arcticstoat writes to tell us that despite a poor economic climate, AMD is moving forward with a new processor socket launch, although they are trying to make it as upgrade-friendly as possible. "As you probably already know from the AM3 motherboards that have already been announced, AM3 is AMD's first foray into DDR3 memory support. As Phenom CPUs have integrated memory controllers, it's more accurate to say that it's the new range of Phenom II CPUs (see below) that are DDR3-compatible. However, the new DDR3-compatible Phenom II range is also compatible with DDR2 memory. As the new CPUs and the new AM3 socket are pin-compatible with the current AM2+ socket, you can put a new AM3-compatible CPU into an existing AM2+ motherboard. This means that you can upgrade your CPU now without needing to change your motherboard or buy pricey new DDR3 memory."
If your competitor has a better marketshare and also a better line of processors, it would be a suicide to not release a competitive product when the economy is staggering. Withholding the technology while waiting for the economy to improve can make the gap between them and Intel even wider.
Not to mention that the money has already been spent for R&D. Spending the money for R&D, then sitting on it because the time isn't perfect is, as you mentioned, the best way to increase the gap. And have the added bonus of being out cash on something that won't sell.
AMD is competitive at the low and middle end as long as you don't overclock the middle end CPUs. (If you include the price of the motherboard and don't care about overclocking a low- or midrange AMD system will be cheaper.)
AMD don't have as high end CPUs as Intel and the ones which are closest don't overclock as good or use as little power.
Though then I'd say you shouldn't overclock anyway and AMD chipsets have used less power making the two when used in a complete system rather comparable.
Also AMD used to have an advantage in memory bandwidth and when using multiple CPUs.
Information may be slightly outdated but all of it is probably true, Intel may have catched up in memory bandwidth performance with their latest CPUs since they have put the memory controller within the CPU themself to.
Information may be slightly outdated but all of it is probably true, Intel may have catched up in memory bandwidth performance with their latest CPUs since they have put the memory controller within the CPU themself to.
AMD's Hypertransport has interesting extensions to help cache coherency and currently scales very well with lots of cores and lots of physical CPUs. (Opteron can be used in motherboard with 4 or 8 slots).
Intel's Quickpath is currently more a generation 1 interconnect. That's probably why they have only announced platforms with lots of cores and cpu packages only for later on. (The first CPUs announced, as far as I've read, are only to be used in 2 socket configurations).
For notebooks I have no idea how total system power usage looks, AMDs chipsets provide better integrated graphics than Intel do however. And I guess I would go for someone better though still crappy graphics when somewhat faster / more power efficient CPU (if Intel really is.)
Afaik AMD don't have an alternative to Atom, I may be wrong though.
Also Intel notebook with Nvidia chipset may compare better to AMD.
AMD has the Geode LX and NX lines. Geode LX [amd.com] is very low powered and the highest clock speed (I've seen) is 566Mhz. Geode NX [amd.com] is targeted directly at the Atom. Although I have yet to see any of these out in the wild. I've only ever found a Geode in the wild clocked as high as 500Mhz (see the ALIX boards [mini-box.com])
Actually the Geode is a dead end processor, AMD already has stated they are disconinuing it.
AMD recently announced a new processor "Conesus" that is intended for netbooks and UMPC. http://gizmodo.com/5086703/amds-upcoming-conesus-netbook-chip-wont-stoop-to-mid-levels
This is probably something not many people care about, but...It's a hell of a lot easier and cheaper to find an Athlon64 motherboard that supports(and actually does ECC) ECC memory. Think $50-$100 for an Athlon64 motherboard that does this, versus $200-$300+(original Asus Maximus Formula, Asus P5E WS Pro) for a Core 2 motherboard(has to have an X38 northbridge, unless you want to give up PCIe x16 with a server chipset). I don't think the currently released Core i7 processors with built-in memory controllers support ECC *at all*.
