Barton 400mhz FSB question and will AMD have a version of HT?

[Wurrmm]

ACtually they should call it SUPER THREADING!!! YEAH!!

 

[chizow]

No, they will claim it is slower, but much more efficient, dubbing it "Split-Loom Weaving"



Chiz

 

[aka1nas]

Originally posted by: Accord99

Originally posted by: ImmortalBlade

Pent4-Socket 478

Analagous to AMD's Slot A to Socket A transition

Pent3/New cellies-Socket 370

Last generation product. Do we care about the K6 too?

No the Slot A-->Socket A switch would be analogous to the slot 1-->socket 370 switch. The pentium 3 was the current intel chip when the Athlon came out at 500Mhz. Also, there was a logical reason for the slot--> socket switches due to the integration of L2 cache in the cpu die. The socket switches can't really say that.(I could understand P3-->P4 requiring a diff socket due to the different architcture, but switching to socket 478 only a year later is either poor planning or just an attempt to shaft early adopters.) Also keep in mind that Intel delayed the entry of DDR for the P4 for a long time, which stuck you with RDRAM(Very expensive at the time, and moreover, if you were upgrading you would actually prob need newer RDRAM to notice much performance improvement due to the bandwith hungry nature of the P4.)

So lets think, upgrade from p3 to p4. Whoops need new mobo at least, if not also new ram because Intel switched from SD to RD and now you can use RD or DDR wow... so similar to AMD where i can stick my XP into my old T-bird mobo(again with new bios) and use my old SDRAM if i wanted to.

So lets think, upgrade from K6 to K7. Whoops need new mobo at least, if not also new ram because AMD switched from SD to DDR... so similar to Intel where i can stick my P4 into my old i845 mobo(again with new bios) and use my old SDRAM if i wanted to. Older Socket 478 motherboards work just as well with recent P4s as do older Socket 423 motherboards do with recent Athlons. If you want to go to unofficial means, then even Socket 423 motherboards can use recent Northwoods with an adapter, which is more than one can say for Slot A motherboard owners.

Actually going from a k6 to a current Athlon would be much easier as there are boards that still take sdram for the athlon. There are even boards that take both sd and ddr ram, so you could hold on to your old RAM and upgrade to ddr later. and of course, lets not forget that the Athlon's performance isn't totally crippled by using sdram like it would have been for the P4. Keep in mind that a k6 is now a very old chip(it's really more of a pentium 2 Analogue.), so you really ough to be considering a PII-->P4 upgrade with your argument. The problem with that is most likely that your SDRAM is a wee bit too slow for any modern platform.(Maybe even PC66 if you are talking about an original Celeron)

 

[majewski9]

Interesting many newer motherboards have a jumper for a 400 fsb! hmmm AMD was showing chips off running a 400 fsb. We all thought those were Barton chips and were sure Barton will come out with the 400 fsb. HT isnt likely for any AMD chip unless many apps become HT and then AMD will be forced to implement it. Although AMD will probaly go the dual core route which is an obviousily better implementation than HT.

Interesting the 333fsb never appeared on any roadmap until they released them. I wouldnt be suprised if AMD has another Barton core with 400 fsb and clocks higher slightly. It would probaly use SOI like the original Barton core was suppose to. AMD has obviousily demonstrated that SOI can indeed clock with the big boys when it showed off 2ghz Athlon 64's. SSE2 instructions would be a very nice addition to the K7. I honestly believe that not even prescott could beat k7 with SSE2, SOI, and 400fsb. Any how the Opteron will probaly be AMD's next chip out.

 

[Wurrmm]

Okay, I have heard alot of speculation concerning 400mhz fsb for Barton but nothing specific. Does anyone know anything?

 

[sparks]

Its all speculation until there is an official announcement. But from a PR standpoint it would make sense. Intel was originally behind AMD in the FSB department at 100MHz, the soon jumped to 133/533MHz FSB and are now poised to introduce 200/800MHz FSB for the Prescott. For AMD, its a matter of mind share, having a 200MHz FSB may not really improve performance, but it will show that they are not falling behind Intel. Besides, if AMD can get 200MHz FSB out soon they will have a head start on Intel since Prescott isn't expected until fall.

 

[MadRat]

Figure on the Hammer that they'll bust the 64-bit pathway limitation to outside memory with the new on-chip controller. The two-channel 64-bit memory transfers may actually make large L2 caches, like the 512k one on Barton, unnecessary on the Hammer.