Prescott have the potential of the A64?

[MrEgo]

I'm sorry if this was already discussed. Ha.. I also suppose I should apologize in advance for the flame wars that this may cause, but it is something I'd like to ask. I'm sure all of us or near all of us had a peek of some of the preliminary Athlon 64 benchies.

So my question is, do you guys feel as though Prescott will have an impact like the Athlon 64 is having? Although guaranteed, reliable benchmarks are not out yet, it is pretty safe to say that the Athlon 64 will be a force to be reckoned with.

I understand that Prescott will have 1MB of L2 cache, but at what point does cache become something that isn't useful to upgrade?

What else is new in the Prescott that will/could make good competition with the Athlon 64?

Thanks in advance.

 

[mrgoblin]

I think the prescott will be nuts and will give the a64 a run for its money. It has some weakpoints but for now, no processor is without handicap. The Intel has heat problems, no 64bit and ramping problems till .09 process. The athlon 64 has price problems, high end model needs registered dimms and low end model not having dual channel capability. Right now, it would be foolish to purchase either of these until both companies come out with second gen chips that address these issues. Makes you wonder though what amd has been doing since the 3200+ since its obviously a 2900+ and obviously overlooked these obvious problems when making the hammer. I guess you cant blame them however as they dont have nearly as much resources as intel and obviously make alot less money.

Thats alot of obvious!

 

[Necrolezbeast]

I think that they will both kick major ass and cost a lot of money! The Prescott will be better at encoding video/audio without a doubt. While the A64 will be better for gaming... They both are aimed at different audiences and have been for a long time now, although Intel has caught up in the gaming performance with the 3.2c comapred to 3200+ but those 2 are still close for gamnig. Which one should you get? It just depends what you plan on doing with your system. I personally use my computer mainly for gaming with a little bit of encoding, but if I am going to wait 3 hours for a movie to encode I might as well wait 3 1/2 hours....not a big deal to me, but as I said I don't use it very often like most do. I will be getting an A64 when the price comes down, unless Intel can show better gaming performance.

 

[Excelsior]

Originally posted by: MrEgo
I'm sorry if this was already discussed. Ha.. I also suppose I should apologize in advance for the flame wars that this may cause, but it is something I'd like to ask. I'm sure all of us or near all of us had a peek of some of the preliminary Athlon 64 benchies.

So my question is, do you guys feel as though Prescott will have an impact like the Athlon 64 is having? Although guaranteed, reliable benchmarks are not out yet, it is pretty safe to say that the Athlon 64 will be a force to be reckoned with.

I understand that Prescott will have 1MB of L2 cache, but at what point does cache become something that isn't useful to upgrade?

What else is new in the Prescott that will/could make good competition with the Athlon 64?

Thanks in advance.

I have no doubt the Prescott will have loads of power, but still, Id like to see AMD stay competitive.

 

[touchmyichi]

Originally posted by: Excelsior

Originally posted by: MrEgo
I'm sorry if this was already discussed. Ha.. I also suppose I should apologize in advance for the flame wars that this may cause, but it is something I'd like to ask. I'm sure all of us or near all of us had a peek of some of the preliminary Athlon 64 benchies.

So my question is, do you guys feel as though Prescott will have an impact like the Athlon 64 is having? Although guaranteed, reliable benchmarks are not out yet, it is pretty safe to say that the Athlon 64 will be a force to be reckoned with.

I understand that Prescott will have 1MB of L2 cache, but at what point does cache become something that isn't useful to upgrade?

What else is new in the Prescott that will/could make good competition with the Athlon 64?

Thanks in advance.

I have no doubt the Prescott will have loads of power, but still, Id like to see AMD stay competitive.

AMD is competitive but that isn't good enough. AMD only makes a decent amount of revenue when put in the top place, look at them for the past year, they need to have the preformance crown.

 

[Goi]

If the Prescott ramps up to 4GHz and beyond, it would give the A64 a lot of problem. The A64 may be better clock for clock, but when intel has twice the clockspeed, I dunno man, its tough to beat.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: Goi
If the Prescott ramps up to 4GHz and beyond, it would give the A64 a lot of problem. The A64 may be better clock for clock, but when intel has twice the clockspeed, I dunno man, its tough to beat.

Twice the clock speed? Are you honestly assuming that the only Athlon-64's ever made will not go above 2.0 Ghz? Of course after the Prescott is refined and can run at 4 Ghz it will be faster than the very first Athlon-64 at 2 Ghz... but the Athlon-64 will be refined too... if they're launching it at 2.0 Ghz, I would imagine it will probably scale to 2.6-2.8 in the future. And twice the clock speed of 2.6 is 5.2 Ghz... that's optimistic, even for the almighty Prescott.