(PS to trolls: Unbuffered ECC memory is only marginally more expensive than unbuffered non-ECC, though it usually has a small latency penalty. Registered/FB-DIMMs ECC on the other hand are Quite Expensive)
Literally all socket AM2/AM2+ motherboards support unbuffered ECC memory, because the memory bus connects the memory slots directly to the CPU socket, therefore the CPU is the only thing dictating what type of memory is supported. And because all AM2/AM2+ Athlon processors support ECC memory, all AM2/AM2+ motherboards support ECC memory.
Core i7 940 -> $564.99 + about $250 for mobo = $800+ Phenom II 940 -> $224 + about $150 for mobo = about $375
Core i7 needs DDR3, Phenom II 940 runs DD2 (note that the 940 is an AM2+ part, not AM3 so it doesn't support DDR3). DDR3 is somewhere around 50% more expensive than DDR2 (though falling).
For me, the fact that the i7 is only about 10-20% faster than the Phenom for more than twice the cost, it's simply not worth considering for me. Then again, I do most of my gaming on consoles.
The i7 system will definitely cost more, as there aren't really any budget X58 motherboards and the CPUs and DDR3 are still brand-new, top-of-the-line parts (and thus get a price premium). However, I just got an EVGA tri-SLI board, i7 920, and 6GB of DDR3-1866 for $570 + S
Basically Intel is giving AMD a righteous spanking when it comes to performance. Now that they have tossed Netburst for core(which while there wasn't anything wrong with Netburst speed wise they were space heaters) the performance has shot WAY up, which leaves AMD having to constantly lowball on price to make up the difference. After all, who wants to pay more for a slower chip?
It actually reminds me of the old days/breaks out rocking chair/ when AMD and Cyrix were the "good enough" CPUs that you bought wh
In addition the fact that it's cheaper for them to make this than the previous version as well, they have every reason to stay competitive.
Who writes this "poor economy" crap?
Many companies are doing just fine through this downturn, it's just a mental state of consumers that has changed, and probably not for the long run either as consumers tend to have about the memory of a goldfish when it comes to taking corrective action financially.
We're just slowly deflating back to where we were before this hyperinflation the last few years has brought.
it's just a mental state of consumers that has changed... We're just slowly deflating back to where we were before this hyperinflation the last few years has brought.
I reserve the right to remind you that you said that.
Ah, it's nice to see an appropriate level of pessimism. Judging from the last few times something like this happened to the economy it could take up to 15 years before growth and employment returns to "normal". Though our level of debt is much worse than at any time in history, so even that estimate might be too optimistic.
This means that you can upgrade your CPU now without needing to change your motherboard or buy pricey new DDR3 memory.
Other than starving CIS majors, who barely earn enough money from their university's computer lab to pay for Ramen Noodles, who does that? IT professionals would just buy all the hardware together because their time is worth more than their money, and everybody else just buys entire new computers. This could only appeal to a handful of small-budget kids.
OK, I'm not married, but recently when I was at the computer store, I overheard this scrawny guy on the phone with his wife begging her for permission to get the 2G instead of the 1G RAM upgrade. His whiny, pathetic, groveling demeanor over a $20 difference in price, and his futile attempts to explain to her why 2G is better than 1G, made me absolutely want to vomit. I'm not married, but I vowed that day to either divorce or kill myself if I ever find myself to be such a pathetic, spineless loser.
So my advice to the married chumps out there is to keep a separate bank account for discretionary purchases which your wives have neither control of nor access to. Life without self-respect (and gadgets) is not worth living.
Seconded. One of the best things you can do is establish the idea of a slush fund for both sides of the relationship; fighting over money is one of the more common reasons for divorce.
So my advice to the married chumps out there is to keep a separate bank account for discretionary purchases which your wives have neither control of nor access to. Life without self-respect (and gadgets) is not worth living.
Or... marry someone who isn't a total shite and respects your interests. -Taylor
Or... marry someone who isn't a total shite and respects your interests. -Taylor
This.
There's no way you are going to be able to successfully "hide" income from your partner.
