SPCR

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SPCR Review.


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Some info about the upcoming CPU's:









Source
The original source is ChipHell, or maybe even AMD!

I wonder why they chose to use a 9xx naming scheme... kinda seems a little too familiar (i7 anyone?). This is going to cause massive confusion on the consumer level.

speedkar9 wrote:I wonder why they chose to use a 9xx naming scheme... kinda seems a little too familiar (i7 anyone?). This is going to cause massive confusion on the consumer level.

It is just as much confusing as Intel using 9xx for i7 (Pentium D anyone?).

I'm guessing they're choosing the numbers precisely NOT to confuse consumers, like the old days when an Athlon 3000+ was supposed to be the same speed as a 3GHz Pentium 4, even though it didn't run at 3GHz.

Moon GT wrote:I'm guessing they're choosing the numbers precisely NOT to confuse consumers, like the old days when an Athlon 3000+ was supposed to be the same speed as a 3GHz Pentium 4, even though it didn't run at 3GHz.

My feelings exactly: AMD has always chosen naming conventions that made it as easy to compare to Intel as they could.

Moon GT wrote:I'm guessing they're choosing the numbers precisely NOT to confuse consumers, like the old days when an Athlon 3000+ was supposed to be the same speed as a 3GHz Pentium 4, even though it didn't run at 3GHz.

Actually, the Athlon XP 3000+ etc ratings weren't meant to represent the equivalent clock speeds of the P4s. They were meant to represent equivalence to one of the original Athlons running at the stated clock speeds i.e. an Athlon XP 3000+ was equivalent to a classic Athlon running at 3GHz.

The fact that these chips were practically equivalent to their P4 counterparts was, I'm sure, entirely coincidental.

Yeah, AMD has done a good job so far. But I strongly doubt, that an Phenom X4 920 will be even close to the Core i7 920 in terms of performance. Perhaps in watts, lol, but not in computing power.

Strid wrote:Yeah, AMD has done a good job so far. But I strongly doubt, that an Phenom X4 920 will be even close to the Core i7 920 in terms of performance. Perhaps in watts, lol, but not in computing power.

Yeah, uh... AMD's got a little ground to make up. Even if you ignore clockspeed, the 9950 is about 60% as fast as the i7, which would mean the Phenom II would need to make up a ton of per-cycle performance to catch the i7.

AZBrandon wrote:

Strid wrote:Yeah, AMD has done a good job so far. But I strongly doubt, that an Phenom X4 920 will be even close to the Core i7 920 in terms of performance. Perhaps in watts, lol, but not in computing power.

Yeah, uh... AMD's got a little ground to make up. Even if you ignore clockspeed, the 9950 is about 60% as fast as the i7, which would mean the Phenom II would need to make up a ton of per-cycle performance to catch the i7.

http://www.hardocp.com/images/articles/ ... 3_14_l.gif

Sisoft is an irrelevant synthetic test.

Check this review by Anandtech: http://it.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3456&p=1

45nm Opterons simply dominate power consumption and price/performance comparisons. And the absolute performance ain't too bad either

Naturally we need more benchmarks to better understand the differences over a wider area of applications.

As long as the new Phenoms can compete with Core 2, they should at least be able to stay in the game for mid-range systems, which is where I'd be more likely to spend my money.

Quad core CPU:s at 2.3-2.7GHz with a TDP of 55W? Sounds great to me:)

Oh, and I found this slightly amusing, though:)

Note: The line for Harpertown four DIMMs is dotted in the above graphs because we did not actually run this configuration but speculate this is the power consumption based on idle power consumption analysis

It's always nice to build conclusions on speculation like that

Tobias wrote:Quad core CPU:s at 2.3-2.7GHz with a TDP of 55W? Sounds great to me:)

Oh, and I found this slightly amusing, though:)

Note: The line for Harpertown four DIMMs is dotted in the above graphs because we did not actually run this configuration but speculate this is the power consumption based on idle power consumption analysis

It's always nice to build conclusions on speculation like that

They could have just left it out and test with 16GB of RAM which is a likely scenario these days, for example for a virtualization host. But at least they added the note there.

If they can make a low idle drawing x3 720 chip that's unlocked....

oooo that's what I would get Cheaper, less overall pull, but a 3rd core for offloading craptastic winblows functions.

x4 I am skipping until they get to like x8.

Dragon platform looks good. the 790 series is really cool with the 700-750 southbridge. I like it all working perfectly together which is what you get from amd and a 89 dollar board.

Ever wonder why intel's new boards are so expensive????? The cpu has an IMC. in all the previous years, the excuse was that the board is much more complicated on a intel for it lacks IMC.... now its more even the board is simpler, the boards chips are tinier....
shrug.

It seems cold bug is gone and AMD just might be back in the OC game as well: Phenom II @5+GHz running Crysis.

Ans some reports claim even 6 Ghz with liquid helium and Inquirer reports even as much as 6,3 Ghz which I am more than doubting. But 5,0 Ghz so you can play Crysis and not simply pass thru simple Benchmark... Now that is pretty good achievement...

