More confusion from AMD, can you handle it?

mechBgon

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For comparison, the Opteron 246 (also 2GHz and dual-channel) is around $900.
 

infinite012

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Apr 23, 2003
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$640 at newegg definitely is NOT close to $900...

EDIT: It's close to the $650 one...but you could probably still see a bigger performance increase by using the 3.2 over the opteron in normal desktop use.
 

sellmen

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May 4, 2003
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Originally posted by: infinite012
$640 at newegg definitely is NOT close to $900...

EDIT: It's close to the $650 one...but you could probably still see a bigger performance increase by using the 3.2 over the opteron in normal desktop use.

Opteron Desktop Benchmarks

A 2GHZ opteron outperformed a P4 3.2ghz (11/17 tests won) on desktop benchmarks, while using registered CAS2.5 RAM. Switching to regular CAS2 DDR should improve performance significantly.
 

stevejst

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May 12, 2002
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The p4 3.2ghz is around the same price.
Exactly. And it is not selling well. But in a compatible mobo I can put 2.4C and overclock it to 3.2. What can you use in 754 dual channel mobo? Is there any new 754 duron??
rolleye.gif
 

mechBgon

Super Moderator<br>Elite Member
Oct 31, 1999
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Originally posted by: infinite012
$640 at newegg definitely is NOT close to $900...

EDIT: It's close to the $650 one...but you could probably still see a bigger performance increase by using the 3.2 over the opteron in normal desktop use.
It looks to me like Opteron 246's are $830 and $900 at Newegg: Opteron 246.

At any rate, the $650 price isn't cheap, nope. But if you've been waiting for an x86-compatible chip that doesn't gag on 8GB+ of RAM, then this could be your ticket to ride, whether it's $650 or $900 :cool: Like this Tim Sweeny guy, he made some game called "UT2003" or something... ;)

?Because of our new content tools, we're already feeling a very strong need for 64-bit internally right now, and by year's end I expect we'll look at 64-bit as something that we couldn't possibly do our jobs without. We expect this sentiment to carry over to other game developers in the next 12 months, to high-end consumers over the next 24 months, and the wide mainstream all the way down to the lowest end of the market within 36 months.?

Tim goes on to say, ?In our next-generation technology, we are building 2,000,000-polygon meshes, and running them through a preprocessing program that analyzes the geometry and self-shadowing potential of the mesh based on thousands of incident lighting direction using per-pixel floating point math, and compresses all of this data down to texture maps, bump maps, and 16-component spherical harmonic maps at as high a resolution as possible.

This process uses many gigabytes of memory, and implementing it on 32-bit CPU's places a lot of constraints on the size of meshes we can preprocess and the resolution of maps we can generate. With onerous programmer gymnastics, this kind of algorithm could be made disk-based or Address Windowing Extensions aware, but these approaches require an order of magnitude more development effort, and aren't practical given the frequency with which we change and improve our algorithms.?

from Firing Squad
 

dannybin1742

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Jan 16, 2002
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there is a reason that the flagship processor is $650-----------> thats why its called a flagship processor, its the fastest, how much is a p4 3.2ghz? how much do you think a prescot will run you? probably around the same give a month or two till they release lower clocked ones, then you will start seeing people buy lowerclocked that can be oced to the higher clock


prices will come down, they always do
 

sellmen

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May 4, 2003
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Originally posted by: dannybin1742
there is a reason that the flagship processor is $650-----------> thats why its called a flagship processor, its the fastest, how much is a p4 3.2ghz? how much do you think a prescot will run you? probably around the same give a month or two till they release lower clocked ones, then you will start seeing people buy lowerclocked that can be oced to the higher clock


prices will come down, they always do

There will be cheaper 754 pin version of the Athlon 64 at launch as well.
 

mechBgon

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Incidentally, Tim also seems to be expecting about a 15% theoretical performance boost from a 64-bit OS and 64-bit-optomized game code:
Evil Avatar: Can you give me any idea what kind of a performance increase people might see running the 64-bit version?

Tim Sweeney: In pure CPU performance, Athlon64 is about 15% faster than previous Athlon's of identical clock rate for 32-bit apps, and 30% for 64-bit apps, because it exposes double the number of CPU registers, enabling the compiler to generate more efficient code. As for UT2003 performance, we haven't benchmarked yet but expect it to be faster though less than 30% because the GPU is as significant a factor as CPU.
from here

So look at the glass as half-empty or half-full, whichever you like best :)
 

stevejst

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I don't see they have any plans to release lower clocked ones. Where did you hear that? I see the crippled board ones (one channel) which is nothing compatible with the "flagship" thing.
 

sellmen

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May 4, 2003
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Originally posted by: stevejst
I don't see they have any plans to release lower clocked ones. Where did you hear that? I see the crippled board ones (one channel) which is nothing compatible with the "flagship" thing.