You need to be able to sit down and talk about priorities and expenses without it devolving into a shouting match or having one of the parties become an unhappy invertebrate...
Life without self-respect (and gadgets) is not worth living.
Dude! Way to totally reverse priorities. Did it occur to you that maybe she's the one with the high-paying job, and all that groveling got him better hardware than he could have bought if his was the only income?
Okay that probably wasn't the case, I'm just sayin', if I had to choose between self-respect and gadgets... "Honey, please?! I took out the trash last night and everything!"
Should it matter? In my opinion, if you're married, then it doesn't matter who makes the money, you're in it together. By that reasoning, should a parent who stays home with the children not be able to buy anything at all since they don't earn anything? Granted, I think that any major purchase or decision should be made together, and a $1k purchase is usually considered major, but one person shouldn't be begging the other for anything. That kind of relationship is not sustainable and not healthy for anyone.
Works both ways. You come home with a new CPU & MOBO and install it in the old case when she's not looking; she sneaks a new pair of shoes into the closet and tells you she bought them last christmas on sale when she busts them out.
Or, you can be adults, and maybe agree on an amount for discretionary spending that doesn't require the others approval.
Reminds me of my cousin, he works in a computer store and his girlfriend wouldn't allow him to get a new computer because she thought he should spend the money on a trip for them (he was like 19 and she 18 so pretty pussy whipped.) Anyway, he kept the case, problem solved;), or well, not the actual problem, be he found a workaround.
Gamers. Sure, most would rather go out and buy a totally new box, but if someone just wanted to upgrade a CPU, AMD would let them do it. It may seem illogical for hardware vendors to target a small portion of the hardware buying community, but both AMD and Intel are trying their best to get the gamer's money.
Other than starving CIS majors, who barely earn enough money from their university's computer lab to pay for Ramen Noodles, who does that? IT professionals would just buy all the hardware together because their time is worth more than their money, and everybody else just buys entire new computers. This could only appeal to a handful of small-budget kids.
If you don't think in terms of upgrading the processor of the computer sitting on your desk, but instead think of HP updating the processor in their line of AM2-based computers, then you should be able to see that the appeal is basically universal. This way the OEMs can offer refreshed versions of their lines without having to incur the extra expense of DDR3. Obviously they will also make a DDR3 AM3-based line, but the DDR2-based line will be cheaper.
Backward compatibility and in-place upgrades appeals to far more than a handful of poor hobbyists.
Actually we bought drop in CPU upgrades for our Database server, when you have the time invested in the OS and application installs and QA time not to mention tons of ram it's a very cheap upgrade to just swap out CPU's if you are CPU limited. Spending $5K or so to get 40% better performance out of say $300K is sunk cost is a no brainer. Now that's on the Opteron side not the Phenom side, but again if you do a lot of transcoding it's probably cheaper to buy a new CPU then upgrade the whole rig.
Virtualization doesn't help your performance if you're already using all of a particular resource. It has overheads that mean you're getting less out of your hardware in terms of raw performance. The fact that you can put 5 boxes that would otherwise be sitting idle on the same hardware is what makes virtualization attractive.
Exactly how does virtualisation magically add performance out of hot air? And exactly how does buying additional iron provide that same kind of performance increase per $ spent that the parent mentioned?
Gosh, can we please have an automated -2 buzzword sucker whenever someone comes up with fancy terms where they just don't fit?
It's still cheaper to buy $5k in processors than a new $40K+ server, and even with virtualization it's not like racking, configuring, and SAN and network connecting a server is free. Plus with per CPU licensed applications where you are performance constrained it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to lose some percentage of performance when a license upgrade is even more expensive than the time invested. I'm not saying everyone looking for better performance should run out today and buy a drop in CPU upgrade
I mean the economy in terms of releasing a product update. If the work is done & ready to go, it's too late to worry about the economy, just ship it. Not only that, product development cycles on these products are long enough that they need to continually invest in R&D regardless of the economy, by the time a just-started project is done, the economy will have rebounded and ready for new product.
