“The release of AMD’s AM2 platform has left many consumers with mixed feelings. While some are looking forward to the progression of AMD’s Athlon 64 line, there is much more to the platform than a new socket. Experts have repeatedly told us that the expected performance boost of moving to AM2 (from socket 939) will be limited and this new platform has largely been overshadowed by the upcoming arrival of Intel’s Conroe (Core 2 Duo), but after the success of socket 939, AM2 definitely warrants a review.”
all the release of AM2 means is its finally time to upgrade my trusty old socket A box…. to a 939 rig. the dismall performance of DDR2 means i will try and skip that generation of products.
Nice pseudo review of a couple of mb along with what’s already been said: AM2 provides a slight c. 5% increase in overall memory bandwidth at the expense of slightly higher latencies. (I note that they failed to compare it with a socket 939 Athlon 64.)
IOW just what you would expect when the major change was in the memory controller to support DDR2 & a second change providing initialo support of hardware virtualization, neither of which translate into significantly increased overall performance as shown in that article and every other similar examination of the AM2 available.
K8L is the oly possibility of true performance increases in the near future from AMD, as going back to multi-CPU sockets is a been-there-done-that-saw-the-movie-got-the-t-shirt sort of thing excepting that most mainstream CPUs are actually dual core now. All of which adds up to if your app has been designed to support multi-threading/multi-cores and done so well, you will see some benefit ow again, big deal.
Too many AMD fanboys kicking around(e.g. HardOCP and their Core 2 Duo “review”, this article, etc.) rather than people who are interested in performance. I’ve got an Athpn 64 now, but if I build another system before k8L(and after if it doesn’t measure up) I’ll be using Core 2 Duos as AMD doesn’t appear to be dropping their prices enough(on their current offerings) to truly match Intel. (I feel sorry for the suckers that bought AM2s at the old prices too, though… esp since they also had to spring for new memory & mbs(unless they had that ASROCK board)…)
(I feel sorry for the suckers that bought AM2s at the old prices too, though… esp since they also had to spring for new memory & mbs(unless they had that ASROCK board)…)
What about the suckers who will have to upgrade to the 64bit version of the Duos?
Edited 2006-07-27 02:34
…that the move to AM2 was only to switch to DDR2 memory. And that person would have also known that the main reason why the AMD 64 processors were so fast is because of their memory controller and the ability to work really fast with tight timed memory. I do not know why AMD moved to DDR2. But that said, we knew that AMD processors were not bandwidth starved. DDR2 has a lot more bandwidth but that is not being used. The only thing i can see from the move to DDR2 is that AMD is planning on a increasng the number of cores. That is where the archtiecture based on DDR2 is supposed to sign. That is my guess. If Intel tries to stick 2 more cores on their current CPU platform, I think their processors no matter how powerful will be starved. How much of that is correct I am not sure.
That being said AM2 is just a stop gap solution. Intel’ new offering is definitely the way to go. I configured a system at gamepc last night based on Opteron 285’s and I saw the pricing for those processors were still above 1200 dollars each. Sure AMD has slashed prices but not enough IMO. Right now they are in a tight spot I guess. Whether AMD has been caught napping I am not sure but all I can say is I am quite looking forward to see what AMD has to offer. Their K8L on a 65 nm process seems really intriguing to me. With 65 nm i think they would be able to hit 3.4 ghz max. But then again it is not just about clockspeed but the architecture as well.
One thing I am rather skeptical of is their 4 x 4 concept. It seems they are tackling their current lack of performance of their stop gap AM2 solution by introducing more cores. That iMHO is not the right way to go about keepimg up with performance because Intel has a single threaded monster…clock for clock AMD will still lose in performance to Intel. Only in very heavy multitasking will the AMD 4 x 4 shine but then again how many people do that? To my mind, gamers who want to build a fast machine are going to buy the Conroe like mad. The only way AMD can strike back is to bring out a quad core K8L 65 nm and a dual core K8L at the same time. That will show that their quad core technology is ready. That way server companies will be pleased, and so will gamers who will lean towards the more affordable dual core setups. And if they show numbers that their processors are faster, then AMD will havee an even bigger hit on their hands…
Anyway sorry for the long post. Just my 2 cents. But aint competition grand?!
I got my desktop back in 2001. It was a 1.2 ghZ AMD Athlon. While I have been tempted to purchase a new desktop, my old desktop works too well for me to bother. During the last two years, I was heavily leaning towards AMD. Now, with the Core 2 release, I am heavily leaning towards Intel. But I don’t think I will buy a new computer yet for the same reason why I didn’t buy a computer when AMD had the lead; there are no software that truly take advantage of multiple cores and the 64-bit CPU. When this changes, I will again evaluate the situation once again but probably will ultimately buy on price because 10% better performance, while nice, will not make a difference in the long run of when the CPU will become obsolete.
Mhh, wasn’t the AM2 socket designed to support dual core AND in quadcores when they’ll be reay for show time.
In that aspect, AM2 will be for the quadcore transition what socket 939 was for dualcore transition (you know, the flash your bios magic and you have a great upgrade path).
Now, instead of bringing the usuall 10-15% of performance improvment, the F cores brought DDR2 and virtualisation features…
Well, that’s a bit disappointing but that’s not that bad if you consider that there are limitations to what you can do when you can’t increase much the number of transistor or the frequency and that the K8 cores should have been heavily optimised by now.
Personnaly, I see it as a necessary step and I’m waiting for what the G cores (shrink process…that is..Intel and AMD on the same ground) and H cores (new architecture).
As for the AM2 socket… I guess that we’ll be more than happy to have that when the fist AMD quadcores will be released in the beginning of 2007.
And…well…not everybody needs quadcores or 4*4..for sure…But I, for one, will really appreciate it…
dividing rendertime by 2 (quadcore on AM2) or by 4 (2 (cheap ?) quadcores on 4×4…with a lot of ram…sigh..so expensive)
would be more than welcome
Besides, I already have 2 cores (thanks AMD for the Athlon X2 3800) but I could use 4 too when I’m not doing heavy duty calculation :
what about doing heavy duty calculations that takes day when I use one/two cores to play or watch a movie or whatever.
I just hate it when I can’t use my comp because of rendering…
Lakedaemon
4×4 will obsolete distcc for me.
you guys know that the physical am2 socket is still 939 pins just in slightly different places right? AMD COULD make a socket 939 quad core CPU with DDR1 support… it wont happen but they COULD if they wanted too.
AM2 is basically useless with Core 2 out. For years I assumed my next CPU would be an AMD (like my last one) but it doesn’t look like it anymore. Core 2 simply rules. Add to this AMDs upcoming purchase of ATI. Aside from my dislike of ATI for their relatively bad Linux presence, one has to wonder where that will leave nForce, which is what I’d like to use for a mobo.
Hopefully AMD can do something great with k8l, something more than incremental. k10 is too far out, and we need continuing competition to keep Intel from feeling comfortable and sitting still like they did for so long with netburst.
With AMD expecting to move the AM2 to 65nm process technology in the next few months the performance gains of the Intel processors should be non existant, especially if AMD do what many analysts expect with the upgrading of the Cache and a few other tweaks in the same process. Right now is not the time to buy a CPU from any producer simply because the market is really in a hung position waiting for all the transitions to occur and prices to stabilise.