Amd athlon 64 x2 kills intel

[Didou]

Intel dual-core pricing is almost the same as single-core (except for the EE chips which still stand for "extremely expensive" IMO), it won't cost that much more contrary to AMD.

Here's the pricing for the Intel Pentium-D :

Pentium D 820 2.8GHz $241
Pentium D 830 3.0GHz $316
Pentium D 840 3.2GHz $530

The only difference between the Pentium-D 840 & the Pentium EE 840 is HyperThreading support. The EE will have a total of 4 "CPUs" (2 physical & 2 logical due to HyperThreading).

 

[zephead]

ht establishes two cpus, whereas amd cpus have no such technology. the multitasking abilities of two cpus can be greater than one.

 

[coastymad]

ht establishes two cpus, whereas amd cpus have no such technology. the multitasking abilities of two cpus can be greater than one.

Is dat because dere is more dan one processor. Obviously 2 cpu's are going to be better than one.

 

[Didou]

ht establishes two cpus, whereas amd cpus have no such technology. the multitasking abilities of two cpus can be greater than one.

It still isn't as flexible or as fast as a true dual-cpu system. It helps when running a heavy application & a few smaller ones at the same times but don't expect to play games while encoding a DivX in the background.

 

[zephead]

yes, it's not a true dual-cpu system. still, it's better then current athlons for said apps.

 

[Justin]

Actually that is wrong, zephead. Most benchmarks show HT as giving a 3-15% increase for multithreaded applications only as compared to the same cpu without HT. The most common desktop applicaitons are NOT multithreaded. MS Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access, Citrix ICA, OfficeScan, Quickbooks and around 90% of other office applicaitons are all single-threaded. Given the already stunning superiority of the athlon in terms of performance per clock and the far more accurate L1 and L2 cache of the athlon and athlon64, HT is really not that big a deal. The only thing I am dissapointed in with AMD at all is the pricing of the X2. Was it closer in price to the P4, there'd be absolutely no reason whatsoever to buy Intel this time around. HT is not a godsend and in fact has turned out to be 10% tech, 90% hype.


And didou,thanks for clarifying, that's what I thought. I was pretty sure the Intel rep told me that dual-core P4s will be close in price to single-core.

 

[coastymad]

I have been reading a magazine (Micro Mart) that has a lot of articles about dual-core and it sounds like we won't see the full potential of dual-core until they design games/applications that will be able to "stream" themselves to each processor eg in a game 1 processor loads all the levels the objects while the other processor loads the sounds and the graphics.

 

[zephead]

in windows xp the user can set cpu affinity and assign certain processes to a specific cpu. this gives the user more control, compared to the current athlons.

 

[Justin]

I have been reading a magazine (Micro Mart) that has a lot of articles about dual-core and it sounds like we won't see the full potential of dual-core until they design games/applications that will be able to "stream" themselves to each processor eg in a game 1 processor loads all the levels the objects while the other processor loads the sounds and the graphics.

There are a scarce few applications that take advantage of SMP in windows. Linux/Unix/BSD sees a lot more use out of multi-processor, multi-core and hyper-threading systems because many more applications make use of threads.

A few windows applications that DO make good use of threads are Internet Exploder, Mozilla Firefox, Apache 2, Quake 3, and a few others. The real advantage windows gets with SMP/HT/Dual Core is overall more responsiveness as windows will launch different processes under a different CPU. Note, if a process uses a full load, such as TVR applications, 3d games, audio/video editing utilities, etc, HT is of absolutely no help because a thread launched under a virtual CPU does not get any more CPU time than another, and so must wait in turn just like a single-cpu system. Remember that HT is NOT SMP, and is NOT having "Two' processors, it is merely a way for a processor to execute two threads in parallel, dividing its resources among them (thus if two threads execute at once, each one gets less cpu time then a single thread would at max cpu) This is why HT is much better for the office and non-gamer user.

 

[cyrusroe]

Something confuses me though. If the actual X2 procs aren't due to ship for at least another month, how is it that all of these reviews exist in the first place? I do know that the Opteron chips have shipped already, so are they reviewing the Ops and saying that the benchmarks for the X2's will be the same? if so thats can be a bit misleading considering even the few differences between the 2 models.

So answer this question for me, did AMD ship X2 models to these review sites in preparation of its eventual release so that consumers know what they're buying?

 

[Tedster]

The chips are sent to Beta testers and commerical end testers like magazines for review.

