Wow, what a glowing review of Intel's upcoming technologies from Anandtech. Seems strange that this website should think so highly of the NetBurst architechure, considering how roundly criticized it is on other websites...
So I guess Anandtech thinks Intel's technology is going to come out on top of AMD's next year? Guess time will tell on that one...
Well..I'm from the old school..."show me". Intel hasn't shown me a thing in the last 2 years..and Im not about to give them a pat on the back now. Until they put a product in the hands of the consumer that is clearly better than what AMD has on the table they won't be getting any of my hard earned Computer toys play money, and, they will have to put it in the market place at a price that is competitive with AMD.
I can't help but wonder if my p4 660 would find any performance gains with the upcoming 945/955 chipset, if compatible at all. Probably not, but theres always hope, right?
kiwistag: A good point - but i think some internal documents I have seen lean twoard the idea of licensing per socket (instead of processor). Obviously, BSD/Linux won't care if you install 4 logical processors. I would not be surprised if the x64 Windows XP comes out with some little tweaks to the license and install base to take into account multiple sockets/processors.
One thing that is missing from all the discussion is what O.S's will support the new Processors?
This might sound silly but...
Windows XP & 2000 Pro both support up to 2 processors, Hyperthreading or not if you have a Dual core with Hyperthreading, 2K/XP seeing 4 Processors it won't install. Only Server editions will allow this. Then again, Linux will just slurp up the new CPU's and not miss a heartbeat :P
NEC's v20 was a popular replacement for the intel 8088. There were some compatibility issues but I can't remember what they were. I think I used a V20 in a couple XT-Clones. Yea baby!
Does anyone know what advances GMA 950 will have compared to GMA 900? I'm going to be upgrading soon and will use my computer mostly for a office work and HTPC so integrated graphics should be enough for me but it would be nice to have a slightly faster graphics for very light gaming.
Lol, now that is funny...and rather embarassing for that author I would suppose. But don't worry, your articles are well written and i sensed no bias in it at all.
Naw, I have nothing wrong with writing a positive article for Intel or AMD. I mean, I understand both companies have great chips, so I don't care if a positive article is written. But yeah, I still don't understand where sleazes came from, lol.
Learn to type very fast (80 WPM or more) and write a lot of articles. You get all sorts of interesting slips. I would correct the "sleazes" for Kris, but unfortunately I can't. (Not enough access.)
As for Kris being an Intel "fanboy", give it a rest. So he writes a relatively positive article on the latest Intel roadmap, what's the big deal? Does a relatively postitive AMD roadmap article make me an AMD fanboy? (Obviously not, since I get accused of being an Intel supporter just as often when I provide my own take on the market.)
We're all just interested in performance - price/performance for many of us. Competition from Intel is great, because AMD needs it just as much as Intel does. Given that the last few Intel roadmaps had little information on Smithfield and it looked like it would slip to late 2005 or 2006 instead of launching earlier, how can this revised roadmap be anything but good news? We'll still give a critical look at the final performance when all the products launch, and hopefully XP-64 will even become a factor some time this decade.
Kris, "sleazes" can't be a typo. Even it it was, how did it escape the proofing?
Perhaps you've been in a daze, but Intel has hardly been napping - just a bit on the back side of the power curve. Put all the vaporware aside and let's see what spring has in the air. Just tell the folks here, you are 100% pro-Intel.
Wow, that article had Intel fanboy written all over it. To sum up: "Intel Better, and it gets better, need to see if AMD has enough up their sleazes ...."
Intel has to slowly adapt the Pentium-M into the market. If they came out with a desk top CPU based on the PM, what would they say? "Look at this amazing CPU with twice the power with less the clock cycle!" While AMD just sits back and goes, "Hey, we've been doing this for years" Wouldn't look good.
The reason why I think Intel won't scrap their Netburst Northwood's is because they sold the market on High Clock Speeds while also selling the mobile market with less power hungry yet more clock efficient processors. If they came out with something like AMD's processor, what would that make them look like? It seems like Intel's marketing department is running the course for Intel in the future other than their engineering department.
