“AMD’s forthcoming Opteron processor–aka Hammer–packs ground-breaking technology: Its hybrid design allows the chip to run 32- or 64-bit operating systems natively. Plus, AMD claims that one Opteron running in its 32-bit mode will outperform two XEONs–the heart of the most advanced 32-bit servers based on Intel technology. But where are the benchmarks? Which system vendors are planning Opteron-based servers? And what about software support? Until some of these pieces fall into place, AMD’s gamble looks to be facing some long odds.” Read the set of articles at ZDNews.
Opteron: The Rodney Dangerfield of Processors?
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
[i]also, getting a baracuda VI hard drive helps alot since that anoying whir is the platers spinning and the barracudda maes even searches nearly impossable to hear unless you put your ear to the case.[i]
I also bought the Seagate Baracudda (80Gb-7200RPM), and all was well and dandy until I started a Hard Disk temperature tool. The Baracudda runs at 45-53 degrees celcius. This will kill your hard disk in less than a year (it killed my Quantum Fireball). So I had to buy a hard disk cooler fan, bought the TTCooler (2 fans), it sits in a CDROM slot (5-1/4), sucks outside air with one fan and blows it down into the case (and the Baricudda directly below it), extracting hot air with the other fan. The Baracudda dropped to 25-28 degrees celcius.
The bad thing is that my PC now sounds like a jet propulsion lab. The fans themselves dont make any noise, its the turbulent air flowing throught the system which makes the whoooosssshhh sound all day long.
In the future, the best PC’s wont be designed by Intel/Amd/Motorola. It will be designed by air-conditioning and cooling companies. The case with the best air flow will win. Hmmm, sounds like a good time to invest in Fujitsu and GE.
As long as AMD’s Opteron chips continue the tradition of being much cheaper than similar Intel offerings, all the benchmarks in the world are irrelevant to me.
Sure they’re cheaper, but they’ll melt your motherboard. And the case. And the floor under the computer. And…
– chrish
Well.. why not? If a processor is SO much faster than one is used to, wind the mhz down a few points and you can have a PC that runs cooler, lives longer and is less likely to crash.
Everyones probably staring at me and going “WTF?” but it makes sense..
Why have a 3000mhz machine that singes the hair off your legs if you stand too close when you can have a 2600mhz one that runs cold to the touch…. and doesnt crash as often. How many extra Mhz do you need to compensate for the lost productivity when a system goes down?
(apologies to “Bloom County”)
Chris, have you heard any solid stats on how hot the beast is going to run? Seriously curious!
I’ve seen reports saying that unclocking a processor is just as bad for the processor as it is overclocking it. Sure it would run cooler, but the proc will hate you for it.
I’ve also seen a P166 that when put to 150Mhz would not boot any OS properly, I dont see WHY it wouldnt like it, but it just does.
Most AMD system do not get all that hot if you have proper cooling in place.
Me….AMD 2100 – normal = 25C; Full Load = 35C to 40C
that’s some pretty low temp’s.. where do you measure that? a probe on the cooling unit? i have the die measurement.. mine is ~50 idle and ~60 loaded.. celsius ofcourse!
I use the bios to check temps and also the ASUS probe which is not a accurate as the bios.
I found the best way to cool a AMD system it to have a fan blowing out the side of your case and then have a PC duct running from the fan to the CPU. (lowered mine 10C)
Also changing the Thermal Paste will cool the system alot.
There’s always water cooling if your doing some serious overclocking.
Check out http://www.amdmb.com that have lots off cooling suggestions.
I picked a quiet fan, but it was still to damn loud for me, so I reostated it down to about half the RPMs and now it falls in as part of the background noise so when I walk into the room I do not even know it is running.
also, getting a baracuda VI hard drive helps alot since that anoying whir is the platers spinning and the barracudda maes even searches nearly impossable to hear unless you put your ear to the case.
now I ust need a quiet PS and an LCD monitor for totaly silent system 🙂
oh…and my teps are only in the mid 40s.
Most AMD system do not get all that hot if you have proper cooling in place.
