call it a 'reinvention' of x86...

It seems most of the improvements are with virtualisation - so it's probably going to give Intel a hard time in the server space.

Gashman · 11 Feb 2007 at 12:48

NathanE said:
I'd hardly call it a 'reinvention' of x86...

It seems most of the improvements are with virtualisation - so it's probably going to give Intel a hard time in the server space.

its coming on desktop as well, many people keep forgetting that a dual core variant is coming to desktop, exact same processor, half the cores, if it beats woodcrest in the server market, the desktop varient will beat conroe in the desktop market, i must say it looks to be an impressive processor, all cores have there own L2 cache!? and share a large L3 cache, interesting thinking, certainly outside the box as of late, and floating point performance 'more than' 80% of current opterons, thats a lot

Dolph · 11 Feb 2007 at 12:58

Gashman said:
its coming on desktop as well, many people keep forgetting that a dual core variant is coming to desktop, exact same processor, half the cores, if it beats woodcrest in the server market, the desktop varient will beat conroe in the desktop market, i must say it looks to be an impressive processor, all cores have there own L2 cache!? and share a large L3 cache, interesting thinking, certainly outside the box as of late, and floating point performance 'more than' 80% of current opterons, thats a lot

Not necessarily, how many people do you know who use virtualisation on their home PC's?

Likewise the 80% floating point performance could be data related, similar claims were made about the Netburst architecture, and they were true when dealing with certian data types and streams, but that didn't make the processers great performers across the board.... SSE only works well with compatible data types...

Full benchmarks needed before anything can really be decided.

Justintime · 11 Feb 2007 at 12:58

Barcelona is a new CPU, not a doubling of cores and not extensions strapped on here and there. Get ready to be blown away long before its release, which is scheduled for midyear

So.. going by AMD timescale, mid 2009?

NathanE · 11 Feb 2007 at 13:02

Gashman said:
its coming on desktop as well, many people keep forgetting that a dual core variant is coming to desktop, exact same processor, half the cores, if it beats woodcrest in the server market, the desktop varient will beat conroe in the desktop market, i must say it looks to be an impressive processor, all cores have there own L2 cache!? and share a large L3 cache, interesting thinking, certainly outside the box as of late, and floating point performance 'more than' 80% of current opterons, thats a lot

It is impressive yes - but not these particular details. There is more to Barcelona than the mediocre details in this particular article.

A dedicated L2 cache per core is actually a draw back - I'm not sure why AMD are flogging it as an advantage.

Advanced power control... ability to turn off certain parts of the cores. Nothing new. Intel has been doing this for years. C2D does it too.

L3 cache is nothing new either. It's been done before on x86. L3 cache is a workaround a larger problem - prefetching. L3 cache is also going to hit their performance per watt. I also doubt a L3 cache would have been needed if they'd made a single large shared L2 cache. L3 caching will also hit memory access latency (an additional table lookup to perform) - much worse than a shared L2 cache would have.

Their enhancements to SSE are impressive but remember they are speaking in comparison to previous AMD chips. Not Intel chips. Intel designs the SSE instruction sets so they sure as hell will always be one step ahead in optimising each instruction's µops.

pastymuncher · 11 Feb 2007 at 14:20

That could be why there's a RUMOUR going round that Intel is bringing the 45nm Penryn core forward to the 1st half of this year then.

See here .

NathanE · 11 Feb 2007 at 14:22

The rumour is false and a crap one at that. Penryn only taped out in January. It will be 8 months minimum before it even starts to reach the market. Delays with the 45nm process (which is not uncommon on a new fab process) could also set it back. Intel was recently quoted as saying it's looking for a Q4 release of Penryn.

smsmasters · 11 Feb 2007 at 16:28

Marketing BS.

luminous · 11 Feb 2007 at 16:56

Some of this going on soon then?

sajtion · 11 Feb 2007 at 17:45

i think that picture could also tell you the pricing difference from two companies. in the end intel win

jaykay · 11 Feb 2007 at 18:19

lol lots of fanboys around
amd will always have the lower price thats what theyve done for years

anyway i like competetion it mean cheap as chips cpus

simonnance · 11 Feb 2007 at 19:04

Prob is, most games are bottlenecked by the Gfx with a good C2d (even more so when overclocked), and the C2Qs arent giving good scaleability yet. So unless you have the top of the range Gfx, do you really need more than a C2D t the moment?

Its a good thing that AMD look to be pulling their socks up though.... looking forward to seeing some benchies!

Big.Wayne · 11 Feb 2007 at 19:21

AMD Native Quad Core Opteron (Barcelona).

This is the first details I read about it, thanks for the heads up. I missed the whole Athlon64 buzz as I stuck it out with my P4 Northwood and the next big upgrade I did was an Opteron 146, followed 2 months later by an Opteron 170. They are wicked CPUs but then Core2 Duo came along and the rest is history.

Dual-Core is usable right now, at the very least if only for smoother multitasking and gaming benefits, but I'm not whats gonna make Quad-Core a must-have on the desktop platform? (unless we become a nation of DVD-shrinkers!).

Am I missing something?

PinkFloyd · 11 Feb 2007 at 21:03

Big.Wayne said:
very least if only for smoother multitasking and gaming benefits, but I'm not whats gonna make Quad-Core a must-have on the desktop platform? (unless we become a nation of DVD-shrinkers!).

Quad cores are going to be pointless for average users for a while yet, anyone who rips lots of media, does 3d rendering, or likes running 3dmark06 over and over again will love them. I'll be getting on once there is one around the £300 mark, no doubt I'll be waiting a while yet!

sajtion · 11 Feb 2007 at 22:45

intel and amd seem pretty determined to release 8 16 and 32 core cpus in few years so i think they will become mainstream sooner than you think

fester · 12 Feb 2007 at 10:32

I think 4+ cores will come in be very handy if u want to shrink a hd dvd/blueray movie to a dvd next year.