Anandtech has tested some of the new dual core AMD 64s, looks very promising. AMD seems to beat Intel as the better overall dualcore CPU
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...oc.aspx?i=2410

Nice but waaaaaaay too expensive.

That means yields obviously suck right now. But I'd take a 90nm DC chip with sucky yields with the knowledge that they will improve an eventually move to 65nm.

viking..
actually for the first time in a long time i'm a tad disappointed with amd.
particularly given the pricing of these chips.
It doesnt seem we will get the big leap in performance i was hoping for.
In summary , silicon technology has plateaued.
On both MAC and PC.
Because the processor is but one part of a computer architecture.
I was hoping by this time frame we would see 5ghz processor chips.
But it isnt happening. I guess due to the gate technology in the chips.
Seems to me that given the low price of sempron processors it might make sense to get two sempron pc's. One for tracking and one for sampling,
and sync them up. This way TCO is 600 bucks for two systems.
In fact the more i play with semprons the more impressed i become.
The 3100 is the one to go for imho.

I think the perfomance looks very good. Remember it's only going to get better as software catches up. In some of the benchmarks there are already big performance leaps over the single core. Also notice that the clockspeeds of the AMD X2 are very close to the single cores unlike Intels dual cores.

Personally I think the pricing is reasonable, if you got a socket 939 motherboard there's a good chance you'll be able to just swap the cpu and upgrade the bios.

I think the thing to keep in mind is that a dual core system will get faster as software is optimized.

Plus these things are supposed to run fairly cool.

Looks pretty slutty to me!

viking...
well. maybe. my local stores wont be stocking them for a while.
What i'm interested in is cutting mixdown times for say a 32 track song.
When i can mixdown such a song in 10 to 15 seconds then THATS maybe worth paying the money for. I just get antsy waiting for the mixdown process.

I'd argue that they're likely priced that way because they can. They have no competition and they don't want to totally kill the sales of their single core offerings.

Intel bungled their 90nm move. In contrast, it went very well for AMD and their 90nm yields, power consumption and quality are very good (as evidenced by 90nm pricing and the easy overlocking of those chips).

My 90nm 1800 Mhz AMD64 runs cool and reliable at 2340 Mhz. Pretty good for a $160 CPU and memory bandwidth is around 4200 MB/sec.

My largest session currently must be slightly under the trackcount you mention, but at 96k. Bouncing it takes around ... hmm ... 30 to 40 seconds I´d say. So I would remotely gather that those top of the line machines could be doing it within your time frame. Sure that not?

Ruphus

Ruphus...
frankly i want to see an acceleration in processor ghz.
We are stuck on this 2 to 3ghz plateau.
And it seems none of the processor manufacturers can break out of it.
Which is disappointing to me. I want MORE GHZ. then i'll be happy.
Remember also people want to as well have the ideal DAW with not just lots of tracks for audio like us but also video. with lots of video tracks for testing out ideas.
video chews up things pretty quickly. Also - if one has huge track capability for
video and audio ....think of the implications !. I know some video freaks (i'm audio only) have significant demands.
I'm hoping in the next 10 years we will see what i want.
We ARE getting there....but these dual cores are just an incremental push forward imho rather than a major breakthrough to a new performance level.

Hi Manning,

I see what you mean.

Years ago it appeared like several new technologies were approaching like with transparent sheets and laser or imprinted foils and stuff. All where praised for far superior capacities, but were never heard back of.

Yet, some has been developed over 3 gigs already. Have you heard from that IBM / Toshiba / Sony team chip "Cell"?
It is supposed to be build into out of all Sonys new "playstation 3" next year. It has been announced to enable photo realistic games.
But Sony is also working on home servers with Cell CPUs.

Toshiba plans to implement them into high resolution TVs, and IBM is targeting for high end work stations.

Supposedly MACs will be the first computers on the market to profit from it, cause they get their G5 CPUs already from IBM.

Cell will be consisting of of 9 different processor cores, future versions of even more. The existing model already calculates in the 4.6 GHz range. ( 256 million operations per second ).