And what do you consider “proper” cooling, a Kryotech case?
Me….AMD 2100 – normal = 25C; Full Load = 35C to 40C
You’re definately pushing the limits of believability here. My Athlon XP 1900+ idles at 42C, this with the Alpha PAL8045, a heat sink which most would consider more than adequate, and a 50CFM 80mm Sunon fan. I have another 50CFM 80mm Sunon fan for case exhaust, a 30CFM Sunon fan for intake, and I have a slot cooler next to my video card.
Your processor is jumping 10-15C with load? That’s even less believable… under full load for hours my system will rarely go above 48C.
Systems with a less extensive cooling setup (that is, Volcano 6 Cu+) tend to idle around 50C.
How is that uinbelievable? There are more factors then just your processor that cause your system to get hot.
What kind of Video Card do you run? I run a Nvida 128MB G4 thats why my temp rises so much during full load…that thing gets hotttt.
Also room temp can effect your readings.
So what Im saying is there is alot of factors that play into system temps. Just because you run higher and your full load difference in a bit less does not make in impossible.
I know some people who run water cooling and the never even go past 20C full load.
I also know someone that has 2 intake fan a 2 exhaust fans and then a video card fan and they run about the same as me.
Try the PC duct by the CPU blowing otu and I bet you’ll be more in my range.
Its ok if your jealous. 🙂
Maybe some more people can post what they run and also their temps to see what the avg. is.
Thanks
<P>But where are the benchmarks?</P>
<P>
Don’t you two lovers talk to each other about yourhttp://www.queru.com/articles/Benchmarks.html>articles
Athlon XP 1800+/A7V266-E
CPU temp (checked w/ bios) is currently 61C (142F)
The case has 2 fans, the heatsink on the CPU has no thermal paste, but the system heats this room.
When chips come out, they check the speed each one in a batch can handle. So I dont see why underclocking would be a problem.
As for teh system taht wont boot at the lower clock speed, Ive seen systems that dont like different jumpers settings while others will run however you have it configured.
Can I run BeOS on it or are they going to make me hack it again? And I wonder what two xeon’s it will beat?
Hmm. You might want to get a better heatsink on that thing. While theoretically these things run up to 90 C, in reality, you start to feel the effects (increased instability, shortened lifespan) once you go much above 60 (which I’m guess yours does under load if its 61 in the BIOS).
…CPU processing benchmarks.
My Athlon XP 1600+ runs at about 36C idle and peaks at around 60C. But this means very little. CPU thermometers are extremely difficult to calibrate. I had 10 identical dual PIIIs in a cluster and these ran almost the same calculations at exactly the same time. The loaded temperatures varied by as much as 15C.
FWIW, I’m running an Athlon XP 1800 with the retail box fan and I don’t think I’ve seen it go above 44. GeForce3 Ti200 next to it.
http://www.queru.com/articles/Benchmarks.html
/me thinks some ppl can’t read below the <textarea> box
always at 42c, dont know what my oem shop is using for heatsink/fan but its a big mother…
Anyways, how about people focus less on heat of the cpu and more on voltage
61c? That’s very hot, by any method to measure temp. You shouldn’t run that thing over 50c (55 under load) if you want to keep it more than a few months. Do not, and I cannot stress this enough, fail to use thermal paste. That’s like using brakes on a car when the pads only make contact on a cm^2 area. It isn’t efficient. There are lots of little gaps and pits and holes on the chip and heatsink that cause it to not make contact and not work efficiently.
If the sound bothers you, get a more efficient cooler like thermalright’s sk6 or (much better) slk-800.
Benchmarks: with all respect to JBQ, he has missed the point of xp+ branding. (though I’m sure this has been rehashed on the response thread). The performance of a 2200+ is equal to what an original AMD Tbird would do at 2200mhz, not a p4 at 2200 (which was not in production when the xp+ nomenclature was created). And I leave aside all questions of which is a better chip – I’m perfectly happy with my AMD Tbird 1.0.
