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AMD's Response to Intel Conroe: Energy Efficient Athlon 64 X2 CPU

imagine for a moment that they only changed the process to 65nm. That's a cooler running cpu right there. To be any real threat to conroe, they'd still need to be clocking well past 4ghz.

Be totally honest here. @ 3ghz, heat isnt an issue for my opteron 148 - it's at it's physical wall, despite loading @<50c on quiet air cooling. if you decrease the heat output further, without making any other substantial changes, do you really think they will be closing in on 4ghz?

can't see it happening, and that's the honest truth. To be any threat at all will require a redesign.
 
Yeah ... the sad fact about AMD is that it can only play catch up ....

by that time , Intel will have launched their Quad Core ( 1133 Ghz Kentfield )
chip ...

AMD , have sat on own hands and now INTEL are now going to take the Crown ... :D
 
AMD i think did screw up a lot here, they sat on there hands with K8, they made no revisions to it barring some fancy new 'strained silicon' type thing and added SSE3, they've had several years to come up with new architecture... :eek:
 
Yea.. got complacent if you ask me. I'm no cpu engineer but i'm sure they could've done more with the time they had if they were more aggressive.
 
El Jimben said:
Even if they do increase clockspeeds, AMD's chips are still a long way behind in terms of cache too.
Click to expand...
Cache doesnt really matter that much (after a certain point) - Intel have in the past just put as much cache just to hide the relative inefficiencies in its architecture - indeed its just a quick patch (not a fix) while they were attempted to get conroe et al. out...

No doubt AMD might do the same though I doubt their processors will benefit as much as the P-Ds and EEs did...

ps3ud0 :cool:
 
AMDs cache technology is not as efficient as Intels, hence the Barton and Opteron etc.. not being that much more faster than their 256/512 counterparts.
 
Gashman said:
AMD i think did screw up a lot here, they sat on there hands with K8, they made no revisions to it barring some fancy new 'strained silicon' type thing and added SSE3, they've had several years to come up with new architecture... :eek:
Click to expand...

Justintime said:
Yea.. got complacent if you ask me. I'm no cpu engineer but i'm sure they could've done more with the time they had if they were more aggressive.
Click to expand...

Sorry but err what? Sat on their hands? Got complacent?
AMD have constantly been trying to improve their architecture and design a new one ever since and even before the K8 was launched. There have been tons of revisions adding bits here and there that make the current A64 much better than the original clawhammer.
It takes years and years to design a new architecture that might not even be as fast as the prvious version. You think Intel was just sitting around thinking the Netburst architecture would last them for the next 20 years? No, they are constantly working on improving their architectures, it just happens that nothing came along that was better than Netburst for the desktop until as Intel people put it.... The Israeli design team had some "suprising breakthroughs" with stuff they were working on.

AMD will no doubt continue to increase their market share until the end of the year, by that time they will have ramped up 65nm with mature yields. Then possibly will come their first (non-native) quadcore based on the K8 architecture (foxhound?) before a dual core K8L sometime probably in 2Q (my speculation) and then the native quadcore K8L in 2H07 (claimed by AMD). AMD will be first to have a native quad core if they release the K8L on schedule (deerhound isn't it?).

All Intel will be doing up till then in the non-native quadcore that is Kentsfield. I say all, but in reality it will be the fastest thing around until K8L and then still might be after that.

As for the A64 EE's. They probably won't clock much if any better than the current processors, we won't see any major clocking improvements until the 65nm die shrink.
One thing i can't wait for in AMD processors in the inclusion of Z-ram, its cache 5 times denser than their current cache which should give them a better cache density than Intel currently have.

EDITED: Various typo's and structure.
 
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Lemme guess, you real love AMD eh? :D They did tweak and make revisions etc.. but ever since the debut of K8 they never really made any stunning breakthroughs, they surely could'nt think that K8 would be thier flagship for ever? As i said, i hope to eat crow, i love AMD and always have but they're really in the porridge with conroe.
 
Justintime said:
Lemme guess, you real love AMD eh? :D They did tweak and make revisions etc.. but ever since the debut of K8 they never really made any stunning breakthroughs, they surely could'nt think that K8 would be thier flagship for ever? As i said, i hope to eat crow, i love AMD and always have but they're really in the porridge with conroe.
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Ermmm right so Intel produce their first Netburst chip in late 2001, AMD bring out their first K8 (clawhammer) chip in late 2003. Intel have taken 5 years to design a barnd new architecture yet you are slating AMD for not making any stunning breakthroughs in 3 years?
No one has made stunning breakthroughs in architecture design of late. NGMA (next gen micro architecture... the Core2 architecture) is really just an evolutionary step from the P-6.
THis is the same as what K8L will hopefully be for AMD.