Cells are going to be a heavy punch for Intel which is a good thing. The bad thing is that AMD always gets hit as well whenever Intel sucks on stocking market. This could kill the final bit that has remained of my humble AMD stocking values.
However, AMD ought to have the best crews and I suspect that they might be having an answer to the new trio mentioned above already fiddling with in their labs.

So, likely we are going to see further CPU sizing. Well possibel from AMD too, even if it might not prevent them from breaking down economically due to predictable fall of Intel stocking quotations.

Man, I wish AMD would join with Samsung*. THAT would be a killer combo ( and possibly rescue my losses )!

Greets,

Ruphus

* You might have seen that I mentioned prospective Samsung papers recently. See how the uptick looks already. > slaps himself on the shoulder <
They will be a long raiser as long as no global crisis was to generally interfere.
( But don´t listen to me, my cousin lost lots of cash when he followed me into AMD and short afterwards the whole market crashed. )

As we learned with the prescott core, reaching higher ghz doesnt really matter much of all that energy is just being translated into heat. Really if you look at the move to 1ghz and then the move to 2ghz you will see we slowed back down again and are slowly hitting 3ghz and higher. This is the way it should be. Intel just decided to wage war on amd and "create" power. They messed up big time and that guy lost his job. They are still in the sink from that. I will say centrino technology is working good.

btw I run a p4c 2.4 so I'm not some amd fanboy its just they way it is.

ruphus.
well maybe in a couple of years we will buy a sony playstation
to do recording with this cell tech .
frankly i dont care who does it. (more ghz)
in hi tech all the engineers move around quite a bit.
so you can bet if amd or intel are threatened by any new technology they will just buy the engineers or the comp sci profs that create stuff in univ labs.
intel might have made a few errors. but i would never underestimate them.
companies go through down periods then bam ! surprise everyone.
big blues gone through down periods as well and then risen anew.
if i was a billionaire i would hire the engrsand have a go myself.

Manning,

First of all with the Cell there you got the requested higher performance and they won´t be out too far in the future. And as they seem internally stackable they must bear quite some potential.
Enough at least to supposedly provide some very perceivable CPU progress within the next years.


I do. I have mentioned it before that they would had not made the leap into the GHz region hadn´t AMD been forced to let them use their patented copper technology.
Without AMDs technology Intel would still be sitting on aluminium cores and would be selling advanced flat-irons now.
Intel made its way through typical nepotism and monopolistic strategies, not so much through technological innovation. And I think they are seeing their hopes dashed since a while.

I´m sure that they are sneeking around trying to buy some specialists for a while now, but it seems not to help. Their idea to copy AMDs smart draw to open a plant in the German east and taking advantage from the local engineers´s proven flexibility wasn´t maybe that bad, but Intel withdrew from the plan although the state was about to pay for a vast part of the investment and on top make special conditions for them. But Intel seems a Yellow-billed Storck who are used to big chance, but not investing and so they withdrew.

Greed shall be their cornerstone to become a household utensil supplier.
Let´s have some intelligent besoms and coffee grinders!

Ruphus

Manning,

had you followed my advice your 120.00 bucks would have become 184.00 by now.
Not bad, huh?

But it´s good that you didn´t follow the suggestion, cause if you had, it would probably be crawling around 82.00 or something like that.
You know how life is. :O)

Ok, off to the next round.
I claim this paper to still be just at the start.
Check it out in 2 years again and wonder.

- Or not.


Ruphus

206 ...

AMD is overpriced, but I've read at the nuendo forum, that the performance jumps up very high. So may be it worth the money.
Regards Tamas Dragon

Seems like a pretty off-base statement to me as I don´t know of any papers that were more under priced than AMD.

If I may ask, where do you conclude from that AMD would be overpriced?

Ruphus

Just bought my 4800+ and I am LOVING IT!

My CPU usage in Sonar 4 dropped from 95% (with my old Athlon 2200+/1.8 ghz) to 30% (with the Athlon 64 4800+/dual 2.4 ghz) WTF?? I expected a performance increase, but this was MUCH better than I expected. This was in a session that had over 40 tracks with some plugs on each channel

BTW, this thread is old and those prices are all WAY OVERINFLATED. I bought my 4800 for $750 on newegg.com.