(Oh, and for those that were looking, I run it at 1330mhz, and keep it at 42/47c, quietly and stably with a thermalright sk6 and 2800cfm fan. (Yes, this is mroe appropriate to an overclocker’s discussion board).
My bad.
Jim,
You really should put some thermal paste between the heatsink and processor. Without the thermal coupling provided by the paste, the heat is not transfering off of the processor very well. Go get some Arctic Silver II paste (Fry’s sells it if one is nearby). It will probably drop your CPU temperature dramatically. Otherwise, your poor proc may not live much longer.
A.N.
Even so, they do pack a very nice punch for the buck. Play it safe with Intel, but is it really better? Transmeta, and maybe Via C3 is the only ‘safe’ option, so what floats your boat?
It’s all in the eye of the beholder, and we all know that BETA MAX and RISC should be the winners…
In response to the thing about CPU thermometers not being correct, I’d like to point out that modern CPUs (Pentium-4 and Athlon-XP) have an integrated thermal diode which older CPUs (specifically the PIIIs you mention) lack. Older CPUs use a thermal diode under the processor in the socket, and can be unreliable. The integrated ones, however, are quite accurate. As for thermal paste, I’d be careful about it. Unless you make sure that you really spread it real thin (just a film really) it can actually make heat transfer worse. I’ve found that thermal pads tend to be much easier to install, albiet slightly less effective.
The exact same stuff was said about the (K7) Athlon before it was released, and look at it now… Bring it on, I want some!
And by the way, what the hell does this article have to do with tempratures?
I had a HSF in an unopened box next to my desk
I replaced the HSF with a new one (but still only rated to 1.5GHz) and threw on some artic silver 3
CPU temp leveled off somewhere around 54C(129F)
Sure they’re cheaper, but they’ll melt your motherboard. And the case. And the floor under the computer. And…
I don’t know, with Palamino, the heat went down, compared to Thunderbird. With Thoroughbred, compared to Palamino, the heat went even more down. The same should happen with Barton, with SOI, better 0.13micron transistors and smaller die sizes…….. notice the patern here? Ever since K6, AMD processors had been reducing its heat gradually.
The exact same stuff was said about the (K7) Athlon before it was released, and look at it now… Bring it on, I want some!
K7 was very significant, as AMD for the first time stop following behind Intel (yeah, i know K6 stopped imitating Intel’s CPUs, but wasn’t that successful in that). Notice AMD market share increased significantly from that point.
I think AMD decided not to use SOI for the Barton btw
http://www.amd.com/gb-uk/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_608,0…
since via, nvidia, etc support 200mhz fsb,
why doesn’t amd increase the fsb to 166 or even 200mhz, but drop the clock multiplier?
the “pr” rating of a cpu that is 200mhz*8 will be higher than a cpu that is 133mhz*12
that, plus a 512k cache would be technically straightforward method of performance improvement.
anyone know why amd doesnt do this? amd’s stock is taking a beating. does amd care about competing with intel?
second, how is it that since heat production is proportioanl to transistor count and die size, and amd has fewer of both thanthe intel p4, why is it so much hotter than a p4?
It’s been theorized that AMD won’t increase 2nd level cache to 512 KByte (some rumors say that even Clawhammer will only have 256 KB) because they’re short on (compared to Intel’s virtually unlimited) production capacity.
IIRC current Athlon XPs play in the same league as current P4s as far as power consumption is concerned. The thing is that the Athlon has a *much* smaller die size, so that the heat is concentrated on a smaller area, and thus it’s more difficult to cool it.
Chris
underclock
“why is it so much hotter than a p4”
I believe it has to do with the layout of the chip. I understand the p4 spreads the heat more evenly across the die, therefore allowing heat to dissipate much quicker.
But the heat gap between the two chips is shrinking.
Oh, and underclocking a processor won’t hurt it. That’s silly. Actually, most chip designs have the same exact core but are wired to run at different settings, or tested to see the max stable speed and set at that. An 1600+ is essentially the same core as 2200+, running a 2200+ at 1.4 ghz, can’t possibly hurt it.
