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IDF 2006 - Conroe Merom and Woodcrest info

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This is excellent news, and I am very excited. I?ve never owned an Intel enthusiast box before. So this Conroe could be the first. I still await reviews as that to me is final and independent. ?Independent? meaning that for example Anand himself can build from scratch a Conroe box and test without Intel governed restrictions.

A worrying thing that comes from the AMD camp, is what will AMD actually bring to the battle in the coming months and year. I mean seriously a re-hash of the current X2?s on the AM2 ?DDR2? form factor is not going to cut it IMO. You may ask what in the future will AMD bring. Well all we know at the moment is 65nm is a given, but that doesn?t mean much unless you have a decent core design to back it up, and the K8 is old, even a re-work will not be able squeeze much more.

So the only way forward for K8 is parallelism and clock speed. Now clocks have reached a limit and a 2.8Ghz X2 high yield silicon sample is going to be a push on 90nm as we are aware, and that is only a 200Mhz improvement in itself anyway. So the move to 65nm will become, but still I cant see 65nm bringing much more speed to K8.

Now parallelism. We already have dual core which is still new to us as the ?home/consumer? end user. We have yet to reap the benefits from fully multi threaded applications as they are far and few between to be considered the norm. Now with 65nm and if AMD looks to bring to the home user ?quad cores?, I feel this would be a wrong decision as this is not really the right progression path, due to my previous statements (its not needed), its kind of like having 16GB?s of RAM as a home user (totally not needed).

Maybe AMD does have something indeed up its sleeves (K10?). But really they should be advertising the fact and forecasting, not staying quiet and letting Intel woo everyone else with its new tech. I don?t think they have advertised AM2 that much because it is a transition period/platform for DDR2, and its purpose is not to completely replace s939 and become the new AMD bread winner within 2006 as some might think. I think within 2006 AM2 is a DDR2 migration period for AMD users not a new core revamp because it is not.

Just my thoughts.
 
Originally posted by: biostud
I guess AMD need to push the K8L forward, if they can.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=29890
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Thanks for the link, interesting indeed. I especially like the opening paragraph.

AMD IS NOT going to sit still in the face of Conroe and Woodcrest, but it will take them until the first half of 2007 to mount a comeback.
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Unfortunately the wait between Conroe launch and AMD?s next gen might be too long a wait and hurt AMD in the meantime. Going by the info to hand it could be up to a year wait :shocked:. AMD need to build on the user base they have currently accrued with A64 (K8), before Intel win an amount of users back with its up coming next gen (Conroe etc). Thus meaning AMD has to start all over again in building their user base and name. Also this will hurt prospect OEM?s confidence taking up AMD products, as at the time it will be inferior in performance and price.

Is this new product indeed going to be K10?
 
As someone who is actually on a Merom design team, I must say that it was an honest benchmarking that Anand did. There were no strings attached.

We've just got a good chip 🙂 That's all! Merom is, indeed, a NUCLEAR weapon against AMD 🙂
 
Very impressive indead. I've owned 2 Pentiums before my AMD Venice in my sig. Though now i love my AMD, it will be strange to go back to intel again.

I do think Intel wont let their chips be as overclockable as amd. Like they wont release a equivalent 3000+ that can overclock to fx55 speed. Intel make their own chipsets, so I'm sure they wont be making it as overclocking friendly like dozens of ram divider settings, or 1mhz bus increases from their default bus speed to like double bus speed.

I do hope when intel releases conroe and its as good as benchmarks say which i dont doubt at all, AMD responds by lowering all their chip prices, i need a 4400+ X2 for US$250. LOL. Otherwise AMD will lose many enthusiasts to intel.
 
As I read these forums, I see many people doubting the abilities of the Conroe/Memroe/Woordcrest architecture. I'd like to know why because these tests are about as "offical" as you can get without having the ability to go out and buy them. Clock for clock, Intel's design slauthers AMD's K8s. I don't care if these benchmarks where "optimized" because I highly doubt that they are. What you see is what you get.


