AMD Dual core

mattek · Post by **mattek** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 4:04 am

Techreport has done a review of AMDs dual core solution. A good read with stats on powerconsumption:

http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q2/op ... dex.x?pg=1

"AMD's dual-core Opteron processors are extremely well executed on all fronts, based on what we've seen. AMD's dual-core design has a technical elegance that Intel's can't match, and that design brings superior performance. One Opteron 175 performs slightly better than a pair of Opteron 248s running at the same clock speed, and it does so while consuming less power than a single-core Opteron 152. All in all, very impressive."

/matte

tay · Post by **tay** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 5:33 am

*drool* This calls for a christmas time dual core athlon upgrade!! Time to start saving!

cansan · Post by **cansan** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 6:59 am

Well well well.....

Anandtech also has a review up.

I think the pair to compare is the 530$ Pentium 840D versus the 581$ Athlon 64 X2 4400+ (or 537$ 4200+ but we have no results for that). And to me, the performance is NOT comparable at all, it is a slaughter. Which is not surprising because 3.2GHz P4 means 2.0 GHz Athlon. The P4 has lost its hyperthreading here and the Athlon has gained a 200MHz bonus.

Too bad they don't have lower clocked models i.e. 1.8, 2.0. I can't afford 581$ for a cpu. If I had the money though I wouldn't hesitate to get the 4400+, looks FANTASTIC.

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 2:32 pm

I read both reviews/previews earlier.

AMD was always going to kick Intels arse with dual core cpu's, now we have the proof.

However, as both of the reviews pointed out, whether dual core is the way to go at the moment is up to the end user, and how they work/play.

I would love to have one, but I dont need one right now, and wont until there are more SMP aware apps (games) that make use of it, or when Longhorn comes out.

I have a good suspicion that longhorn is going to require dual core to run well, and probably 64BIT, and 1GB+ of RAM, not to mention D9+/10.

Dual core is the future............... And the future is nearly here.

Andy

Lawrence Lee · Post by **Lawrence Lee** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 4:53 pm

Dang I was looking forward to heat/power consumption figures.

tay · Post by **tay** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 6:02 pm

Tech report compared single CPU dual core vs. dual CPU dual core and it turned out the dual CPU MB/CPU combination used around 85 watts more power. Not sure if its AC watts or DC watts. Plus that number doesnt include 10% DC/DC conversion on the motherboard.

Green Shoes · Post by **Green Shoes** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 6:33 pm

Wow, AMD had about 50 press releases today, apparently. Either them or their partners or somebody, all about the new Opterons (and the announcement of the X2). I mean, it's great for AMD and all, it's certainly getting a more favorable response than Intel did three days ago (and are those chips for sale yet? Hmmm, didn't think so), but wow, stagger them or something

Not that I'm complaining about dual-core.

yeha · Post by **yeha** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 6:48 pm

the difference between a single 175 cpu and two 275 cpus was 86 watts ac power - the article mentions that they measure at the wall. the psu used in the test was an ocz powerstream 520w. spcr has reviewed a couple recent ocz psu's but not that exact model, however since the others reach 78-80% efficiency we'll go with worst-case-scenarios in terms of power usage:

- measured increase in power with second dual-core cpu added = 86 watts
- psu efficiency of 80% = 69 watts
- motherboard efficiency of 90% = 62 watts

so using high efficiency ratings that shine a poor light on the cpu, and ignoring the fact that a dual-cpu configuration will most likely increase motherboard power consumption, a dual-core 2.2ghz opteron draws no more than 62 watts. could be as low as 55 watts. that bodes well for us.

sthayashi · Post by **sthayashi** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 7:06 pm

Green Shoes wrote:Wow, AMD had about 50 press releases today, apparently. Either them or their partners or somebody, all about the new Opterons (and the announcement of the X2). I mean, it's great for AMD and all, it's certainly getting a more favorable response than Intel did three days ago (and are those chips for sale yet? Hmmm, didn't think so), but wow, stagger them or something Not that I'm complaining about dual-core.

Welcome to the world of NDAs with expiration dates.

Slaugh · Post by **Slaugh** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 9:02 pm

According to C'T, a german magazine, the AMD K9 will be released in 2007 with a quad core. Here is an english translation of this article (Google Language Tools). There's also an Opteron+ dual core on the way. The Xeon DP Woodcrest looks promising with just 45W TDP...

Roadmap: Consumption and Performance

cansan · Post by **cansan** » Fri Apr 22, 2005 12:59 am

Amourek wrote:Dang I was looking forward to heat/power consumption figures.

From the TechReport review, it looks like the 2.2 DualCore consumes a little bit less power than the 2.6 Single Core. (Ignore the power consumption at idle figures, AMD's have power management disabled.) Good news, I say!

This says it all for me:

Code: Select all

System power consumption - Load:
Opteron 175         201W
Dual Opteron 275    287W
Pentium D 840       292W

The Pentium D 840 draws an extra 90Watts. How much does electricity cost? For people who fold 24/7, will it be cheaper to get the expensive AMD that uses less power or the cheap Intel that sucks up the watts?

lm · Post by lm » Fri Apr 22, 2005 1:54 am

cansan wrote: The Pentium D 840 draws an extra 90Watts. How much does electricity cost? For people who fold 24/7, will it be cheaper to get the expensive AMD that uses less power or the cheap Intel that sucks up the watts?