Also, simply putting a big ol’ fan on your processor and a couple of big ol’ fans in your case will not necessarily lead to the coolest case. Considerations of the airflow in the case are very important, too much turbulence can result in an uneven heat distribution in your case. Positively or negatively pressurizing your case will give different results as well. I’m sure there are other factors of fluid dynamics I have no idea about to consider to.
Doesn’t make as much of a difference if you don’t overclock your processor (which is a real bad idea if you do any serious work with your computer at all. But, its your computer, make it as unstable as you want.)
As for thermal paste, I’d be careful about it. Unless you make sure that you really spread it real thin (just a film really) it can actually make heat transfer worse.
—————
I’ve never understood this. With the pressure most modern heatskinks put on processors, even a thick dollop of thermal paste will become a VERY THIN film as soon as you apply the heatsink…
As for silence, I run my Duron 1.3GHz chip with a Zalman CNPS6000-AlCu and dial the fan speed down to the lowest with the included Zalman Fan Mate (fan speed controller). I can hardly hear it. http://www.zalman.co.kr/english/product/cnps6000alCu.htm
I also have a Novibes III hd cage reviewed here http://www.dansdata.com/novibes.htm and I can barely hear my Seagate Barracuda IV. I once wondered why my system was so slow and then noticed the HD light on; it was halfway through a full system virus scan and I couldn’t hear it! I would be a bit careful about running the bigger Barracuda IV HDs from Seagate in summer tho. They tend to run hot. Let’s hope the Barracuda V out soon will solve that.
I also run a Geforce4 MX440 from http://www.xfxgraphics.com , which is the only Geforce4 MX card I know that is cooled by a heatsink alone and my system is very, very silent now. Far more silent than 99.9% of the OEM systems that come out now, AMD or Intel.
I Started my latest system with an Athlon 1440 (thunderbird core) on a Abit motherboard, inside a Lian Li PC60 case. Tryed a Chrome Orb first, could not get the Core temp below 59c. Then I switched to a bigger orb with the dual fans, I think it dropped down to 55c. Finally, I threw out both orbs (the one I had on my celeron worked weel enough) and spent the big money on a Thermaltake SK6(?) with a 80cfm fan and Artic Silver II. Sure, now my system sounds like a General Electric high-bypass turbofan, but the Core temp never goes above 24c.
Bah… wimps. When I were a lad our computers were cooled by liquid nitrogen & they took up a whole room.
P
via kt333 supports 166mhz fsb so why not bump that rather than a mere 67mhz speed?
I think AMD decided not to use SOI for the Barton btw
http://www.amd.com/gb-uk/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_608,0…
I’m outdated… but does Hammer comes with SOI? Hopefully.
since via, nvidia, etc support 200mhz fsb…. second, how is it that since heat production is proportioanl to transistor count and die size, and amd has fewer of both thanthe intel p4, why is it so much hotter than a p4?
They have 266mhz (133mhz*2), why downgrade? Anyway, the FSB speed would be increased with Hammer. They aren’t doing that now because they are focusing most of their resources on Hammer. As for the heat, it is a common perception because AMD processor had historically been unstable means it have a higher heat emmision. Well, not true :-p. (Besides, from Palamino onwards, these stuff have been stable).
Bah… wimps. When I were a lad our computers were cooled by liquid nitrogen & they took up a whole room.
What if you knock the computer over and some of the liquid N falls on your leg, and becomes, well, frozen?
via kt333 supports 166mhz fsb so why not bump that rather than a mere 67mhz speed?
KT333 allows you to use PC2700 DDR RAM, but the speed increase is not that spectacular, as the processor doesn’t support it.
by 200mhz DDR bus, i am talking about 200mhz*2.
yes, kt333 does not have much of a speed increase BUT
if the athlon Barton supported 166mhz*2 natively, there should be a 333/266= 25% bus speed improvement, which should higher PR, at the same clock (by lowering the multiplier).
would u rather have a 100mhz DDR bus and a 20x multiplier or a 200mhz DDR bus with a 10x multiplier?