If the world is switching to DDR3, that probably means having a new socket. As such, AMD needs to introduce the new socket when they are ready to.
This is great. I'm hurting for a new desktop and was planning on getting an AM2 CPU.
I still am, but knowing that the AM3 was just around the corner, waiting to knock all the AM2/AM2+ prices down has delayed my plans for a few weeks, and now there's finally an end in sight!
You may be able to put a am3 processor in a am2+ motherboard, but the Register says that am2+ processor in a am3 motherboard will not work. (http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/02/09/review_cpu_amd_phenom_ii_am3/page2.html)
To quote: "makes life horribly confusing as the Phenom X4 920 and 925 and the X4 940 and 945 will be identical apart from the processor socket. This means that there is the possibility that some poor so-and-so will buy an AM2+ CPU and an AM3 motherboard when ne'er the twain shall meet.".. careful what you buy out there
And also due to poor economy, otherwise they wouldn't support cheaper DDR2.
I guarantee you they would.
Even when the economy was good, there was a lot of downward pressure on the prices of computers. Mandating a switch to a more expensive memory tech before the market is ready is a sure way to have it backfire in your face *cough* RAMBUS *cough* Ugh that was some nasty phlegm.
Not that I expect any different from/. most days, but who cares if its the middle of a recession? The R&D work on this has been in place for quite a while, and this is actually MORE attractive than an i7 platform right now because you don't need to move up to the new socket for the new chips - they are backwards compatible.
"Despite a poor economic climate, farmers still harvest crops they planted last year...." - come on....
TITLE: AMD Launches New Processor Socket **Despite Poor Economy**
So we're not supposed to do anything because the economy is bad?! So let's never a thing again because we're ignorant of larger pictures and contexts and variableness in life. What kind of f***ed-up sh** IS THAT! Start tagging sentences with pessimistic endings and implying stuff because we're ignorant a**holes. Let's see....
Today I drove to work in the winter despite road salt runoff will affect the lake. I bought a new dog despite the existence of puppy mills. I washed my hands after peeing despite the fact antibacterial soap kills good germs. I sat on a wooden chair despite my ginger ass getting chapped.
You know what... I think the title actually had an effect on me despite the fact I found it totally ignorant. What do you think?
That's bullshit, CL in periods * period length = latency, and since they are clocked higher the latency will probably be around the same, I won't calculate it for you.
And that latency is how long it takes before you actually start to read any bits, but as soon as you have started each bit will come faster from the higher clocked memory.
If you don't get a speed increase it's because either of: 1) Processor not fast enough to take benefit of additional bandwidth. 2) Cache system smart enough to not take benefit of additional bandwidth. 3) Application not using memory in a fashion where it will take benefit of additional bandwidth.
Most likely the later one..
All higher end graphic cards come with faster memory, it may not be a huge deal always but it probably add some benefit, rather stupid if it didn't.
AMD said they would skip DDR2 and go directly to DDR3 earlier because there was no benefit when actually in use but I guess they "had to" when Intel was using DDR2 just because people see the numbers and wonder why one is bigger than the other. Though first AM DDR2 chips vs 939 DDR chips showed no increase in speed in benchmarks.
Anyway, DDR3 is faster than DDR2, will you notice it? I have no idea.
The 3-fold clocking scheme will only really help on interleaved burst reads. The memory cells don't charge the output buffers any faster just because you clock them at a higher rate. This is why the nCLK latencies scale with the number of folds in DDR scheme. The only things that will make the cells charge faster are a) higher voltage or b) smaller process or c) a more conductive semiconductor chemistry that lowers resistances and increases currents on the wafer.
If you can have 3 banks of DDR3 interleaved by 1 clock then you can probably see some significant gains on sequential (aka burst) reads. In real life, this doesn't happen very much, especially in a multithreaded environment where almost all s/w is written using high-level foundation classes with very little machine optimization.
