DrMrLordX
Lifer
- Apr 27, 2000
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This doesn't really hold water. Some upgrades make a lot of sense. For example, someone going from an aging s754 system or an overclocked Athlon XP-M to a s939 x2 would have seen an enormous improvement in performance, especially if they got one that overclocked well (or an Opteron 165 or what have you). Such a jump in performance would have been considerable enough for them to hold out through the entire s939 product cycle until the release of dual-core procs from AMD. Someone upgrading from their overclocked X2/s939 Opteron to an AM2 system will see maybe a 5% increase in performance. That is not an enormous increase in performance, and it's an upgrade they can afford to ignore. One upgrade made sense and was "worth the wait". Another wasn't. Can you tell which was which?
Conroe is on the roadmaps, and we have a pretty good idea of when the chips will be available to the public. AM2 will be out at the same time. Based on what we've seen of Conroe, it will be worth the wait. AM2 won't.
Whatever product AMD intends to use against Conroe (K8L I assume) isn't due to launch until sometime in 2007, which is a pretty vague, sweeping estimate. That means that, after Conroe ships, AMD will have to suffer at least 6 months of being without the performance crown. In contrast, Conroe will ship in about 3 months from now, give or take.
Are you beginning to see why the "you're always waiting for the next best thing" argument just doesn't make sense? I'll summarize: some processors are just great buys with respect to their generation. Some are not. Stick to getting the ones that are, and wait for the ones that promise to be true winners. Nothing on AM2 looks like a winner, but Conroe and Merom both have enormous potential.
Revisionist history. Northwood took back the performance crown for Intel culminating with the release of the 3.2c. AMD's response, the Barton core (represented by the flagship 3200+) could not keep up in a majority of apps. The 3200+ was only able to compete in the gaming arena. It wasn't until the release of the Athlon 64 that AMD was able to compete again.
Barton sucked, sorry. It was only useful once AMD started shipping nice mobile cores that could overclock well. At stock speeds, desktop Bartons were inferior to Northwoods. The 3.2c was faster than any desktop Barton released.
Their responses have not always been adequate. Notables include the k6-3 and all the Barton-core XPs. Now we have AM2 which won't launch with anything faster than that which is on s939 aside from the FX-62.
Why would anyone do that? AMD's response will be at least 6 months off from the Conroe launch. People who are salivating over Conore know it's about 3 months from now. They also know that engineering samples have been tested by a number of individuals, and the results are intriguing. That's more than a teaser on paper. You'd have to be a real fanboy to ignore Conroe and Merom in hopes that AMD will release details on their next big thing in June or July.
Um, no? These people see something they like about 3 months from now. I don't blame them for holding off. If Conroe launches at the prices Intel has released to the public, AMD prices could drop through the floor too, which will be great for anyone looking to upgrade on the cheap.
Wrong. If you wait, you get to skip over useless generations of technology like Barton, Willamette, Prescott/Smithfield/Cedar Mill/Presler, Nforce 3-based s939 boards, and other junk.
AMD will not have a response for Conroe until 2007. Waiting for Conroe makes sense. It's a short wait, and it promises to offer a huge boost in performance for both Intel and AMD users.
Actually, the Conroe that was compared to the 2.8Ghz dual core was running at 2.66Ghz. The big deal, is the fact that not only did it outperform the amd cpu by 20% accross the board, but the 2.66ghz conroe will cost $530~ at launch while the 2.8Ghz X2 will be around $1000 if things do not change significantly.
Also, that 2.66ghz is not even close to the limits of that architecture. This year, Intel will release a 3.33Ghz conroe labeled as the Extreme Edition and priced at the same level as the 2.8Ghz X2. Who would buy a 2.8Ghz or even 3Ghz X2 when you could get a 3.33Ghz Conroe for the same price?
Of course their financial situation is an advantage, I never said it wasn't. If the situation was reversed and Intel had the Athlon 64 and AMD the Pentium 4 AMD would have probably been out of business years ago.
The point I was making is all their (Intel) financial resources didn't do them any good in the benchmarks were the Athlon 64 was and still is on top of Intel in practically every aspect.
I don't care about who is faster than whom...they need to drop the prices on those CPU's period. I hope Conroe changes the market because I want a cheap 939 upgrade to dual core. But back to the debate.... AM2 seems like a better upgrade for those still on old 754's or socket A's after it's release. Other than that once AMD changes architecture again..who knows if even old AM2 mobos will work with later releases. Upgrading these days seems like a here and now issue....there is no such thing as future-proof anymore.
Well AM2 is the same core in a different socket with DDR2 support. How much did you honestly expect? New memory types dont usually give more than 3-5% real world performance increases in the best case scenario's.