The 754 Pin version of the Athlon 64 is the "crippled" single-channel version.

Link

It doesn't look like performance will be too bad.
 

stevejst

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May 12, 2002
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Yes, I have to say I am getting lost with all this but I know I have no intention paying $350 for a single channel one. And then waht, when the 940 becomes more affordable to throw 754 chip and buy both mobo and a new chip? Nice idea.
 

sellmen

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May 4, 2003
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Originally posted by: stevejst
Yes, I have to say I am getting lost with all this but I know I have no intention paying $350 for a single channel one. And then waht, when the 940 becomes more affordable to throw 754 chip and buy both mobo and a new chip? Nice idea.

If performance is good, why would anyone care whether it was single or dual channel? I would wait for benchmarks before completely writing off the single-channel version.

 

Jeff7181

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Aug 21, 2002
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Wow... bunches of links to the Inquirer... that's hardly a reputable source of information.
You guys can speculate all you want... I'll wait for it to be released.
 

stevejst

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May 12, 2002
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Wow... bunches of links to the Inquirer... that's hardly a reputable source of information.
Actually it is a reputable source of information. Did you confuse it with "National Inquirer"?
 

stevejst

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May 12, 2002
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So?
I suggest you read the German magazine article to find fairly accurate Intel road map in Jan 2003. As far as AMD road maps go, I doubt that anybody in AMD knows exactly what is going on and what would happen. That is nothing new. Inquirer, Register, and XBit Labs are three sources for daily news in microelectronics. If you did not know that, too bad.
 

OddTSi

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Feb 14, 2003
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Originally posted by: sellmen
Opteron Desktop Benchmarks

A 2GHZ opteron outperformed a P4 3.2ghz (11/17 tests won) on desktop benchmarks, while using registered CAS2.5 RAM. Switching to regular CAS2 DDR should improve performance significantly.

The setups on the two are not equal. The Opteron has 4x the amount of RAM and it also uses 4 slots vs. 2 slots on the P4. If you read the recent memory article on the AnandTech homepage you'll see that using 4 slots is the ideal setup. The fact that a few of those benchmarks were memory bandwidth benchmarks, and that the memory setup was biased towards the Opteron makes those benchmarks useless. Not to mention the fact that AMDZone themselves labels some of the non memory bandwidth benchmarks (memory intensive) makes me eager to see a true, unbiased, and fair comparison between the two CPUs, because this one you linked to is ANYTHING but that.

And on a side note, why did you call them "Desktop Benchmarks"? Half of those are professional/science benchmarks. That has nothing to do with their results, just wondering why you decided to call them Desktop Benchmarks.
 

stevejst

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May 12, 2002
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We shall shortly see what these new AMD processors are capable of. Unfortunately AMD has been engaged in paper releases of processors for more than a year already, and their fan sites like AMDzone are just another twist in the sorry story that AMD has become.
The performance is not on their side for some time already and business has never been.
 

bjc112

Lifer
Dec 23, 2000
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Originally posted by: stevejst
Yes, I have to say I am getting lost with all this but I know I have no intention paying $350 for a single channel one. And then waht, when the 940 becomes more affordable to throw 754 chip and buy both mobo and a new chip? Nice idea.

Same as Prescott, they are changing sockets too...

Nice idea..

rolleye.gif
 

DivideBYZero

Lifer
May 18, 2001
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Originally posted by: stevejst
We shall shortly see what these new AMD processors are capable of. Unfortunately AMD has been engaged in paper releases of processors for more than a year already, and their fan sites like AMDzone are just another twist in the sorry story that AMD has become.
The performance is not on their side for some time already and business has never been.

Put the flamethrower down, boy. You'll burn yourself.
 

DivideBYZero

Lifer
May 18, 2001
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Originally posted by: stevejst
Yes, I have to say I am getting lost with all this but I know I have no intention paying $350 for a single channel one. And then waht, when the 940 becomes more affordable to throw 754 chip and buy both mobo and a new chip? Nice idea.

P1 60 > 66 Anyone?

or Slot 1 to socket anyone?

or coppermine to tualatin anyone?

or the P4? How many "platforms" has that had?

Move away from the greenhouse before releasing missiles....
 

mechBgon

Super Moderator<br>Elite Member
Oct 31, 1999
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Originally posted by: DivideBYZero
Originally posted by: stevejst
We shall shortly see what these new AMD processors are capable of. Unfortunately AMD has been engaged in paper releases of processors for more than a year already, and their fan sites like AMDzone are just another twist in the sorry story that AMD has become.
The performance is not on their side for some time already and business has never been.

Put the flamethrower down, boy. You'll burn yourself.
What are you incinerating, DBZ? ;) ;) ;)


:D