Great read on AMD's Barcelona core.

[james.miller]

I remember that when I got my 1Ghz Athlon is whipped butt compared to everything else on the market. Then my Athlon XP 2000 was pretty good and feinately beat the 1.8Ghz/2Ghz P4's.

yes it did the problem was intel had the 2.4ghz p4 out and they are overclocking quite well, most people getting near 3ghz and over. when the xp2000 was released it was a palamino which was right on the edge of its limits before they bought the updated thoroughbred cores out. as far as socket a goes, they were the kings of budget but they never were faster than intels offerings at the time. not untill the bartons 3000/3200's were released could they be concidered faster, thats strictly talking stock speeds of course.

wait, was prescott out same time as k8, so long ago hard to remember exactly when what did what and when with who

the prescotts were released feb 2004 i think, the first k8's (opteron sledgehammer) were released april 2003 according to the wiki

 

[drunkenmaster]

damn, time really does fly, i was working in the tech/warehouse of another online store at that point. actually, thats wrong again i was there when the 3500+ newcastle 939 was out. the 3200+ i think came out 754 in around august/sept 2003 i think then. haven't played with a xp for over 3 years now (cept sending them out to people ).

 

[geff_r]

the thoroughbred were never faster. the p4's were always the better cpu's. where did you learn this stuff?

Everyone got a barton mobile 2500 i am talking about bang for buck here
maybe an intel did beat it but it was 4 times the price?
I seem to recall something about mathmatical floating point beating the intel
for gaming too.Anyway i am not trying to start a flame war as i'm getting a 6300 on monday i'm just confident that amd will come along and beat the core 2 duo in a while.
It has always been the case or they would have gone out of business
a long time ago,then intel will beat amd again it is of course the way of all things grasshopper.

 

[Justintime]

They've done it once in history (the K8) on my count? (not stirring things up here, just I believe this is a fact?)

They did it with K7 too, original Athlon and later T Birds whupped the PIIIs and most Pentium 4s, only clockspeed really held them back from beating the later 3Ghz and over Nwoods on a consistent basis though it did take them in a lot as well.

 

[steve258]

The original Thunderbird K7 was a legend and with the L1 bridge mod you can adjust the multiplier too, making it THE only choice for enthusiasts and gamers at the time.

 

[Dolph]

The original Thunderbird K7 was a legend and with the L1 bridge mod you can adjust the multiplier too, making it THE only choice for enthusiasts and gamers at the time.

That's entirely true, but it doesn't mean that the chip was overall better than the P4 chips available at the time, it just means it was a better bang for buck and overclocking choice, there is a difference between those two ideas.

With the exception of K8, Intel were pretty much constantly ahead of AMD on pure performance, with only the occasional, short term switch between top end chip launches. K8 changed this by being consistantly, totally faster than the Intel offerings.

On the flip side, Intel, when they launched Core 2 Duo, turned the usual rule of bang per buck on it's head, by offering not only the fastest chip (which they usually did anyway), but by offering the best bang for buck too.

 

[Stelly]

very interesting, especially liked the conclusion

Stelly

 

[Emlyn_Dewar]

Great article, something to look forward to later this year I think.

 

[semi-pro waster]

That is an interesting article, I had been wondering what AMD was going do to compete more effectively with Intel again and the Barcelona core does seem quite promising.

 

[HighlandeR]

Only issue I saw was Q3-07 Launch for Desktops.....

I think the choice for this year just maybe the Intel quad cores(after the price drop) and E6600s for 07

May just opt for an E6600 or quadcore rigg to tie me over this year...

 

[NathanE]

They did it with K7 too, original Athlon and later T Birds whupped the PIIIs and most Pentium 4s, only clockspeed really held them back from beating the later 3Ghz and over Nwoods on a consistent basis though it did take them in a lot as well.

The K7 was only ahead for a very short time though, I'm talking about 'clear and consistent' out right wins here, not just short term fluctuations. The very fact we are having to even discuss this means that these were not 'clear and consistent' wins for AMD Thunderbirds were quick yes but then Intel responded with the Northwood which was faster and ran cooler. Thunderbirds ran very hot and very noisy (kind of AMD's version of the Prescott... extracting every last drop from an exhausted architecture) and that's why I don't think many people will put them in bold text on a brief history of CPUs timeline

K8 is the only time AMD has held a lead over Intel for more than just a few months.

 

[jaykay]

yer but a few years was a lot for the k8 which showed it was very good hopefully the k10 should follow in its foorsteps

 

[Justintime]

None of my T-Bird rigs were noisy.. Also Prescott should not be compared to T-Birds, T-Birds actually outperformed their ancestors Prescotts ran hotter, required bigger or noiser cooling solutions, drew more power and performed worse than Northwoods clock for clock in the majority of applications.

 

[Hades]

Any idea what socket AMD wil be using for this? Will it be AM2 still or F? Or something else?

 

[FrankJH]

Any idea what socket AMD wil be using for this? Will it be AM2 still or F? Or something else?

I think its socket F but dont quote me

I read that article at work yesterday and it sounds promising - I just hope AMD can compete on price and maybe get their 65nm process working well (to make it cheaper for us )

The only potential problem with quad core chips at 2GHz is the fact that with more cores on the cpu will increase the chances of getting a duff core (oc'ing wise) which will restrict options on the other three - as Im guessing it will always be impossible to clock cores independently of each other.

 

[jaykay]

barcelona is for skt f
agena is for am2
both are quad core

then theres kuma and something else which is a dual core version of the k10 design

 

[Hades]

What's the difference between future AM2 cores and socket F?

 

[Kamakazie!]

What's the difference between future AM2 cores and socket F?

Socket F is the server platform usually for 2+ cpu's.

The will make Barcelona based Opterons for the AM2+ platform.
Mobo's with AM2 will be able to take these Opterons and also the desktop variant named Agena as said above. Though with an AM2 motherboard you will only get HT1.0 support and not HT3.0 so the hypertransport bus will be running at less than half the speed. This is really not an issue for 1 cpu systems.