Factor in the increased cost of making it silent, and if there's an AC, that would need to run more to evacuate the heat, which would also increase costs.

tay · Post by **tay** » Fri Apr 22, 2005 6:40 am

The price difference is $250 which is because AMD cannot afford to make more dual cores. I cant remember the last time I paid $500+ for a CPU. I dont think you can recoup $250 in electricity/airconditining costs in 2 years with a system. Looks increasingly like waiting for 0.65u and picking up a PentiumD is a good idea (if you can wait).

cansan · Post by **cansan** » Fri Apr 22, 2005 6:51 am

Do you think it can be made as quiet(as AMD dualcore)? Because most people here stay away from even a single presscott, and pentium D has two somewhat slow presscotts. Or do you think that power would be reduced in the 65nm process?

StarfishChris · Post by **StarfishChris** » Fri Apr 22, 2005 7:00 am

Going from 130nm to 90 produced a lot of heat for Intel. It might be the case this time too, unless they can sort that out...

tay · Post by **tay** » Fri Apr 22, 2005 7:21 am

StarfishChris wrote:Going from 130nm to 90 produced a lot of heat for Intel. It might be the case this time too, unless they can sort that out...

From what I remember reading (not sure if its true, but sounds plausible) intel chose to use features in the 90nm process and transistors that maximize clock frequency at the expense of power loss. I hope someone got fired over that one, because Prescott is completely thermally limited as evidenced by nearly every new Prescott making it to 4 Ghz. Intel has already promised a 20watt drop for their 65nm parts. Not a big deal, but again a step in the right direction just like the 600 series.

WRT silencing Prescotts, a number of people here have done it with a little bit of effort. Its much easier if you dont have a beefy video card thats for sure.

cansan · Post by **cansan** » Fri Apr 22, 2005 8:03 am

Intel went from the Northwood to Presscott with 130nm to 90nm. It was not a simple die-shrink as AMD is doing now. Instead the pipeline length and probably the number of transistors increased a lot.

It makes me wonder what would have happened if Intel had done a simple die-shrink of the Northwood to 90nm. I haven't had either but the impression I have is that most people think Northwood is(was) pretty good and Presscott is well not as good (unless clocked very high: ~4G).

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Fri Apr 22, 2005 11:56 pm

The northwood core at 90nm would have been much cooler, still might not have reached any higher clocks speeds.

Anyway, the AMD Athlon 64 X2 kicks arse, everyone knew it was going to.

AMD will likely release slower clocked parts not long after launch, that will of course cost less.

AMD have launched parts in this manner before, going for the mid-high end first, and then filtering down, I suspect that they will clock down CPU's that didnt make the grade, and once they have enough to supply demand they will release, but also remember they will release faster parts, and as always prices drop (usually a LOT once the chip gets mainstream).

I suspect that you will be able to pick up a 4400+ this time next year for $300 - $350.

Anyway, if anyone NEEDS the performance, the price is irrelevant, if you dont need the performance then you are wasting money.

Andy

cansan · Post by **cansan** » Sat Apr 23, 2005 3:51 am

andyb wrote:I suspect that you will be able to pick up a 4400+ this time next year for $300 - $350.Andy

That would be NICE!

Beyonder · Post by **Beyonder** » Sun Apr 24, 2005 7:01 am

I want one of these guys *real* bad.

it'd be so awesome for development work to have two cores...and my application is already threaded to take advantage of them.

lm · Post by lm » Sun Apr 24, 2005 7:46 am

tay wrote:The price difference is $250 which is because AMD cannot afford to make more dual cores. I cant remember the last time I paid $500+ for a CPU. I dont think you can recoup $250 in electricity/airconditining costs in 2 years with a system. Looks increasingly like waiting for 0.65u and picking up a PentiumD is a good idea (if you can wait).

You missed 'cost of making it silent'. Not like I would buy such expensive cpu myself either, though.

Shining Arcanine · Post by **Shining Arcanine** » Sun Apr 24, 2005 8:01 am

Now if only programs were written so the addition of cores in CPUs has the same effect on scalability as the addition of pipelines in GPUs.

Green Shoes · Post by **Green Shoes** » Sun Apr 24, 2005 11:24 am

Shining Arcanine wrote:Now if only programs were written so the addition of cores in CPUs has the same effect on scalability as the addition of pipelines in GPUs.

*sigh* it'll happen, and the price of those programs will probably double, thanks to the extra development time

Oh, well, they'll figure it out eventually.

ronrem · Post by **ronrem** » Fri Jul 22, 2005 3:41 pm

The dual core Pentium is a space heater,a toaster oven. The A64 X2-different from a dual core Opteron,has only a little higher Watts in/Heat out than the same clock singlecore. The Pentium M is usable,but otherwise making a Pentium quiet is like making a pitbull smart...not much result-way too much effort.

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Sun Jul 24, 2005 1:18 pm

dothan's are the quiestest per usable computing power out of anything on the market.

they just are overpriced and not concentrated on board wise. a zalman passive setup on a dothan with dual 7800 gt sli would have less power and heat than a dual core amd with one gpu, and i bet, beat it out frame wise.

i just never would consider it as the chipsets are always (seem to be) like 1 year backwards and the baords are like 250+ dollars min.

hence, I will purcahse a 4400 and call it a day.

StarfishChris · Post by **StarfishChris** » Sun Jul 24, 2005 2:17 pm

Of course it would beat it framewise, it has twice the graphics power! But if you do something like Folding guess what wins...