 

[Goi]

Well, AMD hasn't been very good at ramping up their speeds. I'm using their initial clockspeeds of 1.8GHz and 2.0GHz as a gauge. Obviously with time they will increase their clockspeeds, but by that time I would assume intel would counter with even higher clockspeeds as well, perhaps not with the Prescott, but with other newer IA32 CPUs. Their roadmaps do show IA32 going way beyond 5GHz.

 

[mechBgon]

I'm sure Intel has no intention of being a stationary target

 

[dullard]

Here are my thoughts.

1) Prescot should come out at 3.4 GHz - giving a 5% boost over the current top 3.2 GHz P4.
2) Prescot will have more cache, improved hyperthreading, new commands, etc. People claim it will have a 15% boost to efficiency - I'll use 10% here to be conservative.
3) The net effect of (1) and (2) will be roughly a 15% boost from the current 3.2 GHz P4.
4) Workstation wise, the P4 runs just as well as the Athlon 64, but gaming wise the P4 needs help. Here is a good starting point for the Athlon 64 benchmarks. This is finally an article without overclocking the Opteron.

I'll focus on gaming since that is what most people here want fast chips for. Looking at that review, the P4 needs a good 15%-20% boost to be competitive. That is exactly what (3) says it will get. So I think we will see another neck and neck battle. It just depends on who can ramp up clock speed faster.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: dullard
Here are my thoughts.

1) Prescot should come out at 3.4 GHz - giving a 5% boost over the current top 3.2 GHz P4.
2) Prescot will have more cache, improved hyperthreading, new commands, etc. People claim it will have a 15% boost to efficiency - I'll use 10% here to be conservative.
3) The net effect of (1) and (2) will be roughly a 15% boost from the current 3.2 GHz P4.
4) Workstation wise, the P4 runs just as well as the Athlon 64, but gaming wise the P4 needs help. Here is a good starting point for the Athlon 64 benchmarks. This is finally an article without overclocking the Opteron.

I'll focus on gaming since that is what most people here want fast chips for. Looking at that review, the P4 needs a good 15%-20% boost to be competitive. That is exactly what (3) says it will get. So I think we will see another neck and neck battle. It just depends on who can ramp up clock speed faster.

Interesting. You're neglecting to note that the Athlon FX is rumoured to perform 40-50% faster than its P4 brethren in some situations tho.

The other thing that you're not keeping in mind is the fact that the FX can do 64-bit.

An integrated dual-channel memory controller is icing on the cake. Hyperthreading interests me, but computers have been able to do multitasking for years now. The one thing that intel will have in its favour is the 0.09um fab process. The next few months should be a nice heated battle to watch.

 

[jorojr]

Personally, I'm more interested in a 2nd generation A64 and the Intel Tejas /w Grantsdale chipset. Hopefully the Prescott won't go down without a fight. Competition is good for the enthusiest crowd. It'll help drive down prices.

 

[solofly]

Ever since the introduction of Athlon chip, Intel had to lower their prices to stay competitive. That's how it's has been ever since and I hope nothing changes. I like my AMD rigs, (all 5 of them) but I love my Intel rigs even more.

 

[dullard]

Originally posted by: SickBeast
Interesting. You're neglecting to note that the Athlon FX is rumoured to perform 40-50% faster than its P4 brethren in some situations tho.

The other thing that you're not keeping in mind is the fact that the FX can do 64-bit.

An integrated dual-channel memory controller is icing on the cake. Hyperthreading interests me, but computers have been able to do multitasking for years now. The one thing that intel will have in its favour is the 0.09um fab process. The next few months should be a nice heated battle to watch.

No I'm not forgetting that. I posted about it in the other thread on that 40%-50% number (in general hardware). That 40%-50% number was for SOME programs - I can just as easilly find SOME programs where the P4 is 40%-50% faster. Plus that number wasn't in comparison to the 3.2 GHz P4 with 800 MHz fsb, but instead it was comparing to the 3.06 GHz P4 with 533 MHz fsb. I can also show you link after link where the 3.2 GHz P4 averages 10% faster than the 3.06 GHz P4. So what does that all mean?

1) Assume the 3.06 GHz P4 gets 100 on a benchmark.
2) Assume the Athlon 64 is 40% to 50% faster - thus it gets 140 to 150 on that benchmark.
3) Add 10% to the 3.06 GHz P4 to see what the 3.2 GHz P4 gets: 100*1.10 = 110.
4) Add 5% for movement from 3.2 GHz to 3.4 GHz: 110 * 1.05 = 115.5.
5) Assume the Prescot improvements give it a 10% conservative boost over the current P4: 115.5 * 1.1 = 127.1.
6) Thus the Athlon 64 is 140/127.1 - 1 = 10% faster to 150/127.1 = 18% faster. That is damn impressive. 10% to 18% faster. But again that was on SOME programs.