I remember reading about what a huge impact the concept of interchangeable parts had on the industrial revolution. And at the beginning there for a while, it also applied to computers.
It still does. Your PCI-E video card works in just about any computer that supports that socket.
I am positive you can engineer a socket that leaves plenty of room for the future. But why would you want to do that, if you can drain your customer's bank accounts?
Why would you do that? It'd be more expensive now, offer no advantages, and in three years, the new socket would be faster and come with updated IO choices.
And presumably all those auto industry and manufacturing workers getting fired were cheating when they took classes in high school right?
No, they were busy getting drunk and ignoring the adults who told them they'd end up with shitty jobs later on in life if they didn't take school more seriously.
What's the point in wating for markets to turn (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's the point in wating for markets to turn (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
What exactly is the gap between Intel and AMDs CPUs?
(I'm not trolling or trying to start a flamewar, just curious)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There's lot to consider when you decide which CPU to go for, and then there is their market performance.
Re:What's the point in wating for markets to turn (Score:5, Informative)
AMD is competitive at the low and middle end as long as you don't overclock the middle end CPUs.
(If you include the price of the motherboard and don't care about overclocking a low- or midrange AMD system will be cheaper.)
AMD don't have as high end CPUs as Intel and the ones which are closest don't overclock as good or use as little power.
Though then I'd say you shouldn't overclock anyway and AMD chipsets have used less power making the two when used in a complete system rather comparable.
Also AMD used to have an advantage in memory bandwidth and when using multiple CPUs.
Information may be slightly outdated but all of it is probably true, Intel may have catched up in memory bandwidth performance with their latest CPUs since they have put the memory controller within the CPU themself to.
Parent
Lots of cores (Score:3, Insightful)
Information may be slightly outdated but all of it is probably true, Intel may have catched up in memory bandwidth performance with their latest CPUs since they have put the memory controller within the CPU themself to.
AMD's Hypertransport has interesting extensions to help cache coherency and currently scales very well with lots of cores and lots of physical CPUs.
(Opteron can be used in motherboard with 4 or 8 slots).
Intel's Quickpath is currently more a generation 1 interconnect. That's probably why they have only announced platforms with lots of cores and cpu packages only for later on.
(The first CPUs announced, as far as I've read, are only to be used in 2 socket configurations).
Thus if you want to run a server which
Re:What's the point in wating for markets to turn (Score:4, Informative)
You have to account for how each company lists its TDP.
Intel lists its TDP as average load usage, while AMD lists the max draw.
So if each chip was listed at 90W, the AMD would actually use less power.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
For notebooks I have no idea how total system power usage looks, AMDs chipsets provide better integrated graphics than Intel do however. And I guess I would go for someone better though still crappy graphics when somewhat faster / more power efficient CPU (if Intel really is.)
Afaik AMD don't have an alternative to Atom, I may be wrong though.
Also Intel notebook with Nvidia chipset may compare better to AMD.
Re:What's the point in wating for markets to turn (Score:5, Informative)
AMD has the Geode LX and NX lines.
Geode LX [amd.com] is very low powered and the highest clock speed (I've seen) is 566Mhz.
Geode NX [amd.com] is targeted directly at the Atom. Although I have yet to see any of these out in the wild.
I've only ever found a Geode in the wild clocked as high as 500Mhz (see the ALIX boards [mini-box.com])
Actually the Geode is a dead end processor, AMD already has stated they are disconinuing it.
AMD recently announced a new processor "Conesus" that is intended for netbooks and UMPC.
http://gizmodo.com/5086703/amds-upcoming-conesus-netbook-chip-wont-stoop-to-mid-levels
Parent
Re:What's the point in wating for markets to turn (Score:5, Informative)
(PS to trolls: Unbuffered ECC memory is only marginally more expensive than unbuffered non-ECC, though it usually has a small latency penalty. Registered/FB-DIMMs ECC on the other hand are Quite Expensive)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What's the point in wating for markets to turn (Score:5, Interesting)
Core i7 940 -> $564.99 + about $250 for mobo = $800+
Phenom II 940 -> $224 + about $150 for mobo = about $375
Core i7 needs DDR3, Phenom II 940 runs DD2 (note that the 940 is an AM2+ part, not AM3 so it doesn't support DDR3). DDR3 is somewhere around 50% more expensive than DDR2 (though falling).
