Glued or Native Quad does it matters?

[ahock]

Just wann know your opinion on this. AMD is really killing all Intel hype on quad core saying its not an elegant design. For me as long as it delivers sunbstantial performance boost (70% for desktop and 50% for servers) I dont care how they implement it as long as price is attractive. Intel is somehow on track to deliver that. Native quad as what AMD says but it will still take a year to deliver

How about you guys.

 

[dexvx]

Doesnt matter. The definition of Quad-Core is 4 cores on 1 socket.

Its like arguing x86-64 isn't truly 64bit because its 64bit extentions slapped on a 32bit ISA.

 

[ForumMaster]

Originally posted by: dexvx
Doesnt matter. The definition of Quad-Core is 4 cores on 1 socket.

Its like arguing x86-64 isn't truly 64bit because its 64bit extentions slapped on a 32bit ISA.

not completly true. the native dual core design of Conroe gives it the advantage in cache technology. a native quad core can utilize the cache for any core. the "glued" version of the Conroe (kentsfield) is really really good. however, if and when Intel brings a native quad core design, it would be faster.

 

[aka1nas]

"native" Quad-core will probably be slightly more efficient, but it's rather moot if K8L can't match or beat the single-core performance of a kentsfield. Intel will probably have their native quad-core chip out not long after we can finally purchase K8L-based chips.

 

[TuxDave]

Non-native quad core > Non existing native quad core

 

[ahock]

Originally posted by: TuxDave
Non-native quad core > Non existing native quad core

I agree... it really boils down to performance

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: aka1nas
"native" Quad-core will probably be slightly more efficient, but it's rather moot if K8L can't match or beat the single-core performance of a kentsfield. Intel will probably have their native quad-core chip out not long after we can finally purchase K8L-based chips.

Exactly right. It's not a matter of being effecient. It's being faster. If a gamer is upgrading and gets a quad core CPU he's not gonna look at "well, this architecture is slightly better in memory effeciency" no no, he's gonna say "so which one will run game x faster?" and that usually means purely single core performance numbers.

 

[zsdersw]

Originally posted by: ForumMaster
not completly true. the native dual core design of Conroe gives it the advantage in cache technology. a native quad core can utilize the cache for any core. the "glued" version of the Conroe (kentsfield) is really really good. however, if and when Intel brings a native quad core design, it would be faster.

Irrelevant. The term "quad-core" doesn't speak to nuances of the design. It's simply a moniker for how many processing cores are on the chip.

 

[Duvie]

technically quad cores just means 4 cores...i haven't seen anything that states on one socket, one die, etc....

I have quad cores right now as well...I would rather have 2 dual core chips then one 4 core chip just for the reason I can run dual channel memory setup per chip.....Unless we are going to start having quad channel setups this might start to get bottlenecked....

 

[RichUK]

Originally posted by: dexvx
Doesnt matter. The definition of Quad-Core is 4 cores on 1 socket.

Its like arguing x86-64 isn't truly 64bit because its 64bit extentions slapped on a 32bit ISA.

Shall we start this debate again

 

[theteamaqua]

the difference will be each core's ability to access cache, kentsfield has 2 x 4MB , its like Core 2 Duo vs Pentium D . Core 2 Duo has full 4MB L2 cache pool for each cores whereas pentium D only has 2MB L2 cache for each core.

so if data is greater than say 4MB kentsfield might be a little slower compare to CPU that have full 8MB. In most multitrheaded apps it will be faster of course compare to Core 2 Duo. Like what they demoed Alanwake, but for general user, its a waste of money. Even for gamers... not many games uses 4 cores, and i am not getting it jsut to play Alanwake.

 

[BrownTown]

The one one other advantage a "true" quad would have is you only need a 2 point bus instead of a 3 point bus, so you can run at a slightly higher FSB speed.

 

[jazzboy]

Originally posted by: ahock
Just wann know your opinion on this. AMD is really killing all Intel hype on quad core saying its not an elegant design. For me as long as it delivers sunbstantial performance boost (70% for desktop and 50% for servers) I dont care how they implement it as long as price is attractive. Intel is somehow on track to deliver that. Native quad as what AMD says but it will still take a year to deliver

How about you guys.

AMD is just doing what other hardware companies do when they aren't winning - spreading some FUD about the winner.

It mattered much more with the pentium D simply because the netburst architecture (or at least the prescott & varients) required much more use of the FSB. As far as I remember the 1066FSB Daul-core Pentium EEs were much better clock-for-clock than the 800FSB Pentium Ds.

With the Core 2 though, Intel has now improved the dual-core design (mainly by allowing core communication through the cache) so that use of the FSB is heavily reduced, and those early benchmarks from Tom's hardware are proof that even with 2 Conroes on one socket, Kentsfield is still very efficient.

At the end of the day though I agree with others that it's the performance, power/heat and price that decides how good a quad-core is, not how technically elegant is seems on paper.

 

[coldpower27]

Originally posted by: jazzboy

At the end of the day though I agree with others that it's the performance, power/heat and price that decides how good a quad-core is, not how technically elegant is seems on paper.