Conroe is a completely new core. Intel is coming out with a core in 2006 that finally beats a core from 2004.
Market cap doesnt mean anything. I think 5 years ago AMDs market cap was about 2-4 billion and Intels was north 200 billion.
As you can see it hasnt been a nice ride for Intel.
Pariah....you're no fun
I love it when AMD competes and challenges Intel. When AMD is the big player I'll love it when Intel wins a few!Eh, go back a bit in time there, AMD held its lead with its athlon cores well into the P4's life time, but once it lost it it never gained it back. Even barton only just barely caught up as the p4 once again leaped past it. It wasn't until the athlon 64 (which was a year late, and it was during that year that intel surpassed amd) that amd retook the lead. The Athlon XP 3200+ did beat the 3.06ghz p4, but the 800fsb P4s were really in a class of their own. At best, the 3200+ equaled an 800fsb 2.8ghz p4, and in extreme cases only equalled about a 2.4ghz 800fsb p4. (the 800fsb p4s similarly beat the 533fsb p4s, memory access times are extremely important for performance in quite a number of things)
The k6-3 was launched after the Athlon, cost about the same or more to produce as an Athlon, though to be fair, clock for clock, could outperform an athlon an a p3 in a great many things. (athlon and p3 of that time period, which were very cache limited) Unforunately for the k6-3, it maxed out at 500mhz, while the athlons and even the p3s had a healthy mhz lead over that. It mainly got relegated to asian and mobile markets.
The barton core was inadequate, a 1MB cache Athlon XP would have been much more appropriate. That, or if Barton had been 400mhz fsb from the start, or if the athlon 64 had just been on time.
Athlon 64 was 2003, I believe 2002 if you want to count opteron. And if you want to count that Athlon 64 is a much smaller revision to the core than Conroe is to the Pentium M (as in conroe is about as new of a core as you can get, while athlon 64 almost falls into a refresh category) then it's beating a core from 1999.
I wouldn't call AM2 a "let down."
It's a new socket with DDR2 support and some other small improvements. It's still pretty much a K8 chip.
Conroe, while having more in common with a P3 than a P4, is (I would argue) sufficiently different from previous Intel offerings to be considered a new design.
It's like saying the 6800pci-e is a disappointment b/c it couldn't beat the X1800 or something. i.e. 6800pci-e just moved from AGP to PCI-E, while the ATI is a whole new generation.
It's a new socket with DDR2 support and some other small improvements. It's still pretty much a K8 chip.
Conroe, while having more in common with a P3 than a P4, is (I would argue) sufficiently different from previous Intel offerings to be considered a new design.
It's like saying the 6800pci-e is a disappointment b/c it couldn't beat the X1800 or something. i.e. 6800pci-e just moved from AGP to PCI-E, while the ATI is a whole new generation.
Rangoric
Senior member
- Apr 5, 2006
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I think thats kinda his point.
Going from AGP to PCI-e wasn't a big jump.
Going from 6800 to 7800 is a huge jump.
Conroe is like going from 6800 to 7800. Its a new design. It will be better.
AM2 doesn't even have a new chip number that I've seen for it. They all use the old 939 chip numbers, because its a memory change. Just like when Intel did that change. They will see a small boost due to the memory but thats it. Because memory bandwidth seems to not be to important ATM. Which is unfortunate.
DrMrLordX
Lifer
- Apr 27, 2000
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umm no. His point was that we shouldn't expect the 6800NU to beat the x1800 just because it's been switched to PCI-e, so therefore we shouldn't expect K8 to beat Conroe just because it's switching sockets. Attempting to liken the switch from AGP 6800NU to PCI-e 6800NU to the switch from s939 to AM2 fails on many levels, but the core of it is this:
Nvidia had faster parts (such as the 7800 you mentioned) available than the 6800 with which to compete against the x1800. In contrast, AMD has nothing faster than the upcoming FX-62 for AM2 to fight against Conroe.
See my point? His analogy just doesn't work.
His analogy would only work if AMD had something faster than the upcoming AM2 chips to fight against Conroe. Sadly, AMD does not. The FX-62 is as good as the initial run of AM2 chips will get.
btw, there will be at least two new chips for AM2, the X2 5000+ and the FX-62. I think?
Well we may all be surprized as AMD may have something up their sleeves and it wouldn't be the 1st time...There's an interesting rumor that claims the AM2 may be strapable in the sense that multiple cores may be combined as one. If this is so I will be one of the 1st to get in line... Of course the Conroe may be unbeatable one on one but imagine a Athlon 64X2 3800 dual core (ex.2GHz) core acting as one so that speeds of
Athlon 64 7600 (4GHz) is attainable...what would we all think of the AM2 now?
Athlon 64 7600 (4GHz) is attainable...what would we all think of the AM2 now?
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