minor observation about Athlon64

[Lord Evermore]

I haven't seen any mention of this yet. AMD moving to 64-bit is going to have something of an effect on upgradeability that hasn't happened before for us.

Used to be, you buy a motherboard, and for some time you could buy faster processors, or even a better type of processor. Socket7 and SuperSocket7 had Pentiums, Cyrix 6x86, AMD K6, K6-2, K6-III. Every type of Pentium board past the PPro has had the option of a Pentium or Celeron (yes the move from P2 to P3 to P4 happened, but those were entirely different classes not just speed increases). K7 boards have had the Athlon and Duron for a long time, and now the newer types of Athlon XP: Palomino, Thoroughbred, Barton, that could in large part be used in boards made before the chips even existed.

The result of all that was that you had a low-end product, and a high-end product. Somebody who didn't really have enough money to immediately buy the best system could get a Celeron or Duron, and have a fair chance of moving up to a PentiumIII or Athlon. Even somebody getting an Athlon T-bird could move up to a Palomino or even higher. Getting a Thoroughbred still leaves you the option to get a Barton. All this lets you get good performance now at a low price, then get a significant upgrade later for a low price as well, due to the trickledown of processor speeds. No need to completely replace your hardware to upgrade beyond a certain point.

Once Athlon64 and Opteron are widely available though, this is going to go away. If you buy a board and a Barton now, you'll never be able to upgrade any further (I can't imagine AMD putting significant resources into continuing that product line specifically, they don't even have anything on the roadmap). The AthlonXP will become the low-end line, with Athlon64 being the high-end consumer line. In order to go beyond a certain performance level, you'll have to buy a completely new motherboard, rather than being able to upgrade to a trickledown higher performance CPU.

Of course, if they continue to produce new SocketA processors, increasing performance further and further, then this won't be a problem. But I just can't see that happening after a certain point. For most people, it won't be an issue, but there are a lot of enthusiasts who have to work hard to get the best they can on a limited budget, and who will be left out in the cold to some degree, having to continue using a motherboard and CPU as it ages more and more, rather than being able to extend its life and maintain somewhat acceptable modern performance with small inexpensive upgrades.

 

[dullard]

You get that problem anytime there is a significant change like this. Heck even minor changes like the pin count or even fsb changes can drastically harm upgradability. Yes for a time there will be a choice: Athlon 64 or Athlon. But that transition period will be short lived. Soon AMD will have a low cache Athlon 64 and a high cache Athlon 64. Then we are back to where we are now: one motherboard for two lines of chips.

 

[Megatomic]

I see what you are saying but I think I might just chalk this up to the price of progress. AMD has, as you eloquently pointed out, given us the ability to upgrade our systems in a piecemeal fashion. While some people actually did that (many is more likely right) think about how many of us actually buy new motherboards as soon as a newer/better chipset is available. I for one have had more motherboards in the past 5 years than I can count on both hands.

For me this situation you have brought to light has no impact. Upgrade ahoy! 🙂

 

[thorin]

You're forgetting that there are plans for a Athlon64 with 1MB of L2 onboard and plans for a version with 256k L2 onboard. As seen here and talked about here

That is why our Athlon 64 2800+, working at pretty low actual core clock, features a 1MB L2 cache. The first mass Athlon 64 processors will have exactly the same L2 cache configuration. A bit later AMD will also launch a less expensive version with 256KB L2 cache.

Thorin

 

[bgeh]

Originally posted by: thorin
You're forgetting that there are plans for a Athlon64 with 1MB of L2 onboard and plans for a version with 256k L2 onboard. As seen here and talked about here

That is why our Athlon 64 2800+, working at pretty low actual core clock, features a 1MB L2 cache. The first mass Athlon 64 processors will have exactly the same L2 cache configuration. A bit later AMD will also launch a less expensive version with 256KB L2 cache.

Thorin

i agree......if i remember correctly, the 256kb edition of the Athlon 64 is codenamed Paris

 

[Lord Evermore]

I didn't specifically notice that, no. 🙂 But that is still different from what we're used to. People will have a choice of either sticking with a SocketA platform for a while longer, then finally being able to get the low-end Athlon64, or having to buy the 1MB A64 right away. No way to move to the A64 platform right away but not buy into the high-end right off.

I can't remember very well what product releases are like, but I seem to remember Celerons and P4's, and Athlons and Durons coming out pretty much at the same times. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm just stupid.

 

[Nemesis77]

I fail to see how this is new. I mean, Intel used to routinely change the slot/sockets of their CPU's, making a simple CPU-upgrade more difficult.

 

[Pariah]

Even somebody getting an Athlon T-bird could move up to a Palomino or even higher. Getting a Thoroughbred still leaves you the option to get a Barton. All this lets you get good performance now at a low price, then get a significant upgrade later for a low price as well, due to the trickledown of processor speeds.

Every "significant" upgrade (bus speed increase) even in the socket A market has required a motherboard upgrade. If the chip runs at all in older boards, a TBred running on a 266 bus is not an upgrade over a Palomino at the same bus as an example.

 

[Budmantom]

Originally posted by: Nemesis77
I fail to see how this is new. I mean, Intel used to routinely change the slot/sockets of their CPU's, making a simple CPU-upgrade more difficult.

Agreed.

 

[thorin]

Originally posted by: Lord Evermore
I didn't specifically notice that, no. 🙂 But that is still different from what we're used to. People will have a choice of either sticking with a SocketA platform for a while longer, then finally being able to get the low-end Athlon64, or having to buy the 1MB A64 right away. No way to move to the A64 platform right away but not buy into the high-end right off.

I can't remember very well what product releases are like, but I seem to remember Celerons and P4's, and Athlons and Durons coming out pretty much at the same times. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm just stupid.