I agree with this part heavily, how elegant the design is only matters to AMD droids. It's the performance that matters.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: ahock
...quad core... For me as long as it delivers sunbstantial performance boost (70% for desktop and 50% for servers)

Besides people named Duvie , or loading up on instances of Folding or something like that, does anyone really think that they will see a 70% performance boost if they (can) upgrade the CPU in their existing desktop machine for a quad core?

What are you gonna do, encode three videos in the background while gaming?

IMO, quad cores, 4x4, high end SLI/Crossfire, EE/XE/FX chips... they're all just an ePenis swinging contest.

 

[ahock]

Rumors says that Intel's first native Quad will be in 2H of 2007 codenamed Yorkfield. WOW

 

[Hyperlite]

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd

Originally posted by: aka1nas
"native" Quad-core will probably be slightly more efficient, but it's rather moot if K8L can't match or beat the single-core performance of a kentsfield. Intel will probably have their native quad-core chip out not long after we can finally purchase K8L-based chips.

Exactly right. It's not a matter of being effecient. It's being faster. If a gamer is upgrading and gets a quad core CPU he's not gonna look at "well, this architecture is slightly better in memory effeciency" no no, he's gonna say "so which one will run game x faster?" and that usually means purely single core performance numbers.

hey, i resent that!

 

[Griswold]

Originally posted by: jazzboy
AMD is just doing what other hardware companies do when they aren't winning - spreading some FUD about the winner.

It mattered much more with the pentium D simply because the netburst architecture (or at least the prescott & varients) required much more use of the FSB. As far as I remember the 1066FSB Daul-core Pentium EEs were much better clock-for-clock than the 800FSB Pentium Ds.

With the Core 2 though, Intel has now improved the dual-core design (mainly by allowing core communication through the cache) so that use of the FSB is heavily reduced, and those early benchmarks from Tom's hardware are proof that even with 2 Conroes on one socket, Kentsfield is still very efficient.

At the end of the day though I agree with others that it's the performance, power/heat and price that decides how good a quad-core is, not how technically elegant is seems on paper.

And you just explained why yorkfield is due around Q4 2007 with shared cache for all 4 cores: current kentsfield doesnt have that and loses some of its thunder (cache efficiency that makes it less FSB dependant) because of the 2x4 approach, depending on the multithreaded tasks running on it.

And as far as the last sentence goes, for Joe Average the enthusiast, encoding his pirated flicks while playing 2 games on his quadcore, it wont matter how its technically done.

 

[PetNorth]

Originally posted by: ahock
Rumors says that Intel's first native Quad will be in 2H of 2007 codenamed Yorkfield. WOW

it will matter now for Intel droids

 

[BrownTown]

Originally posted by: PetNorth

Originally posted by: ahock
Rumors says that Intel's first native Quad will be in 2H of 2007 codenamed Yorkfield. WOW

it will matter now for Intel droids

I always love when people come and psot stuff thats been on Intels roadmap for 6month-year like its a new thing.

 

[lopri]

Originally posted by: coldpower27

Originally posted by: jazzboy

At the end of the day though I agree with others that it's the performance, power/heat and price that decides how good a quad-core is, not how technically elegant is seems on paper.

I agree with this part heavily, how elegant the design is only matters to AMD droids. It's the performance that matters.

I'd say technical elegance is, although the term itself is somewhat funny, equal to performance/power/price in 99% of the time. Just like San Diego is more elegant to Prescott, and Conroe is more elegant to Toledo. As for the 1%, a recent example would be Tulsa.

 

[dmens]

LOL, even if a consumer was screwy enough to care about design "elegance" (i.e. fanbois), the external interface is the last place to look. It's even worse than judging a book by its cover, HAHAHA.

 

[myocardia]

All I personally care about is a)whether or not there will be any games that will be able to utilize 4 cores at once b)whether we'll actually have GPU's that will be able to handle/display that much data, from 4 cores. Anything else about quad-core is useless, at least to me, if we don't already have both a & b.

 

[Yregouth]

Originally posted by: ahock
Just wann know your opinion on this. AMD is really killing all Intel hype on quad core saying its not an elegant design. For me as long as it delivers sunbstantial performance boost (70% for desktop and 50% for servers) I dont care how they implement it as long as price is attractive. Intel is somehow on track to deliver that. Native quad as what AMD says but it will still take a year to deliver

How about you guys.

A Kentsfield setup could be quite interesting in situations such as
1) a game using threads from Cores 1 and 2 (sharing 4 megs of cache),
2) a physics engine (taking care of in-game physics) running on Core 3 AND
3) an AI engine running on Core 4

all at the same time of course.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: Yregouth
A Kentsfield setup could be quite interesting in situations such as
1) a game using threads from Cores 1 and 2 (sharing 4 megs of cache),
2) a physics engine (taking care of in-game physics) running on Core 3 AND
3) an AI engine running on Core 4

all at the same time of course.

You're right, that would be awesome. The problem with that, though, is that the game designers have to be smart enough to code the game for that. So far, they haven't even been unlazy enough to code for simple dual-core utilization, even though dual-cores have been around for more than a year.