When 939's come out with strained silicon that could possibly push through the 3.0 GHz barrier with SEE3, Intel's NetBurst processors will be looking pretty desolate.
Intel needs a knight-in-shinning armor and a 4.GHz Prescott with 2MB L2 cache is not going to do it. They would need to bring out a entire new line of CPU's to match performance with all A64's instead of pushing out one new CPU every 6 months that costs over 500 dollars.
#38, I wouldn't say things were "even" before the Pentium-M showed up. Before that, Intel's speed step always required a deep-sleep transition and had only max and min states, while AMD's were quicker and more versatile, even the original implementation on K6-2+ (where transition time was even fine tuneable to the voltage regulator's needs).
What happened at AMD for the last two years? They kept the power down in general, something Intel quite miserably failed to do on the desktop.
Note that I'm completely with you in that the Pentium-M is a very fine part, and that AMD has some catching up to do in the mobile arena. On the desktop, it's the other way around, and it's exactly this catching up that we see documented in your article.
We're both wrong on who did it first anyway. Guess what, it was Cyrix. Their 5x86 could do live transitions from its native (2x or 3x) multiplier down to 1x and even 1/2x and back up. And it actually worked. In 1995. (Separate voltage regulators for the CPU core were nonexistant back then.)
Anytime the socket-754 Sempron has been discussed, I've said it makes little sense for AMD to purposely cripple a 64-bit processor down to 32-bits, as it leaves them no competitive advantage over Intel.
With Intel extending EM64T all the way down the Celeron D line, now we see that AMD will now be at a competitive DISADVANTAGE vs. Intel because of their foolish crippling of the 754 Sempron. Dumb, AMD, dumb...
And before anyone comments, no I don't think Semprons are just a way for AMD to sell bad A64 cores that won't do 64-bit, but run 32-bit fine... that just isn't going to be a common enough failure mode. Cores with some bad cache? Sure. Cores with a malfunctioning HT link? Maybe. Cores with one memory channel on the fritz? Perhaps. 64-bit extensions not working? Nope.
Anyhow I was just gonna say, who cares who comes out on top?
Without AMD we'd be using Pentium 166's?
Without Intel we'd be using Apples.
I hope both AMD and Intel are around for a very long time and they keep pushing each other to make better processors faster and cheaper. Same as Nvidia and ATI.
After all, what's gonna power Doom 6 and Half-Life 4?
Don't underestimate Intel, though. AMD's power usage on 90nm was substantially less than their 130nm. Part of that is almost certainly due to the lower clock speeds, but regardless we can be sure that Intel isn't going to be underestimating power/heat concerns.
Prescott 2M is really the first major redesign of a 90nm core since the release of the Prescott. Dothan has shown that Intel can get very good power and heat results, and I'm certainly curious to see how Prescott 2M compares to the original. We might assume that it will use more power and produce more heat, but depending on what other tweaks have been made, it may not be so bad.
There's a LOT going on at Intel right now behind the scenes (including some serious consideration of Pentium M on the desktop, I think). Don't just blindly stick with a company because of one or two good products, but wait for actual availability before coming to a conclusion. Also, don't just blindly hate a company for one or two mistakes. If we all did that, AMD would have never even lasted this long. K6 and earlier CPUs were thoroughly outclassed by Intel chips. Only K7 and K8 have been competitive designs, and only K8 has truly beaten Intel's counterpart.
To draw a parallel, look at the GPU market. The FX line was a disaster for NVIDIA, and the R3xx ATI parts completely outclassed it. The latest NVIDIA chips, however, are arguably the better chip - not in small part due to their actual retail availability. These are two competitors that are very close together in price, performance, and market share. The AMD/Intel match-up is not nearly as close. If NVIDIA could make a "comeback" if sorts, how much easier would it be for a company with the resources of Intel to address some of their problems?
As we've said before, only time will truly answer that question.
OMG, how much hype over even more power leaking, room heating, inefficient transistors. If you think 65 nm is gonna be any better/easier/faster transition than 90 nm was, you're, well, khm, how do I put it ... WRONG. It'll be even worse! I see nothing for me from Intel in 2005 or 2006. If they offered me Dothan in desktop, then maybe I’d think about it, but MORE preshott, no thanks!!!