Maybe AMD can make sucker punch on Intel now that it made sucker punch on nVidia earlier... Maybe, maybe not...

These could well be competitive with the C2D 45nm quads, i doubt they'll be a match for the i7's, but then they are in a completely difference price range. You can take one of these phenoms and slot it into a £50 mobo with cheap DDR2 ram if you wanted.
Good news for people with AM2+ boards who fancy an upgrade without changing half the system.

FartingBob wrote:These could well be competitive with the C2D 45nm quads, i doubt they'll be a match for the i7's, but then they are in a completely difference price range. You can take one of these phenoms and slot it into a £50 mobo with cheap DDR2 ram if you wanted.
Good news for people with AM2+ boards who fancy an upgrade without changing half the system.

Without very well multithreaded programs, i7 is really not much better then Core 2 Quad so if AMD can compete with Core 2, it can also do so for i7 for most applications.

I currently run 2 machines one with Athlon X2 6400+ one with Phenom X4 9850 and both on AMD 780 mobos with HD3850 graphics There is no noticeable difference running Ubuntu 810 ( my Windows only box is C2Q 6700 on a P35 Shuttle , windows only because the P35 Shuttle would not play nice with Linux )
If AMD's new Dragon Platform is as well balanced and stable as the Spider platform it most likely will be worth my while upgrading . That said I have found very little to be gained in most applications by using a Quad ( Intel or AMD ) or any major real world speed difference between the C2Q and AMD at similar clock speed . I would like to run an i7 on a 790 (place letters of choice here ) mobo but that is not going to happen . So for me Phenom II is looking to be good enough if the price is right - if not I will just keep using what I already have .

Tobias wrote:Quad core CPU:s at 2.3-2.7GHz with a TDP of 55W? Sounds great to me:)

Actually the 2.3-2.7 shanghai parts are 75W acp, not 55w. However, I have seen a few benchmark results that show the 75W shanghais drawing about the same power as 55W barcelonas. Impressive.

I wonder if these CPU's will bring back HTT overclocking?
790 boards can do 400 MHz, but that's only with K8 so far.

It's too bad that old AM2 boards most likely won't get BIOS updates for P2, P1 was never really an alternative anyway.

Quite a few AM2+ mobos from gigabyte and Asus will work with a bois update . there was a list on AMDzone on 26/11/08 of the boards they intend support for .

I was able to drop an Opteron quad core (1356) into a gigabyte GA-MA69SM board.

No problem recognizing it with the latest bios.

pony-tail: Yeah but I was talking about AM2.

austinbike: Good to hear! Can you tell me the exact model name? I couldn't find it on their site. Maybe it's this one?
I have an old Gigabyte AM2 nVidia mobo that supports P1 X3's, but I'd really like to use it with a P2 instead.

Some AM2 boards seem to work with 65 nm P1's, but I have no idea if the P2's will work.
My guess is that they'll be left behind and won't get a BIOS update.

pony-tail: Yeah but I was talking about AM2.

That is why I specified the AM2+ in my post so as not to have confusion .

austinbike: It seems like the CPU can't lower the Vcore in idle when used together with an older, single plane AM2 motherboard, have you noticed this?

Yes, that is the board and yes, the vcore does not drop, but the frequency does.

The power consumption has once again claimed to be really low.
This site says the 940 uses 50 W under load, while the 9950 uses 120 W.

Next week we'll know for sure.

What happens next week, so we'll know for sure?

That site actually claimed a 70W difference between an old Phenom and the new underclocked one.
Maybe this still means that a stock clocked 925 (2.8 GHz) will draw a maximum of 55W?
I plan to upgrade my mobo, CPU and memory in the next 2-3 months, so if the 925 is on par with the Q9550s, I'm going for it.

I don't understand AMD's marketing here. I've got an Opteron 185 currently, which was rated at 110W when I got it. It's a very hot chip and is challenging to keep it below 65C when slightly overclocked, even with the HDT-1283, which is one of the top HSF's available. The main reason I have avoided even thinking about going AMD again is that I know how hard my 110W rated chip is to keep cool and the Phenom X4's are all 125-140W rated.

Meanwhile Intel has plenty of 95W rated C2Q's. The Intel chips, because they were the first to go 45nm, really do deliver on their promise of lower power draw and greater overclockability. I would think if AMD wanted to recapture the mainstream again, they should have released these chips as 65W rated for the 2.1-2.5ghz models if the draw is really that low, and 95W for the 2.6-3.0 models. If it's really capable of 4ghz on air, then sell it as a 3.6 and if it draws 140W to do it, then at least people know what they're in for.

As it stands, I still can't picture myself buying AMD right now if they are offering higher power draw per clockspeed, especially with many real-world applications showing that Ghz for Ghz, they underperform Core2 chips anyway.

Iam not sure if anyone mentioned it but theres also a new platform slated for announce and a new socket.

Dragon - 790GX, PhenomII, HD4800's

and the AM3 socket which Iam kinda confused about because Gigabyte has said their 780G and 790GX are "AM3 Ready". Also I think in Q2 they will be FINALLY releasing some DDR3 ATI based boards.