7) What if the Prescot gets more like a 15% boost (I'll be less conservative here): 115.5 * 1.15 = 132.8.
8) In that case the Athlon 64 is 140/132.8 = 5% faster to 150/132.8 = 13% faster. Still impressive - but it won't be a tremendous difference.

9) Other things to consider: That 40% to 50% number was using the 2.2 GHz Athlon FX which rumors place as being released in beginning of 2004, not this September. I won't say a thing since I don't have a good date of the releases.

As for 64-bit, I have no use for it yet. 99.9% of us have no use for it yet. By the time we have uses for it, these chips will be far less expensive. So it is meaningless to me. Integrated memory controller is already included in those 40%-50% numbers - you made it sound like it is icing in addition to that. Hyperthreading is great when you need it, but I'm so far unimpressed. I'm looking forward to see what Hyperthreading 2 has to offer though. November will be the beginning of a great battle. It all depends on who can ramp up the clock speed faster.

 

[dguy6789]

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: dullard
Here are my thoughts.

1) Prescot should come out at 3.4 GHz - giving a 5% boost over the current top 3.2 GHz P4.
2) Prescot will have more cache, improved hyperthreading, new commands, etc. People claim it will have a 15% boost to efficiency - I'll use 10% here to be conservative.
3) The net effect of (1) and (2) will be roughly a 15% boost from the current 3.2 GHz P4.
4) Workstation wise, the P4 runs just as well as the Athlon 64, but gaming wise the P4 needs help. Here is a good starting point for the Athlon 64 benchmarks. This is finally an article without overclocking the Opteron.

I'll focus on gaming since that is what most people here want fast chips for. Looking at that review, the P4 needs a good 15%-20% boost to be competitive. That is exactly what (3) says it will get. So I think we will see another neck and neck battle. It just depends on who can ramp up clock speed faster.

Interesting. You're neglecting to note that the Athlon FX is rumoured to perform 40-50% faster than its P4 brethren in some situations tho.

The other thing that you're not keeping in mind is the fact that the FX can do 64-bit.

An integrated dual-channel memory controller is icing on the cake. Hyperthreading interests me, but computers have been able to do multitasking for years now. The one thing that intel will have in its favour is the 0.09um fab process. The next few months should be a nice heated battle to watch.

the athlon 64 FX is 0.09nm as well, intel does not have an advantage in size.

 

[SickBeast]

Nice research. It'll be interesting to see how close to reality your theories land. Some of it is based on what one person posted in a silly forum tho. I'm personally very surprised to hear those 40-50% figures.

Friendly wager? I say AthlonFX>P4 0.09um in more than 50% of Anand's benchmarks. I am proposing a comparison between the first FX chip released and the first prescot chip, or vice versa, as soon as both are available.

It's a pretty rediculous wager tho.

 

[sonoran]

Originally posted by: dullard
Here are my thoughts.

1) Prescot should come out at 3.4 GHz - giving a 5% boost over the current top 3.2 GHz P4.
2) Prescot will have more cache, improved hyperthreading, new commands, etc. People claim it will have a 15% boost to efficiency - I'll use 10% here to be conservative.
3) The net effect of (1) and (2) will be roughly a 15% boost from the current 3.2 GHz P4.
4) Workstation wise, the P4 runs just as well as the Athlon 64, but gaming wise the P4 needs help. Here is a good starting point for the Athlon 64 benchmarks. This is finally an article without overclocking the Opteron.

I'll focus on gaming since that is what most people here want fast chips for. Looking at that review, the P4 needs a good 15%-20% boost to be competitive. That is exactly what (3) says it will get. So I think we will see another neck and neck battle. It just depends on who can ramp up clock speed faster.

Everyone seems to be forgetting that in addition to being 90nm, Prescott will be produced on strained silicon wafers for improved transistor speed.

 

[zephyrprime]

high end model needs registered dimms

I don't think this is really an "problem" per se. I think AMD believes that people that want the high end model would also naturally want the registered dimms also.

 

[Overkast]

I heard that the A64 may be released as early as September 23rd. Has anyone heard about an anticipated release date for the Prescott?

 

[sonoran]

Prescott release date hasn't been announced yet. But I'd say it's a safe bet there will be additional info forthcoming at IDF (Intel Developers Forum) next week.

 

[jbond04]

Originally posted by: mrgoblin
I think the prescott will be nuts and will give the a64 a run for its money. It has some weakpoints but for now, no processor is without handicap. The Intel has heat problems, no 64bit and ramping problems till .09 process. The athlon 64 has price problems, high end model needs registered dimms and low end model not having dual channel capability. Right now, it would be foolish to purchase either of these until both companies come out with second gen chips that address these issues. Makes you wonder though what amd has been doing since the 3200+ since its obviously a 2900+ and obviously overlooked these obvious problems when making the hammer. I guess you cant blame them however as they dont have nearly as much resources as intel and obviously make alot less money.