For me, the fact that the i7 is only about 10-20% faster than the Phenom for more than twice the cost, it's simply not worth considering for me. Then again, I do most of my gaming on consoles.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"Starting now, there's going to be a lot less talking and a lot more killing."
"Less smack, more thwack"
I could come up with more ways to say it, but you get the point.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you think a current i7 would compare to what you will buy for $300 in two years' time? In three years a laptop would be faster.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
An i7 920 will crush an X2 5200+ in CPU-intensive tasks. http://www.guru3d.com/article/intel-core-i7-920-and-965-review/15 [guru3d.com] shows a software-based rendering benchmark. The i7's are up in the 11's and 12's, while my X2 6000+ was in the 4's.
The i7 system will definitely cost more, as there aren't really any budget X58 motherboards and the CPUs and DDR3 are still brand-new, top-of-the-line parts (and thus get a price premium). However, I just got an EVGA tri-SLI board, i7 920, and 6GB of DDR3-1866 for $570 + S
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Basically Intel is giving AMD a righteous spanking when it comes to performance. Now that they have tossed Netburst for core(which while there wasn't anything wrong with Netburst speed wise they were space heaters) the performance has shot WAY up, which leaves AMD having to constantly lowball on price to make up the difference. After all, who wants to pay more for a slower chip?
It actually reminds me of the old days /breaks out rocking chair/ when AMD and Cyrix were the "good enough" CPUs that you bought wh
Re:What's the point in wating for markets to turn (Score:4, Insightful)
In addition the fact that it's cheaper for them to make this than the previous version as well, they have every reason to stay competitive.
Who writes this "poor economy" crap?
Many companies are doing just fine through this downturn, it's just a mental state of consumers that has changed, and probably not for the long run either as consumers tend to have about the memory of a goldfish when it comes to taking corrective action financially.
We're just slowly deflating back to where we were before this hyperinflation the last few years has brought.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I reserve the right to remind you that you said that.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
strange (Score:3, Insightful)
Other than starving CIS majors, who barely earn enough money from their university's computer lab to pay for Ramen Noodles, who does that? IT professionals would just buy all the hardware together because their time is worth more than their money, and everybody else just buys entire new computers. This could only appeal to a handful of small-budget kids.
Re:strange (Score:5, Insightful)
Or a lot of small-budget husbands :P
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
OK, I'm not married, but recently when I was at the computer store, I overheard this scrawny guy on the phone with his wife begging her for permission to get the 2G instead of the 1G RAM upgrade. His whiny, pathetic, groveling demeanor over a $20 difference in price, and his futile attempts to explain to her why 2G is better than 1G, made me absolutely want to vomit. I'm not married, but I vowed that day to either divorce or kill myself if I ever find myself to be such a pathetic, spineless loser.
So my advi
Re:strange (Score:5, Insightful)
So my advice to the married chumps out there is to keep a separate bank account for discretionary purchases which your wives have neither control of nor access to. Life without self-respect (and gadgets) is not worth living.
Seconded. One of the best things you can do is establish the idea of a slush fund for both sides of the relationship; fighting over money is one of the more common reasons for divorce.
Parent
Re:strange (Score:4, Insightful)
So my advice to the married chumps out there is to keep a separate bank account for discretionary purchases which your wives have neither control of nor access to. Life without self-respect (and gadgets) is not worth living.
Or... marry someone who isn't a total shite and respects your interests.
-Taylor
Parent
Re:strange (Score:4, Insightful)
Or... marry someone who isn't a total shite and respects your interests.