 

[Justin]

Yes cyrusroe, Tedster is right. Usually a manufacturer will ship a product before it's release date to various vendors they either have a partnership with or want to show off to. Where I work, we have a partnership with Intel. A few months before the EM64T P4 processors came out, Intel gave us a sales pitch along with a batch of EM64T processors and motherboards for them. We weren't allowed to SELL them until the actual day of release, but we were able to use them as demos to our customers and to prepare machine configs for when we did start selling them.

 

[cyrusroe]

Very Interesting, thx for the info.

As a side note, when do you guys think beta testing for AMD's new socket will take place? I don't know for sure but based on what i've read I think it will be coming in early 2006, correct? Having said that, do you think we may be getting beta tests as early as Q4 2005?

 

[Tedster]

Very Interesting, thx for the info.

As a side note, when do you guys think beta testing for AMD's new socket will take place? I don't know for sure but based on what i've read I think it will be coming in early 2006, correct? Having said that, do you think we may be getting beta tests as early as Q4 2005?

I'm sure it is being tested now. Beta testing on average begins 1-2 years before release.

 

[cyrusroe]

I'm sure it is being tested now. Beta testing on average begins 1-2 years before release.

Oh, so then it's the commercial testing that we're gonna have to wait for. And that will be the time when we start seeing benchmark scores on the various sites and mags we love to read?

 

[Justin]

There are already benchmarks on a few sites. Within 2-3 months you will see many reviews.

 

[SOcRatEs]

Brand wagon

Although I still work on both platforms,
I will shortly be changing my profile ie;
SYS info...
my p4 2.4 celeron
gave it up!
So that left me to rebuild all the good stuff
based on AMD....
I had no idea the atholon xp 2700+(2.167ghz)
would out run the intel 2.4..
I have'nt had a chance to run benchmarks yet but
I already know the amd is more stable and faster!
go figger?

Oh yeah the p4 took out my bfg6800gt too...thank the puter god's
it's life time warranty. Got a fresh one on the way! WHEW :stickout:

 

[isatippy]

one thing about intel you can get DDR2 for ram.

 

[Sab3r]

Kinda makes you wonder what the future will have instore for us, at this rate
its like you buy the best vidcard there is to get and after a month there's already
a better one and after year you'll be outdated , though thats a bit extreme but
still its heading that way .

 

[sllewe]

ahhh

No Saber i totally agree with you and i dont think you have exagerated to much!! I dread buying PC parts any more espically Video cards, and CPUs. I bouht my x700 and thought i was a pro, now i cant wait to replace it! I really cant imagine how this is only going to get worse...

Sean

 

[black9]

Im thinking of upgadeing soon and from reading all this im thinking i would be better off buying a AMD XP 3200 and a cheap mother board instead of just upgrading to a pentium 4, 3.0 ghz. How much better is the 3200 going to be with games? if at all? anyone have a good idea. also can benchmark programs be trusted? my celleron 2.7 benchmarks way more then my 2.0 ghz p4 and i always thought my p4 was way faster??? the celleron would not be better for games now would it? and why would it rate 5900 points to 4800 points next to a p4?

 

[Sab3r]

well I got a 2.8ghz and i'm not changing it in a looooong time.

but black9 you should try running two games on both systems with both the
exact same configuration like AF and AA off at 1024*768 and a couple of other
things on the driver that can increase performence should be turned on, on both
systems to get good results, make sure everything is the same and see how well the game
runs on one of the systems to see which one runs it best.

Good luck.

Spade, if you can run Far cry Very high 1024*768 smoothly everything should be fine
for the next few years, only upgrade when games become "unplayable" and you
have to sacrifice graphics over performance which is why I bought the x800 pro.

Hf&Gl :wave:

 

[black9]

I ran some test on my computer switching the processers. to test i used a program called 3DMark 2003

celeron 2.7 ghz = score of 2089
P4 2.0 ghz = score of 2096

so my conclusion is that from the looks of things the celeron processer runs about 70%-75% of what a P4 does if they are the same speed. I think I'm going to stick with the 2.0 ghz tell i can buy a 3.0 with the 800mhz fsb but my motorcycle comes first

 

[black9]

what are some of the tipical ways people use to boost there performance numbers? for games and 3d stuff? i have a nvidia geforce 5700 LE or at least i think thats what it is. But i don't even know if that makes a diffrance

 

[zephead]

what are some of the tipical ways people use to boost there performance numbers?

overclocking, adjustment of the memory timings (the latter is safest), to name a few.

PS > what kind of bike?