I honestly think this forum is definitely filled with blind AMD supporters who claim all sorts of crazy things like "availabilty". When has Intel ever let us down with availabilty? As far back as I can remember, when a processor was released, it was available for sale at the major retailors(goes for both AMD and Intel). Sure 6 months is far away but I don't think even AMD could keep the wraps off a secret conroe-crushing processor. The only thing we've heard from AMD is new support for DDR2 which isn't really anything to brag about. As far as costs are concerned, Intels are a bargain commpared to AMD(never though I would say that). Not only are they faster, they're cheaper. Sure Intel motherboards are a bit mroe expensive but not woefully so. An extra $30 is not that much for the increase in performance.

 
Originally posted by: sindows
As I read these forums, I see many people doubting the abilities of the Conroe/Memroe/Woordcrest architecture. I'd like to know why because these tests are about as "offical" as you can get without having the ability to go out and buy them. Clock for clock, Intel's design slauthers AMD's K8s. I don't care if these benchmarks where "optimized" because I highly doubt that they are. What you see is what you get.


I honestly think this forum is definitely filled with blind AMD supporters who claim all sorts of crazy things like "availabilty". When has Intel ever let us down with availabilty? As far back as I can remember, when a processor was released, it was available for sale at the major retailors(goes for both AMD and Intel). Sure 6 months is far away but I don't think even AMD could keep the wraps off a secret conroe-crushing processor. The only thing we've heard from AMD is new support for DDR2 which isn't really anything to brag about. As far as costs are concerned, Intels are a bargain commpared to AMD(never though I would say that). Not only are they faster, they're cheaper. Sure Intel motherboards are a bit mroe expensive but not woefully so. An extra $30 is not that much for the increase in performance.
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1. Conroe definately seems to beat A64 where the CPU is the limiting factor
2. Conroe is still ~6 months away (not that I think AMD will launch anything that can compete with it in that time frame)
3. The game tests are done at pretty low resolutions for a X1900XT CF setup. Most will probably either only have one videocard or run at higher resolutions where the videocard probably still will be the limiting factor, and the advantage of Conroe will be smaller.
 
Originally posted by: cmrmrc
isn't the K8L only for servers and workstations?...not for the desktop A64..?
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in the start yes, but it seems AMD need to do something to stay in the desktop market.
 
Fun thread--The thing IMO that is going to hurt AMD if this info is all correct (and I believe it is) is that with AMD moving to DDR2 now, all the folks running AMD now, and looking to upgrade will have to make a WHOLE platform change.(CPU, memory, motherboard).

So nothing is tying them to AMD anymore.(memory)

Good timing on Intel's end to come out with a killer chip.
 
If AMD cant retaliate quickly lets hope they go back to their age old strategy of dirt chip midrange cpus 🙂

$75 A64s anyone?
 
Originally posted by: FelixDeKat
Can AMD surive? Well can they?

:laugh:
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If Conroe is that good,AMD will have to cut prices on their cpus for a while
before they come up with k10,that's all.
 
Originally posted by: Gamer X
Originally posted by: FelixDeKat
Can AMD surive? Well can they?

:laugh:
Click to expand...

If Conroe is that good,AMD will have to cut prices on their cpus for a while
before they come up with k10,that's all.
Click to expand...

Hell now that i think about, what about $75 X-2s :Q
 
AMD isn't able to cut that much, because is not such a profitable brand as Intel. It's profits are barely 5% of incomes, when Intels's profits are 20% of incomes...
 
Originally posted by: Artanis
AMD isn't able to cut that much, because is not such a profitable brand as Intel. It's profits are barely 5% of incomes, when Intels's profits are 20% of incomes...
Click to expand...

They have in the past.
 
Originally posted by: biostud
Originally posted by: cmrmrc
isn't the K8L only for servers and workstations?...not for the desktop A64..?
Click to expand...

in the start yes, but it seems AMD need to do something to stay in the desktop market.
Click to expand...
Yeah, they need K8L in the desktop as soon as possible or they will be screwed.

 
One question - what level and nature of DRM will Conroe have?

Will you be able to switch it off in the bios like AM2 supposedly will be?
 
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