Why is AMD being so slow with the 400FSB Bartons??

[Wurrmm]

Just out of curiosity, but does anybody know AMD is being slow with the release of a 400mhz FSB version of the Bartons. With the release of Canterwood, AMD is going to lose alot of customers with no good new product release. Does it have anything to do with waiting for the nForce 2 refresh?

 

[Shimmishim]

Originally posted by: Wurrmm
Just out of curiosity, but does anybody know AMD is being slow with the release of a 400mhz FSB version of the Bartons. With the release of Canterwood, AMD is going to lose alot of customers with no good new product release. Does it have anything to do with waiting for the nForce 2 refresh?

nforce 2 refresh? what do you mean by that?

 

[sandorski]

They said(or it was rumoured) May, it's April.

 

[Wurrmm]

Nvidia is releasing a refresh of the nForce 2 calling it the ultra.

 

[Swanny]

AMD is always cautious about releases. Right now they probably don't want to take any of the limelight away from Opteron's launch.

 

[tjaisv]

Why is AMD being so slow with the 400FSB Bartons??

Maybe because they're saving it for Hammer. I don't know.

 

[Wurrmm]

That is kind of lame.

 

[mechBgon]

They probably want to wait for the refresh of nForce2 and maybe the release of KT600 as well.

 

[Jeff7181]

Or maybe they're just not ready. It takes a lot of testing to ensure that these 200 mhz FSB processors will always work. As many overclockers know, not all processors are stable at 200 mhz.

 

[Nemesis77]

Originally posted by: tjaisv

Why is AMD being so slow with the 400FSB Bartons??

Maybe because they're saving it for Hammer. I don't know.

FSB (in reality it's an Hypertransport link) on the Hammer is equivalent to 800Mhz

 

[bgeh]

maybe they're playing a waiting game with Intel, when Intel releases it's 3.2GHz chip, AMD will release theirs too.

 

[Duvie]

Unless amd gets the lead out and ramps the athlon64 to much higher speeds then latest xbit reviews if they ramp the barton up and keep improving its performance it will only make the athlon64 look worse. remember the xbit review were it seems the amd pr rating is quite flawed. In many appz the barton 2800+ was still faster. If they go to 3200+ bartons w/ 400fsb they are creating a much higher bar to surpass.

I think it would be in theie best interest not to push the much further until they market the athlon64 into the marketplace. Intel has widely let it be known they will not be ramping up speed until end of the year and most we see now is rework of northwood core to include HT at lower levls and bump up the bus. Most of the enhancements are and will be happening in the platform and chipset market for Intel.

I think AMD should be in no hurry unless they can hedge they will hit 2.2ghz for debut of hammer or frankly the athlon64 will look quite pathetic come review time...

 

[Nemesis77]

Originally posted by: Duvie
Unless amd gets the lead out and ramps the athlon64 to much higher speeds then latest xbit reviews if they ramp the barton up and keep improving its performance it will only make the athlon64 look worse. remember the xbit review were it seems the amd pr rating is quite flawed.

Xbit tested a prerelease CPU on a prerelease MoBo using a prerelease chipset. 'nuff said

 

[paperfist]

Why would they have to wait for an nForce2 'refresh' in the way of the Ultra? The nForce2 has always supported 400MHz FSB according to nVidia and the 2.0 revision of the nForce2 made it 'offical'. As far as I know and someone else mentioned this, the 400FSB Barton's aren't due out till sometime in May.

I would guess they would have to come out before the Athlon64s in Sept as that would place them in direct competion otherwise. The Opterons are for the server market so a 400FSB Barton shouldn't have any effect on sales for those.

 

[Duvie]

Originally posted by: Nemesis77

Originally posted by: Duvie
Unless amd gets the lead out and ramps the athlon64 to much higher speeds then latest xbit reviews if they ramp the barton up and keep improving its performance it will only make the athlon64 look worse. remember the xbit review were it seems the amd pr rating is quite flawed.

Xbit tested a prerelease CPU on a prerelease MoBo using a prerelease chipset. 'nuff said

You are right I should have stated preview...I guess amd should start to optimizing right???😉 OPterons released chips running at same high of 1.8ghz, shipping now. Thay show tremendous server ability but same lackluster desktop and workstation performance...wouldn't those platforms be more then prerelease stuff by now???

 

[Nemesis77]

Originally posted by: Duvie

Originally posted by: Nemesis77

Originally posted by: Duvie
Unless amd gets the lead out and ramps the athlon64 to much higher speeds then latest xbit reviews if they ramp the barton up and keep improving its performance it will only make the athlon64 look worse. remember the xbit review were it seems the amd pr rating is quite flawed.

Xbit tested a prerelease CPU on a prerelease MoBo using a prerelease chipset. 'nuff said

You are right I should have stated preview...I guess amd should start to optimizing right???😉 OPterons released chips running at same high of 1.8ghz, shipping now. Thay show tremendous server ability but same lackluster desktop and workstation performance...wouldn't those platforms be more then prerelease stuff by now???

There are reasons why Athlon 64 ships in september, while Opteron ships right now. By the time Athlon 64 ships, they should be able to scale to higher clock-speeds (to my knowledge, Athlon 64 starts from around 2GHz, whereas Opteron starts from 1.4GHz). also, they can still tweak the memory-controller (reducing latency) and test it more properly with DDR400, not to mention the chipsets.

Like I said, Xbit tested a CPU that was made 9 months from it's official release. To say that no improvements will be made duirng that time, is simply wrong. If Athlon 64 was finished and ready, it would be shipped right now.

And what do you mean by "lackluster desktop and worstation performance"? Could that be because Windows don't properly support NUMA? It runs on Linux just fine. And Athlon 64 doesn't use NUMA so it wont suffer from Microsoft inability to support NUMA. Athlon 64 is tweaked towards desktop-usage, and I would guess that it shows.