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ClawHammer: The 64-bit Desktop

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before you start flaming me, hear what i'm saying, i'm gonna upgrade myself as soon as i put together the money and the Claw hammers are available, but for 90% of the population, i think the TOP edge of performance is WAY beyond what they are going to need for at least 2 yrs or so. any thoughts? >>



I've seen many people who say such things like a 1ghz cpu is enough and all that rhetoric. I feel that there IS a market for such chips. Even though I myself may not NEED the Hammer (as I've got an AXP 1600+ now), I shall definitely upgrade to the Hammer when it comes out, because I WANT it!. 64bit computing is closer a reality than you think. I'll probably use Linux as the OS (probably a distro from SuSe) initially. There are many valid reasons to move to 64bit computing and faster systems. I feel Shanti has stated some valid points too. It's difficult to state all the possibilities right now, but a couple of years down the road it may even become a necessity.
 
Since AGS posted the rather famous Paul DeMone's performance estimates, I thought that I would point out that Paul has posted a few comments on this particular article over at www.realworldtech.com and titled his post "Silly x86-64 article at the Inquirer". Link is here.
 


<< 1) "How do we know what its going to blow the P4 away at?". We can estimate this. Most people would agree that the PR rating matches the equivalent Northwood quite well on average (give or take a few percent). Thus a PR3400+ would match a 3.4 GHz Northwood (give or take a few percent). However the 533 MHz fsb will give the Northwood roughly a 10% boost, so only a 3.1 GHz Northwood will be needed. The PR3400+ Hammer and 3.0 GHz Northwood are both rumored to be released within 1 or 2 months of each other. Thus initally the Hammer and P4 will be nearly tied in performance. The PR4000+ has been rumored to be released far sooner than the roughly equivalent 3.6 GHz P4 release rumors. So if the rumors are true, the PR4000+ will be the first Hammer to be a great success.
 >>



Dullard, what about the Hammer having SSE2 optimisations? And what about the improvement in the memory controller? How much of an impact would that have? Any rough estimates?
 


<< Dullard, what about the Hammer having SSE2 optimisations? And what about the improvement in the memory controller? How much of an impact would that have? Any rough estimates? >>



Are you hinting that you think the Hammer will perform at PR3400+ not including these features? Then are you hinting that with these features Hammer will perform beyond PR3400+ resulting in actual performance of PR3800+ (give or take a hundred PR)?

The key is whether AMD is including all these features in its PR rating. I assume the answer is yes - why wouldn't AMD include these features in Hammers performance rating. If the answer is yes, then us consumers can care less what part gave what boost - the final result is PR3400+ performance. So I think the Hammer will perform at PR3000+ (give or take a few PR) then get a boost from SSE2, get a boost from the memory controller, etc resulting in PR3400+ performance.

Until we have benchmarks we can just guess. Since people around here are dead set that Hammer will debut at PR3400+, I use PR3400+ in my examples. Sure I could add some performance or subtract some performance - but I have no reason to do so and I'd get booted off these forums from angry readers if I tried. I don't know where AMD got the PR3400+ number (but they've been sticking to it). Until they have a final product to benchmark, I don't know how they know exactly what it will scale to.

An attempt to finally answer your question: There are various estimates roaming around for different Hammer parts - the DeMone estimate on an earlier link for example. The SSE2 optimizations should give Hammer roughly the same boost that the P4 gets: several percent here and there (you can look at the benchmarks yourself floating around the web). SSE2 is just now being more commonly used. Every boost that the Hammer gets from SSE2, the P4 will also get - since most current programs don't use SSE2. SSE2 is a performance booster, but isn't what the Intel marketers make it seem (at least not yet). The memory controller will remove some memory bottlenecks, giving another potential small boost (10% is realistic 20% is possible).

 
Dullard, I'm pretty much sure AMD will include those into their PR rating. I also felt that they would take into account the performance gains accruing from the FSB increase in the P4s.

Although AMD says they use the T-bird as a base for their AthlonXP PR ratings (in their techdocs), I feel they're definitely trying to position it alongside the P4...... And I don't think AMD can justify using a PR rating of 3400+ for the Hammer if it does not perform higher than or at par with a 3.4Ghz P4. I feel they shouldn't even think of the idea of using the T-bird as the base for establishing the PRratings for the Hammer and compare the Hammer with the P4 or any other desktop CPU brought out by Intel by then (if any) for the performance segment. AMD hasn't announced anything as yet, we got to wait and watch.....
 


<< Dullard, I'm pretty much sure AMD will include those into their PR rating. I also felt that they would take into account the performance gains accruing from the FSB increase in the P4s.

Although AMD says they use the T-bird as a base for their AthlonXP PR ratings (in their techdocs), I feel they're definitely trying to position it alongside the P4...... And I don't think AMD can justify using a PR rating of 3400+ for the Hammer if it does not perform higher than or at par with a 3.4Ghz P4. I feel they shouldn't even think of the idea of using the T-bird as the base for establishing the PRratings for the Hammer and compare the Hammer with the P4 or any other desktop CPU brought out by Intel by then (if any) for the performance segment. AMD hasn't announced anything as yet, we got to wait and watch..... >>



I agree completely - as I've said in many PR thread discussions. Basing it on the T-bird makes no sense. When my grandmother goes shopping for her first computer, will she see an AMD computer and wonder: "How fast will this be compared to a T-bird"? No - she would want to know how fast it is compared to a P4. She has no idea what a T-bird is... So that basis is the most useless possible for the general public.

The 3400+ number has been out far longer than any info that Intel is definately going to 533 MHz fsb. Thus how would AMD have known that (1) Intel is going to 533 MHz fsb and (2) the benchmark gains Intel will get with the 533 MHz fsb. If AMD didn't know either at the time (in fact no one knows #2 for certain yet) how could it have been incorporated into the PR rating?
 
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