Thats alot of obvious!

I wouldn't bet against Intel's process engineers...they're some of the best in the world. Intel's fab in New Mexico recently won the "top fab" award in a silicon manufacturing magazine that my manager subscribes to.

[EDIT]
Thanks to Wingznut for setting me straight about Intel's fab locations.

 

[Jeff7181]

Tejas... Grantsdale... I remember the first time I heard "Hammer" and got excited too =) Ya see... it's not just AMD who throws around "code names" for new technologies... everybody does it... GeForce FX... R400... NV40... Longhorn... etc.

Not trying to bash anyone... but lets stop speculating about things that are supposedly in development, but are 2-3 generations away. We can speculate about the A64 because we have the Opteron to use as a basis for speculation since they will be very similar. We can sorta speculate about the A64FX because it's still an A64... just has a few different architectural features, and we can guess how it will perform based on the differences between it and a regular A64. The Prescott we can speculate somewhat about because it's a P4 with some core modifications and changes to the instructions. But Tejas... Grantsdale? That's like speculating about Windows Longhorn... the only thing we REALLY know about it is that it's another version of Windows, and it will use a new file system.

 

[OddTSi]

Originally posted by: dullard
Here is a good starting point for the Athlon 64 benchmarks. This is finally an article without overclocking the Opteron.

Thank you. I've been waiting for weeks now for someone to post an article that a) compared the Opteron to the 3.2C and not the 3.0C/3.06B and b) didn't use an overclocked Opteron to do the test. And quite frankly, I'm VERY surprised and disappointed that AnandTech posted a "preview" article that didn't do the same. I gave them much more credit than that and the preview they posted leaves a bad taste in my mouth, as if they were trying to give the Opteron an unfair advantage.

That ExtremeTech article puts both chips on equal footing and that is what makes the results trustworthy, because you don't have to think about "what if this/that was done right". One thing I'm sort of disappointed about (through no fault of ExtremeTech's) is that there doesn't seem to be a clear overall winner, and I was looking for one. The Opteron is the clear winner in gaming and the P4 is the clear winner in media encoding. I use my computer for both, so I guess (assuming these results are representative of the Athlon64) I'll have to decide what's more important: gaming or encoding.

 

[Duvie]

Originally posted by: OddTSi

Originally posted by: dullard
Here is a good starting point for the Athlon 64 benchmarks. This is finally an article without overclocking the Opteron.

Thank you. I've been waiting for weeks now for someone to post an article that a) compared the Opteron to the 3.2C and not the 3.0C/3.06B and b) didn't use an overclocked Opteron to do the test. And quite frankly, I'm VERY surprised and disappointed that AnandTech posted a "preview" article that didn't do the same. I gave them much more credit than that and the preview they posted leaves a bad taste in my mouth, as if they were trying to give the Opteron an unfair advantage.

That ExtremeTech article puts both chips on equal footing and that is what makes the results trustworthy, because you don't have to think about "what if this/that was done right". One thing I'm sort of disappointed about (through no fault of ExtremeTech's) is that there doesn't seem to be a clear overall winner, and I was looking for one. The Opteron is the clear winner in gaming and the P4 is the clear winner in media encoding. I use my computer for both, so I guess (assuming these results are representative of the Athlon64) I'll have to decide what's more important: gaming or encoding.

At this point pretty much...Will the prescott get the gaming closer and pull a big lead in the multimedia??? This may make the intel look better...However wait until we see if 64bit OS and apps will be that overdrive gear that puts the A64 over the top in all categories....

Too early to tell for sure...The reason I am not and early adopter of new technology. I like to run about 3-4 processor speeds back and wait for them to hit the 200 or less range in dollars...

 

[jonny13]

the athlon 64 FX is 0.09nm as well, intel does not have an advantage in size.

The Athlon 64 FX is the exact same thing as the opteron right now, which is definitely not on 0.09nm. AMD will not have 0.09 chips produced till late spring of 2004 or later, depending on how their deal with IBM works out. So, as of the end of this year, the prescott will be half the size of the massive A64 FX chip (~100mm2 for the Prescott vs. 193mm2 for the Opteron/A64 FX) and the prescott will also be produced on 300mm wafers instead of 200mm wafers like AMD. So, from a cost standpoint, the Prescott will be much cheaper to produce, so Intel would have some room to work with on their prices and could really undercut AMD if they wanted to to keep their marketshare. Either way, it should be an interesting 6-9 months here.

Jonny