-Taylor
This.
There's no way you are going to be able to successfully "hide" income from your partner.
You need to be able to sit down and talk about priorities and expenses without it devolving into a shouting match or having one of the parties become an unhappy invertebrate...
Parent
Re:strange (Score:4, Funny)
Life without self-respect (and gadgets) is not worth living.
Dude! Way to totally reverse priorities. Did it occur to you that maybe she's the one with the high-paying job, and all that groveling got him better hardware than he could have bought if his was the only income?
Okay that probably wasn't the case, I'm just sayin', if I had to choose between self-respect and gadgets... "Honey, please?! I took out the trash last night and everything!"
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
Should it matter? In my opinion, if you're married, then it doesn't matter who makes the money, you're in it together. By that reasoning, should a parent who stays home with the children not be able to buy anything at all since they don't earn anything? Granted, I think that any major purchase or decision should be made together, and a $1k purchase is usually considered major, but one person shouldn't be begging the other for anything. That kind of relationship is not sustainable and not healthy for anyone.
Re:strange (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, you can be adults, and maybe agree on an amount for discretionary spending that doesn't require the others approval.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Reminds me of my cousin, he works in a computer store and his girlfriend wouldn't allow him to get a new computer because she thought he should spend the money on a trip for them (he was like 19 and she 18 so pretty pussy whipped.) ;), or well, not the actual problem, be he found a workaround.
Anyway, he kept the case, problem solved
Re:strange (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Not strange at all (Score:5, Insightful)
Other than starving CIS majors, who barely earn enough money from their university's computer lab to pay for Ramen Noodles, who does that? IT professionals would just buy all the hardware together because their time is worth more than their money, and everybody else just buys entire new computers. This could only appeal to a handful of small-budget kids.
If you don't think in terms of upgrading the processor of the computer sitting on your desk, but instead think of HP updating the processor in their line of AM2-based computers, then you should be able to see that the appeal is basically universal. This way the OEMs can offer refreshed versions of their lines without having to incur the extra expense of DDR3. Obviously they will also make a DDR3 AM3-based line, but the DDR2-based line will be cheaper.
Backward compatibility and in-place upgrades appeals to far more than a handful of poor hobbyists.
Parent
Re:strange (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:strange (Score:4, Insightful)
Virtualization doesn't help your performance if you're already using all of a particular resource. It has overheads that mean you're getting less out of your hardware in terms of raw performance. The fact that you can put 5 boxes that would otherwise be sitting idle on the same hardware is what makes virtualization attractive.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Exactly how does virtualisation magically add performance out of hot air? And exactly how does buying additional iron provide that same kind of performance increase per $ spent that the parent mentioned?
Gosh, can we please have an automated -2 buzzword sucker whenever someone comes up with fancy terms where they just don't fit?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Doesn't matter. (Score:3, Interesting)
I mean the economy in terms of releasing a product update. If the work is done & ready to go, it's too late to worry about the economy, just ship it. Not only that, product development cycles on these products are long enough that they need to continually invest in R&D regardless of the economy, by the time a just-started project is done, the economy will have rebounded and ready for new product.
If the world is switching to DDR3, that probably means having a new socket. As such, AMD needs to introduce the new socket when they are ready to.
Excellent (Score:2)
This is great. I'm hurting for a new desktop and was planning on getting an AM2 CPU.
I still am, but knowing that the AM3 was just around the corner, waiting to knock all the AM2/AM2+ prices down has delayed my plans for a few weeks, and now there's finally an end in sight!
am3 CPU in am2+ motherboard: OK Otherway.. no (Score:5, Informative)
You may be able to put a am3 processor in a am2+ motherboard, but the Register says that am2+ processor in a am3 motherboard will not work. (http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/02/09/review_cpu_amd_phenom_ii_am3/page2.html)
To quote: ..