How is it any different then the change from Slot A to Socket A or Slot 1 to Socket 370? The low end chips always come out after the mainstream chips. Think of the P4/P4 Celery P3/P3 Celery, etc.....

Thorin

 

[classy]

Its always been like that. Those who bought top of the line P3s couldn't upgrade to P4s. Same with those who bought top of the line slot A Athons, couldn't use the faster socketed ones. The Athlon 64 will be just like any other cpu change you'll need to buy a new board. This is nothing new and will never change.

 

[Sunner]

There were no P4 Celerons for quite a while after Willy showed up, in fact IIRC Northwood was out quite a bit before the Willy Celery.

 

[sharkeeper]

The only thing that they haven't stripped out is overclocking. Never fear, it's coming!

-DAK-

 

[CurtCold]

My observation. AMD is still having problems ramping up the clock speed. At least they have some Cache going on, but until they can push the processor's up to about 3.0Ghz then they'll still be playing second fiddle to Intel.

 

[jhu]

that's basically the same thing that happened when we went from the 486 to pentium. then better pentiums came out using a different socket than the older pentiums (socket 7 vs. socket 5). and computers were more expensive back then. i don't see what the problem is.

 

[HurleyBird]

At 1.8 GHz its already comparable to a 3GHz intel. memorize the phrase "My FSB is my clock speed" you will hear it often 😀 With every speed bump you get a FSB increase so i would expect that at 2.5Ghz you could compare the thing to a 4.5GHz intel, maybe even higher with optimizations and faster memory.

 

[NesuD]

Originally posted by: HurleyBird
At 1.8 GHz its already comparable to a 3GHz intel. memorize the phrase "My FSB is my clock speed" you will hear it often 😀 With every speed bump you get a FSB increase so i would expect that at 2.5Ghz you could compare the thing to a 4.5GHz intel, maybe even higher with optimizations and faster memory.

Let me see if i understand you correctly. If you are inferring that an increse in clock speed for the A64 core translates to a corresponding increase in the speed of the memory controller then I am not so sure your right. Take the actual ram for instance. PC3200 ram runs at 200mhz/400ddr. exactly how can a faster memory controller possibly make the ram any faster than it's rated speed. The ram is not physically capable in most cases of running reliably at much faster speeds. Granted the onchip memory controller is most likely much more efficient and most likely can increase that degree of efficiency at higher clock speeds but since the ram has a physical limit to fast it can go the only increase will be between the core an it's onchip memory controller. The speed between the memory controller and the ram must stay the same. That is called a bottleneck. Increasing the bus between the core and the memory controller it seems shouldn't yield increases in performance on a 1:1 scale since the ram will not be able to supply any more data as long as it runs at the same speed. Unless i am way off in my thinking that would make "My FSB is my clock speed" a pretty innaccurate way to guage the performance. Now I could be completely wrong here but based on my limited knowledge of how the A64 works that is the conclusion that i come to.

 

[sandorski]

After the Athlon came out, AMD continued to produce K6 chips. They didn't want to, but the demand for K6 chips remained strong for quite some time.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: Pariah

Even somebody getting an Athlon T-bird could move up to a Palomino or even higher. Getting a Thoroughbred still leaves you the option to get a Barton. All this lets you get good performance now at a low price, then get a significant upgrade later for a low price as well, due to the trickledown of processor speeds.

Every "significant" upgrade (bus speed increase) even in the socket A market has required a motherboard upgrade. If the chip runs at all in older boards, a TBred running on a 266 bus is not an upgrade over a Palomino at the same bus as an example.

That's not entirely true. A 333MHz bus only came about a few months ago with the 2600+; until then you had a very clear upgrade path from 266MHz T-birds @ 1000MHz all the way up to a 2600+ at 2GHz+ spanning 4 significant die changes (T-bird --> Palomino --> T-bred A --- T-bred B and even Barton on some boards). If you have an older board that supports multiplier adjustments, you can also run a CPU that runs at higher FSB speeds natively by increasing the multiplier and decreasing the FSB. The benefits of having an unlocked multiplier gives end-users extreme levels of flexibility, which is why breaking the 200MHz FSB barrier has been largely unexciting on the AMD side of things for some time.

Palomino did introduce performance enhancements over T-bird, but you're right, until Barton, the other changes only enabled clock scaling. However, there are still benefits of running a T-bred B over a Palomino at identical clockspeeds and FSB speeds such as heat and power consumption.

I'm gonna wait though on Athlon 64. There are just too many changes on the horizon coupled with a CPU and chipset in its infancy to jump on the bandwagon early. DDR-II should be in full swing this time next year along with a replacement for AGP (PCI-X or Express) along with sweeping changes to the South Bridge that may or may not be implemented in the first round of Hammer boards. My guess is they'll be a bridge between current boards feature-wise and the next-generation features, so I'll pass.

Chiz

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: Lord Evermore
I didn't specifically notice that, no. 🙂 But that is still different from what we're used to. People will have a choice of either sticking with a SocketA platform for a while longer, then finally being able to get the low-end Athlon64, or having to buy the 1MB A64 right away. No way to move to the A64 platform right away but not buy into the high-end right off.

I can't remember very well what product releases are like, but I seem to remember Celerons and P4's, and Athlons and Durons coming out pretty much at the same times. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm just stupid.

For comparison's sake, I'll mention the original Athlon and P2 lauches. Both introduced new, high-end chips that required a new motherboard; the low end was the old product on the old motherboard. In time, the new product ramped up in speed, making the slower version the low-end, and even later replaced by special low end versions, the Duron and the Celeron. This is the same thing, it will be a bit of time before your high-end and low-end products are similar; we're on a generation gap right now.