Nice to see Intel in action once again though. Hopefully it will get AMD off their arses and start putting out something NEW. They seem to have fallen asleep since Intel got themselves in Prescott trouble. I wonna see high volume 2nd generation 90 nm SS SOI chips with SSE3, with dual core following shortly thereafter.
Actually, AMD doesn't have plenty of headroom on frequency as seen by the major overclocks only reaching 2.7GHz. If you think that clock frequency is tied to process technology (as in 90nm means that the Athlon can hit 3.8GHz just like the P4) then I'd suggest some study in processor/circuit design. Just a little food for thought is that some P4s have double clocked adders (2.6GHz P4 has a 5.2GHz adder, for example).
BTW, scuse the typos, thats cause me mum braught me a nasty TRUST keyboard for xmas, ill have to sneek a decent one in the house soon. as for the spelling, poor british education LOL
karlos
I use mainly AMD processors, i would almost call myself a slight fanboi!! but i cant help but deel thers some amd fans on here showing themselves up.
personally i dont understand why intel do continue with netburts. 65nm might help them get some more frequency from it, prhaps 4.2ghz? but generally i dont see that helping much. AMD64 (em64T) is welecome, but i doubt we will see the benefits of 64bit till all the software developers pull ther fingures out. IMHO pentium M is very strong, overclock one a bit on a oldskool platform i.e AGP4x / pc2700 / 400fsb) and it can frighten a athlon fx55. If i was intel id be binning netburst and getting the pM acheteture ramped up and on the desktop ( althouhg i know the design dosent scale well per core variation, its not ment to )
one last thing, yes, intel going for non compatibility on current chipsets regarding smithfield dose allow them to bring platform / performance benefits, whils amds upgradable stance does allow for a cheaper alternative. this dosent have to be seen as a weekness for AMD. Remeber, Intel wanted the whole world and his dog to go 64 bit there way, via Itaniums EPIC archetecture. EPIC on optimised code can probably cain x86-64 hands down. But AMD pushed x86-64 and eventually one the day. Why, ease of upgrade, cost effectivness. so by allowing opteron / a64 users a cheap dual core upgrade, all AMD are doing is repeating a act that has previously done them well.
Lets face it, to lead the desktop market into x86-64, make the 800IB gorilla conceed and bring out a product, push a product ( EM64T ) that a few month ago they even denide a said they would never consider, is a achievment AMD should be proud of.
as for these road maps, very good, certainly better than i expected for 2005, thaught it would be stagnent, but, more Pentium M actio is whats needed form intel.
I read these roadmap articles and gosh they always sound like intel/amd is just about to launch sliced bread in Q-X of 200Y--and occasionally they do. Northwood and Athlon 64 were great products. But this time you kinda wonder just when (if ever)it'll pay off like that with all these prescott iterations.
Seems like waiting for the sweetspot--when to upgrade an intel platform for performance & longevity from the intro of Prescott & into the foreseeable future--is & will be a very long, confusing wait indeed.
What really strikes me is why intel keeps trying to keep the clearly sinking P4/netburst afloat... ? More cache, more FSB, more DDR2 more laughable stuff, that would really benefit database servers... and power bills.
I can not understand the reason they do not promote dothan/derivatives as their desktop solution and put there all their latest hype/duo letters. The only reason I can think of is that they might be working on something bigger for dothan, like on-die controller (ala AMD) and keep it under wraps for a later launch
PS1 Dual core in, HT out for the desktop or to put it otherwise: our HT did fail miserably...
PS2 Those lads that bought the 925, well you need to upgrade in less than 6-9 months (dual), because intel is always thinking with the customer in mind and changes the chipsets/sockets like T-shirts. Don't you love to change T-shirts?:-)
PS3 Same applies to DDR2, why don't they launch tech stuff when they are ready to be launched?!? What is the point of having a memory tech we do not take advantage of.
What would be the difference if they launched DDR2 with the 955 or the next chipset, where it could actually make some difference? Answer:
Pure marketing hype...