"makes life horribly confusing as the Phenom X4 920 and 925 and the X4 940 and 945 will be identical apart from the processor socket. This means that there is the possibility that some poor so-and-so will buy an AM2+ CPU and an AM3 motherboard when ne'er the twain shall meet."
careful what you buy out there
Despite a poor economy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Despite a poor economy? (Score:5, Informative)
And also due to poor economy, otherwise they wouldn't support cheaper DDR2.
I guarantee you they would.
Even when the economy was good, there was a lot of downward pressure on the prices of computers. Mandating a switch to a more expensive memory tech before the market is ready is a sure way to have it backfire in your face *cough* RAMBUS *cough* Ugh that was some nasty phlegm.
Parent
expensive memory? (Score:2)
Inflationary summary? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Despite a poor economic climate, farmers still harvest crops they planted last year...." - come on....
"despite" submitter's ignorance? (Score:3, Insightful)
TITLE: AMD Launches New Processor Socket **Despite Poor Economy**
So we're not supposed to do anything because the economy is bad?! So let's never a thing again because we're ignorant of larger pictures and contexts and variableness in life. What kind of f***ed-up sh** IS THAT! Start tagging sentences with pessimistic endings and implying stuff because we're ignorant a**holes. Let's see ....
Today I drove to work in the winter despite road salt runoff will affect the lake. I bought a new dog despite the existence of puppy mills. I washed my hands after peeing despite the fact antibacterial soap kills good germs. I sat on a wooden chair despite my ginger ass getting chapped.
You know what ... I think the title actually had an effect on me despite the fact I found it totally ignorant. What do you think?
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
The latency is generally lower than DDR2, measured in wall-clock time. The advertised latency appears worse only because of the faster clock.
Parent
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
That's bullshit, CL in periods * period length = latency, and since they are clocked higher the latency will probably be around the same, I won't calculate it for you.
And that latency is how long it takes before you actually start to read any bits, but as soon as you have started each bit will come faster from the higher clocked memory.
If you don't get a speed increase it's because either of:
1) Processor not fast enough to take benefit of additional bandwidth.
2) Cache system smart enough to not take benefit of additional bandwidth.
3) Application not using memory in a fashion where it will take benefit of additional bandwidth.
Most likely the later one ..
All higher end graphic cards come with faster memory, it may not be a huge deal always but it probably add some benefit, rather stupid if it didn't.
AMD said they would skip DDR2 and go directly to DDR3 earlier because there was no benefit when actually in use but I guess they "had to" when Intel was using DDR2 just because people see the numbers and wonder why one is bigger than the other.
Though first AM DDR2 chips vs 939 DDR chips showed no increase in speed in benchmarks.
Anyway, DDR3 is faster than DDR2, will you notice it? I have no idea.
Parent
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
The 3-fold clocking scheme will only really help on interleaved burst reads. The memory cells don't charge the output buffers any faster just because you clock them at a higher rate. This is why the nCLK latencies scale with the number of folds in DDR scheme. The only things that will make the cells charge faster are a) higher voltage or b) smaller process or c) a more conductive semiconductor chemistry that lowers resistances and increases currents on the wafer.
If you can have 3 banks of DDR3 interleaved by 1 clock then you can probably see some significant gains on sequential (aka burst) reads. In real life, this doesn't happen very much, especially in a multithreaded environment where almost all s/w is written using high-level foundation classes with very little machine optimization.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I remember reading about what a huge impact the concept of interchangeable parts had on the industrial revolution. And at the beginning there for a while, it also applied to computers.
It still does. Your PCI-E video card works in just about any computer that supports that socket.
I am positive you can engineer a socket that leaves plenty of room for the future. But why would you want to do that, if you can drain your customer's bank accounts?
Why would you do that? It'd be more expensive now, offer no advantages, and in three years, the new socket would be faster and come with updated IO choices.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, they were busy getting drunk and ignoring the adults who told them they'd end up with shitty jobs later on in life if they didn't take school more seriously.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
doh! Hit the wrong button. Forgot to add the punchline about... unless they're bringing those burgers home. =P