CPU's are much more about evolution than revolution.

As for loving AMD, i love no companies, i merely like to put a balanced view across in face of many ill-informed comments. Mine may not be totally accurate and i don't claim to know much about designing processors but i do read a lot of articles/columns before i make my comments. Many on here don't seem to do the same thing.
 
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People seem really eager and quick to judge AMD on this one... For years Intel had the inferior CPU to AMD. Suddenly the tides have turned and AMD are getting a slating.
C'mon guys... we all know the game here the market doesnt stand still. Everythings evolving and changing, with constant development going on from all sides.

Care to explain the "stunning breakthroughs" intel made with netburst? Aside from a clockspeed hike there was pretty much nothing new in the entire series... It was basically a dog, Intel's plans to continue to scale clockspeeds above 4/5/ ghz fell on it's ass.. Or did you forget about that..?
As you said yourself, one company cant be the flagship forever. One day Intels turn will be ok and AMD will take over. Likewise, their turn will end and Intel will re-take the crown.

Oh and before you call me a fanboi, I've owned (and currently own) both Intel and AMD rigs.

<edit> beaten to it, and a much better argument too :P </edit>
 
Defcon5 said:
How does performance per watt compare between the x2s and conroe?
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The Conroe wins this, if you are considdering full load anyway.
At full load the conroe will consume less power than the equivalent X2. At idle, however, it will consume more.

If you leave your comp on 24/7 but don't fold or do something with the comp whilst you aren't using it then the X2 will probably cosume less power overall, however it is still slightly slower (if you do not overclock, like for like CPU's).

EDIT: This was shown in the HardOCP review, i believe in that review the consumption of the whole system was measured. This is more relevant anyway as people will use a whole system, not just a cpu :)
 
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Kamakazie! said:
Ermmm right so Intel produce their first Netburst chip in late 2001, AMD bring out their first K8 (clawhammer) chip in late 2003. Intel have taken 5 years to design a barnd new architecture yet you are slating AMD for not making any stunning breakthroughs in 3 years?
No one has made stunning breakthroughs in architecture design of late. NGMA (next gen micro architecture... the Core2 architecture) is really just an evolutionary step from the P-6.
THis is the same as what K8L will hopefully be for AMD.

CPU's are much more about evolution than revolution.

As for loving AMD, i love no companies, i merely like to put a balanced view across in face of many ill-informed comments. Mine may not be totally accurate and i don't claim to know much about designing processors but i do read a lot of articles/columns before i make my comments. Many on here don't seem to do the same thing.
Click to expand...

I'm hoping K8L will be the next king as well, however remember AMD is not as big as Intel, and something like this can affect them much more. Intel has always had name brand recognition working in its favour, Intel, Pentium.. before K7 most people would shudder if i mentioned AMD for a system build and it took yrs before people realized Athlon was superior to the P4, K8 really made a huge impact in that as well. AMD has had a 'knockoff, not as good budget chip' history/reputation and if they're knocked back into this league for too long it might affect things like market share etc.. Intel sat around too long and ended up rushing out the Williamette and the Athlon was kicking butt, i hope this dosen't happen with AMD now, i.e i hope it dosen't take years upon years for them to finally bring something to conquer/compete with intel. Like i said i'm not a cpu engineer but thats MY opinion, i don't take a sarcastic view on other peoples opinion when i disagree with them.
 
Justintime said:
Intel has always had name brand recognition working in its favour, Intel, Pentium.. before K7 most people would shudder if i mentioned AMD for a system build and it took yrs before people realized Athlon was superior to the P4, K8 really made a huge impact in that as well. AMD has had a 'knockoff, not as good budget chip' history/reputation and if they're knocked back into this league for too long it might affect things like market share etc..
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AMD did have that sorta image in the mainstream for a long time but they will never get nocked back in to that league. It just won't happen, for one they do not make rip-off's any more and secondly they are now a recognised and trusted brand all over the world. Just because currently their lineup is slower than Intel's, it doesn't set them back to where they were.

I wasn't being sarcastic, i was just wondering if i had interpreted what you said correctly.
 
Justintime said:
Sadly i'm seeing it happen, massive price cuts and less performance. Not as drastic, but it reminds me of the K6 days :(
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Massive price cuts which shows just how much they were making before them. Intel has priced it's new lineup very aggresively. AMD are not charging less because of their brand, they are chargineg less because they have to for their lineup to be competetive. They were charging inflated amounts for their processors up until recently, the only way they got away with it is becase they are now a recognised and respected brand and their chips were faster. 5 years ago they would have to have had a faster processor AND charge less for it because they had little brand recognition.
It is a very different situation.
The price cuts are to make their CPU's competetive, which, if you are not overclocking, they are. Very much so.
 
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