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So will the 6 core AMD will outperform i7?

I understand what you are saying about HyperThreading and I know myself that there is a fair bit of slow down in thread speed, comparing 1 to 8, but this is also true of speed with actual cores. Even dual cores have a certain amount of slow down.
sculptor.
 
Pneumonic said:
Considering it's a different architecture that's a poor comparison... the six-core Opteron is a low power server chip designed to run at 75w TDP if memory is correct, and is DDR2 based.. the whole idea is low watt / ghz and therefore it is not going to compete ghz to ghz with a high-power desktop.. it was never designed to.
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Pneumonic you are right it is a poorer comparison than I realised.
As a base point (somewhere to start from) Ill look at Cinebench results for a X4 810 which runs at 2.6GHz as close as I can get to the i7 920s speed.
The 810 scores 10684, assuming a 50% increase (to make 6 cores) gives us 16026, this is just shy of the i7 920 score of around 16200.
The 810 only has 4MB L3 so adding 50% to its score is basically giving it 6MB L3.
Thuban has 9MB L3, so clock for clock its going to be close, and porbably faster, in a good multi-threaded app.

I have other systems I would like to upgrade and a 50% increase in speed on AMDs side makes things tempting. My choice would be between AMD Thuban or Intel i7 930 (Think AMD would be more expensive as 6GB ram is enough but 4GB isnt, therefore its an extra 4GB to make 8GB for an AMD system), for me it looks like itll come down to heat and power consumtion.
I do miss my old Opteron systems so am hoping Thuban is going to be 20-30% faster, would be nice to get away from the dark side.
sculptor.;)
 
I can't believe people are considering upgrading from an i7 just because a new chip is coming out. It's like that bloke in the review bit on the ocuk shop site - upgraded from a 920-930 i7 - waste of time and money! I find it hard to believe that people are maxing out an i7??? Unless they are doing some serious number crunching or something!
 
well that's prediction one come in correct! now just got to wait for the price :)

Top-end Zosma (upgraded PII X4) look like they will be coming in at 3.6ghz at a mere 95w TDP.. so a 30w decrease on the current 965BE TDP they are looking really promising for some OC'ing..
 
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sculptor said:
You guys seem to be forgetting Hyper Threading, a 920 can run 8 threads.
Xbit Labs have already tested the 6 core Opteron CPUs against an i7 920 and the 920 beats the Opterons in just about everything.
My guess is a 920 running at 4.0GHz would deffinately be faster than the new Phenon X6 running at the same speed, sorry guys just think thats how its going to be.
sculptor.
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stubborn intel and thier pricing for thier own six cores and thier 930 i7 will put the amd 6 cores up against the i7 930?if the poster below is correct about that test using ddr2 for AMD then u can add on another 7% performance on top of thier score.

again what was the clock speeds on both? equal? even if all this clock for clock meant the i7 was 5% faster im thinking ok what about when games start using over 4 cores? it will happen eventually, and for me my pc's last 3 years so multithread games that use more than 4 cores by 2012? considering dx 11 it probably will.

so what then? i was caught out with dual cores the last time over the quad and will be keeping my eye on amd this time

looking at the amd 6 core at say 4.00GHZ versus the i7 930 at 4.00GHZ YUM roll on Q2 2010 :D
 
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More likely £240 tbh. $300 excludes the tax. It's still an exceptional value. If the rumours are to be true, the cheaper Thuban 2.8GHz (not BE) will be priced at $200. That would put it directly against Core i5 750. It's more than a tempting deal for most people.
 
frozennova said:
Rendering, video encoding, CAD, folding@home

Theres plenty of use for 6 cores even if you only need a quad or a dual
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...thats just some of the stuff i use my 980X for. Theres loads of stuff that will use 6 cores. It's just that most people on here seem to be kids or people that just want to play games. They think everyone has the same needs.

P.S this whole thread is stupid.
 
I think the thread should be labelled better but don't think it is completely irrelevant Mr B

PS - not all of us can afford a system priced as much as an average car ;)
 
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