Is AMD really going to have a Dual-FSB???

[AtomicDude512]

I was wondering if they were. Somebody mentioned something about it in the latest price guide. Boy, I would take a Dual-333Mhz 2500+ Barton.

 

[Megatomic]

I really don't understand what you mean by a Dual-FSB. Can you elaborate?

 

[AtomicDude512]

Well, meaning it has two FSBs to work with. Kind of like Dual-Channel DDR, Dual-Channel FSB I think. Look here towards the bottom of the page.

 

[Megatomic]

In other news, are are a little miffed about what is going on with the MP processor arena as well. The official AMD roadmap puts the 333MHz Barton MP and the Opteron processor out at the same time. However, since there are no dual 333MHz AMD motherboard available, we question how accurate this delivery time really is. Some people speculate the AMD 760MPX will eventually be replaced by the rumored nForceFX chipset, but information about this board has been very limited. Hopefully, some more light can be shed on this situation in the upcoming weeks.

That's referrring to a dual CPU system, actually 2 CPUs in one motherboard not a DDR for the DDR FSB of the current chips.

 

[BlvdKing]

I read the page but didn't find anything on dual FSB. What am I missing?

 

[AtomicDude512]

SeekingTao is right. I guess I got a little confused. Dual-FSBs would be cool though.

 

[Sahakiel]

Originally posted by: AtomicDude512
SeekingTao is right. I guess I got a little confused. Dual-FSBs would be cool though.

I think what you'd like to see is something more along the lines of doubling the data width.
Instead of doubling data rate to get QDR buses like the Pentium 4, you just widen the bus width to 128 bit.

 

[ChampionAtTufshop]

Originally posted by: Sahakiel

Originally posted by: AtomicDude512
SeekingTao is right. I guess I got a little confused. Dual-FSBs would be cool though.

I think what you'd like to see is something more along the lines of doubling the data width.
Instead of doubling data rate to get QDR buses like the Pentium 4, you just widen the bus width to 128 bit.

yea
cuz in dual cpu system, "technically" you could say there is a dual fsb (one for one cpu, one for other)
but its shared i think right?

 

[TerryMathews]

Depends on the system. Athlons have an independent FSB to the northbridge, but they have to share everything from the northbridge on. This includes RAM, southbridge, PCI, etc.

Only real advantage this has is that the CPUs can share and swap cache data without imposing too much of a penalty.

P2/P3 based processor systems shared the FSB between each processor making cache sharing uneconomical to say the least. I won't pretend to guess how P4 duallys work.

 

[Cerb]

P4 duallies? No need to pretend how they work.
Anand's
even better
yet again
They work by being beat by the Athlons w/o HT, and sometimes even with.
On the upshot, there isn't much to beat a 4-way Xeon box.

 

[Sahakiel]

Originally posted by: Cerb
P4 duallies? No need to pretend how they work.
Anand's
even better
yet again
They work by being beat by the Athlons w/o HT, and sometimes even with.
On the upshot, there isn't much to beat a 4-way Xeon box.

Not much that runs a 4-way Xeon box, either... .

On the other hand, I got struck with a crazy thought. Hypertransport is 8 or 16-bit wide. Besides licensing, and bad PR, what's to prevent Opterons from being engineered to run RDRAM?

 

[Cerb]

Not much that runs a 4-way Xeon box, either... .

You can buy 4-Xeon boxes. Hope this link works

 

[Cerb]

Besides licensing, and bad PR, what's to prevent Opterons from being engineered to run RDRAM?

Nothing. In fact, it is possible that they might perform better with it, though we won't know unless RDRAM gets down to DDR prices or DDR finally goes to where companies are at leat breaking even.
Given that 512MB and up are common now, DDR offers much better pricing for the performance.