HAMMER. Hard Faced or a Rubber Mallet?

[Killrose]

....and where is it? And are we going to see it soon? And if AMD is still going to use the PR rating, what will it take to equal a 3gig P4?

Not looking for a flame war here, just some info from people in the know.

 

[Duvie]

Amd likely will be changing the pr rating....I have heard the hammer may be 1800mhz but with a pr rating of like 3000-3400+....So I think the 3.06ghz p4 due at end of year with hyperthreading and duall channer ddr wil compete...Likely the hammer will retake the speed crown, but will it be just momentarily??? Who knows...The prescot with 666mhz fsb will be out soon after 1st of year with 3.2ghz....


Should be to oems by years end...I speculate AMD will be late like they have with all the chips the last year...Expect desktop purchases to be late Q1...and prices may be high initially cause remember this was made for the business martket not the enthusiat overclocker market in here....

 

[Killrose]

Thanks for the info. Hopefully there will be a decent drop-in version to replace my XP. I'm not into another Motherboard upgrade right now.

 

[Duvie]

Maybe the barton will drop in, but I am pretty sure the hammer will take a new mobo altogether....


The barton hopefully will have 166fsb and 512kb of l2 cache...who knows there as well....

 

[SupermanCK]

i think i remember reading that hammer will have like 700+ pin connector unlike the current xp's with 462

 

[Wingznut]

Originally posted by: SupermanCK
i think i remember reading that hammer will have like 700+ pin connector unlike the current xp's with 462

Yes, the ClawHammer will have 754 pins and SledgeHammer will have 940 pins.

From what I understand, Barton will be the last Socket A cpu. And there's even conflicting reports on whether or not Barton will ever see the light of day.

 

[HeinrichX]

Clawhammer (Athlon branded):

mPGA 754
1.8-2.0 GHz
512k-1mb L2
Single Channel DDR on-chip controller (DDR333, maybe DDR400)
400MHz 128bit HT FSB

Sledgehammer (Opteron)

mPGA 940
1.8-2.0 GHz
1MB L2
Dual Channel DDR on-chip controller (DDR333, maybe DDR400)
400MHz 128bit HT FSB

Expect Clawhammer at the end of the year, most likely Q1 2003
Opteron in Q3 2003
PR rating for 2Ghz Clawhammer will be 3400+

A 3.2GHz Intel Prescott (Pentium 5) with hyperthreading, 667Mhz FSB, the PNI (Prescot New Intstructions) and architectural improvements along with Dual Channel DDR could possibly beat the clawhammer and possible Opteron

 

[Wingznut]

Good info, Heinrich... Except that it looks like ClawHammer will be 256k cache and DDR333.

 

[CrazySaint]

Originally posted by: Wingznut PEZ
Good info, Heinrich... Except that it looks like ClawHammer will be 256k cache and DDR333.

While DDR333 sounds about right (though I'd hope for DDR400 before too long), where'd you hear that ClawHammer would only have 256k L2 cache? I've heard that it would have 512k, though, I just checked AMD's roadmap and there's no specific mention of cache size, so I could be wrong.

 

[SSXeon5]

Originally posted by: CrazySaint

Originally posted by: Wingznut PEZ
Good info, Heinrich... Except that it looks like ClawHammer will be 256k cache and DDR333.

While DDR333 sounds about right (though I'd hope for DDR400 before too long), where'd you hear that ClawHammer would only have 256k L2 cache? I've heard that it would have 512k, though, I just checked AMD's roadmap and there's no specific mention of cache size, so I could be wrong.

Wingznut PEZ might be right here, the hammer that everyone tested were 256k L2 cache and 800Mhz. Now Im also quessing it will have 512k L2 cache not 1MB like prescott tho 😀

As for Barton:

I really believe if it does come it will sport the 333Mhz fsb and 512k L2 but not live up to its PR raiting. A 2GHz barton is 3100+ PR, now this I still dont see with a 66Mhz in FSB increase and 256k more cache. Im guessing with the cache increase will give it 5-7% faster per clock and fsb a solid 5% (Xbitlabs did a 333FSB XP test you can check it out HERE ) Given a PR about 2900+ @ 2GHz with the estimated 12% increase per clock. But amd wants the PR to be higher and that is where the extra 200 PR comes from.

Now mind you when this hits about Q4-2002/Q1-2003 the pentium 4 will be at 3.06Ghz w/ HT and granitebay/sis655 Duel channel DDR266/333. Thats a force to recon with 😀 But it looks like a fierce battle between amd and intel in the future so look out 😀

SSXeon

 

[DivideBYZero]

HyperThreading?

THG Says:

A few final thoughts on Intel's Hyperthreading technology, which virtually doubles the number of processors: when using typical applications that are optimized for dual processing, Hyperthreading brings no advantages with it. Rather, the overhead on data slows down the application. Only software that is specially adapted for Hyperthreading enables an increase in performance. In addition, when Hyperthreading is activated, the memory performance decreases drastically, which is partially reflected by the memory benchmark.

WankThreading, more like.

 

[alexruiz]

Originally posted by: HeinrichX
Clawhammer (Athlon branded):

mPGA 754
1.8-2.0 GHz
512k-1mb L2
Single Channel DDR on-chip controller (DDR333, maybe DDR400)
400MHz 128bit HT FSB

Sledgehammer (Opteron)

mPGA 940
1.8-2.0 GHz
1MB L2
Dual Channel DDR on-chip controller (DDR333, maybe DDR400)
400MHz 128bit HT FSB

Expect Clawhammer at the end of the year, most likely Q1 2003
Opteron in Q3 2003
PR rating for 2Ghz Clawhammer will be 3400+

A 3.2GHz Intel Prescott (Pentium 5) with hyperthreading, 667Mhz FSB, the PNI (Prescot New Intstructions) and architectural improvements along with Dual Channel DDR could possibly beat the clawhammer and possible Opteron

Good info with the corrections made by the others..... only flaw is the "FSB".... the hammer DOESN'T have a FSB! The FSB term was used when the CPU received ALL the data from the chipset.... in the hammer, the integrated memory controller avoids using the chipset for that. The HT tunnel is used to communicate with the "southbridge" (chipset) for peripherials. In a MP system, another HT tunnels communicates the different CPUs.

I don't see people still buying into the integrated memory controller, but it will reduce the latency dratically, thus a performance boost. Dual channel improves bandwidth, but increases latency. I honestly don't think that a single sledgehammer will beat a single clawhammer by much (single channel DDR vs dual) because of the increased latency.

By the way, the speed of the HT tunnel will be 800 MHz (there are some products using HT, such as the nForce and the xbox. The HT tunnels is running at 800 MHz in the nforce)

Anyway, no matter if you like AMD or Intel, whatever you choose will be a killer machine. 🙂