#42 the problem with Rambus was the company tried to make the entire industry pay them for DDR2 because of tech they suggested to the Industry standards comision without telling them they patented it already when the Standards comminty was tring to find open standards. That and it is like P4 a long pipe when forced to branch wastes clock cycles{way to often}.
Unless they get 2-2-2 DDR2 out AMD is wasting it's time (and performance) with DDR2. Negitivty twards Intel? Probably because they keep pimping that marketing gimmick called netburst. And heaters called prescott, but worse this time with two. EVERY, I mean every CPU in history has worked twards more effecientcy. Not intel.
#34 and #35 - Why all the negativity towards Intel? I certainly don't think this is all the greatest thing ever, but it's a welcome change from the last 3 months of Intel roadmaps where chips were canceled and release dates were postponed. AMD is still way back in terms of revenue, and that isn't going to change over night. I hope they continue to make improvements in their design, but anyone that thinks Intel is just sitting still is loco, plain and simple.
As for the technologies you "poo-poo" above, DDR2 is an industry standard. AMD is avoiding it initially because they don't really need it yet, so when they do need it they can just join the club. That's fine, but at the same time it's good to have one company pushing things forward. AMD pushed 64-bit and forced Intel to join them, and Intel is pushing DDR2 and FB-DIMM technologies, which will benefit everyone in the long run.
In retrospect, do you REALLY think Rambus memory was that bad? It wasn't necessary on the Pentium 3, and it was more expensive than DDR at the time, but economies of scale come into play. If the public had not had a huge backlash against RDRAM, it would probably still outperform equivalent DDR on Intel platforms. The only real problem with RDRAM was that it was a closed standard, so you had to pay royalties.
If you look at the big picture, none of these companies are really out there trying to make the world a better place just for altruistic purposes. They all want to make money. If AMD gets bigger, it will be because they're making more money, and generally speaking that means that they'll be acting more like Intel. To #39, I would say that it *IS* a competition, and we want it to stay that way. If it just becomes another ho hum update each year, we'll end up just like the car industry.
From what I"ve seen a 600 series @ 3.6-3.8ghz should keep up with the FX55 in a lot more games than you'd think. That's based partly on results of EE's clocked @ 3.7-3.8... Of course we will see soon, but of course AMD might easily find another 200 speed bump somewhere too.
If you all remember the performance bump from the 845 to the 875, I think you might want to give some thought as to just what "could" be provided by the 955.
I'm also rather sad the 925XE 'may' not accept the dual core. Oh well. If they'd get rid of that idiotic oc lock, I'd spring for the 955. Would be nice to get back to 875 days or better imo.
I'm mostly glad the two are so tightly in competition. I bet that doesn't make Intel happy but it is sure doing nice things for customers. Again, with the exception of the OC lock which was a stupid mistake...
All of this is the same old inefficient core slapped together with a little bit more cache, a faster FSB, blah blah blah. Their dual-core setup with have an amazing 10% performance increase I'm sure, maybe that extra cache will make up the last 5%. Now if only this stuff wasnt being released a year from now, cause I'm sure AMD will have better than this in the next 6 months - they just keep their cards to themselves.
Anandtech - tnx for hyping this for Intel. Every page had even "better" news, although I'm not sure who the news was better for. You make it sound almost like a competition.
Peter: Surely you jest. The predecessor to PowerNow! technology showed up in spring 2000. The first real production processor with PowerNow was the mobile Athlon4 line in May 2001 - which had 5 frequency stages and 6 core voltage stages.
Not to split hairs or anything, but the first P3 to show up with speedstep was the 600MHz variant which showed up 3 months before K6-2+ in Jan 2000. In Q2'01 SpeedStep improved and which allowed dynamic clocking, but also allowed voltage adjustment with deepsleep.
Concerning latency: EIST today requires a 30microsecond delay to transition frequency, 100microseconds for voltage. Last I checked the AMD driver for CNQ had a 0.03 second hard delay on frequency/voltage adjustment.
OK fine - things are even up until 2003. Then something called Pentium M showed up in Q1 with EIST. EIST goes beyond changing the clock speed and voltage and will actually switch processor logic on and off when it isnt needed. On the Yonah processor EIST will actually disable portions of the cache it isnt using.
