AMD Shows Upcoming Phenom II CPU At 6.0 GHz+ 159
Vigile writes "Today during a press briefing at AMD's offices in Austin, TX the company showed off some upcoming technology that should be available sometime early in 2009. What was most impressive was the overclocked speeds of the pending Phenom II X4 45nm processors. On air cooling AMD showed the quad-core CPU running at nearly 4.0 GHz while with much more extreme liquid nitrogen cooling help the same CPU reached over 6.0 GHz! It looks like AMD's newest processor might finally once again compete with the best from Intel, including its recent Core i7 CPUs."
first question.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Overclocking BS (Score:5, Interesting)
Look, I don't think overclocking in liquid nitrogen is cause for a slam dunk conclusion that AMD is now competitive with Intel, but stating that it's not impressive and not an indication of the performance of the processor indicates a complete lack of understanding of electrical design.
This wouldn't have worked, for example, with the original PPC 7400 (G4) past 500MHz. As it turned out, there was a hard stop getting past that. Finding FMax (maximum frequency) independent of reliability and power concerns highlights design weaknesses. If they can overclock by 50% with adequate cooling, one can conclude they don't have any early or late mode problems preventing higher frequencies, and that metal isn't the limiting factor. In fact, they can easily conclude that the electrical design is sound and that their limit will be what they can qualify from a reliability perspective.
I've stuck with AMD (Score:5, Interesting)
Second, AMD clearly differentiates their product. An XP 6000 is faster than a 5000, etc. Buying an Intel CPU is a chore (and make sure you get the right board, That's not always clear either).Basically I'm Lazy, and Intel's made it a pain to pick the right processor.
Re:Basically (Score:3, Interesting)
You seem like the right person to ask this of, so, how exactly do I choose what's best for the job?
I want a good, cheap, stable, processor that's going to be able to handle every game made in the next few years (the same thing every home user wants).
I can't really judge by GHz, since my ancient 1.6 GHz processor is enough to handle most modern games when overclocked (2.13 GHz). So what do I look at? L1/L2 cache? FSB? Does the tech (45 nm) factor into speed at all, or is does it just give a general idea of how advanced the chip is?
I want to know more about the underlying technology and how it impacts real-world performance rather than just "buy a Core 2 Quad Yorkfield 2.83GHz 12MB L2 Cache, n00b": if I wanted a recommendation for a specific chip I could use one of a million benchmarks and pick one that's rated highly on Newegg.
I know, I know, JFGI, but I can't find a decent explanation anywhere. Even Wikipedia (while having plenty of great technical info) doesn't really tell me how having (for example) a larger cache will improve performance.
Re:Basically (Score:3, Interesting)
You are (possibly unintentionally?) turning this into a straw man argument.
It's not the processor that really dictates what you can handle. It's the graphics card moreso.
As long as you have a mobo that can handle PCIEx16 (minimum) and a nice processor, well you're good for quite a while. Meanwhile, anyone buying any motherboard right now is potentially fucked not because of processors or graphics, but because of USB3 coming out. Since no current motherboards will be able to support that speed without a drop-in PCIE card, you can imagine that in a year or two when USB3 is commonplace anyone without it is going to be screwed.
If you want to find unbiased reviews, stick with techreport.com and follow their articles. They are the company that outed other companies (and tested their own as well), to see who was willing to give positive reviews based on being bribed, such as tomshardware.
Re:Overclocking BS (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm sorry, but it's quite easy. All you need is the following:
- Intel Core 2 Duo SP9300 (x 3)
- Duct Tape
Bam! 6.78 Ghz. Done.
Re:Overclocking BS (Score:3, Interesting)
Heck, even if the Intel solution might be a LITTLE better, I'll still pick AMD a lot of times.
And, at work I have the say as to what systems our clients will order for VMware hosts, and I always pick Opterons, even if they're a little more expensive. With AMD you get better multi-core performance when you're using a lot of RAM - perfect for VMware.
This is likely to change when Intel releases their Server CPU's with what is basically HyperTransport and an embedded memory controller (which they said was a BAD idea...) But I'll still choose AMD because I want to support the company that's moving the technology forward.
When you think about all of the big improvements to the x86 architecture in the last 10 years, it's almost all AMD innovations. A high-speed interconnect bus with no north bridge. An integrated memory controller. x64. The list goes on - AMD led the way, and it's amazing the arrogance you hear from the executives and product managers at Intel. They actually had the balls to say, when questioned about the similarities between Intel's new CPU and Athlon/Opteron, "Smart people can come up with the same ideas." Ohh, sure they can, but these engineers haven't been living in a box for the last 8 years, so that's utter bullshit. Unbelievable.
Re:I've stuck with AMD (Score:4, Interesting)
That's all true. Intel's been beating AMD at that for a while now.
Thing is, that's never the question that you want to be asking when you buy a new computer. Who cares which company has the fastest chip at $1000. The important question is: If I spend $90 on a chip, what's the best I can get? What if I spend $150? Is that better than putting $60 somewhere else? How about $200?
In the $75 - $250 range (the range I personally care about), AMD and Intel are pretty much always trading blows. Here's a good chart for illustration: Crysis CPU Benchmark [tomshardware.com]. Note how, for example, the Intel chip at $187 is slower than the AMD chip at $170.