CNQ just isn't doing this yet, but Intel already has 2 years of experience doing that with Banias/Dothan. If we want to talk about innovation, what has AMD been doing for the last 2 years with PowerNow other than renaming it to Cool N Quiet for the K8?
Live: there are two launches - one of the 6xx line, another a little bit later for 945/955. I dont know if the dual core launch falls at the same time as the 945/955 launch but there will be more data available then at least.
First of all I see nothing on here that will allow intel to take back the performance crown. Of course I already see that intel probably will win the dual core publicity/prestige/etc, even though I think their design will probably be garbage.
#8, amd has had 90nm out for 3 months and it has worked much better than intel's 90 IMHO. Second they are well into the construction of another fab, so I highly doubt they will go fabless any time soon. On top of that intel was, and still is, getting its ass handed to it by AMD 130nm
#34 there was some news about AMD unfortunately going to ddr2 in '06. This will require a new socket, so if there is to be a Hypertranport2, which I do remember hearing, it probably accompany that change.
I do hope that Intels accelerated dualcore will get AMD to start moving a bit quicker. They demoed dual core quite a while ago, I would suspect that it could go into production very soon if they really needed it to.
Whoppee, the paper launch king launches a lot more paper.
I'll believe it when I see it.
BTW, where is that 4GHz CPU? SOI anyone? They need 65nm to keep from cooking. AMD has PLENTY of headroom on frequancy, something Intel doesn't (obviously). Now how about more cache, it will fix it, right?
Any word on Intel figuring out how to make a good FPU yet? Who needs that? The rest of world minus the internet... because it takes a monster machine to crunch full screen video?
How about a bus that can handle the data? 1066FSB? Isn't there something about AMD going 1.4GHz plus with HyperTransport II?
How about that slapped together dual P4? Wasn't the K9 being considered even during the design of the K8?
How about that DDR2 junk? Rambus part deux? At least AMD is going to watch Intel sink or float before you jump on that boat. I'd bet they would prefer to go to DDR3 directly.
Folks, I see a desperate company trying to fend off from something that is 1/8th of its size. And you think that's happens by chance? It's called screwing up.
AMD fanboy am I? Sure, at least they are going somewhere, other than down. (look at the Intel stock prices for 5 years).
If one of the two contenders does have maturity and experience with processors capable of scaling their clock speeds and supply voltage on the fly, then it's AMD. Remember K6-2+? First one to do this on the x86 stage, even before Transmeta iirc. Mobile Athlons had it, all Athlon-64 have it, Opterons will get it soon.
Intel? They had nothing but the clunky original SpeedStep (which required a high latency sleep-wake cycle to change speed, and had only two steps, slow and fast) before the Pentium-M showed up. Now that technology is getting retrofitted to P4 core. Good move, but the innovation was invented elsewhere ...
As for the release date and availability I don’t know, but you could always speculate a bit :)
The article mentions an NDA coming up and launch next month. So launch in February it is, which coincides with CeBIT Hanover 10-16 March. So we can expect launch in conjunction with that. Then we know Intel will release its new 64 bit ready CPUs to be ready for the launch of Windows 64 that is supposed to be in April. So at the latest by May we should have it all in retail.
So if February is launch then I guess March would be the optimistic and April the pessimistic and May if Intel or M$ stumbles and summer if they screw up.
I forget...how big of a gap was there between the official announcement of 915/925 chipsets and being able to actually buy a motherboard based on those chipsets?
I'm putting together an Intel system and I don't know if I should get an 925XE motherboard or wait it out for a 955.
Hmmmm
28 - The comment in regards to AMD vs. Intel is that AMD is keeping dual-core backwards compatible while Intel is not. From a performance standpoint, that means Intel can potentially improve aspects of the chipset. AMD is in a sense more limited in that they're constrained to the original S939 specifications. Neither approach is *better*, per se, although a lot of people like the AMD approach simply because it doesn't require a new motherboard. As far as we're aware, *all* S939 motherboards will be capable of running Toledo.
When will we see all the new hardware? That's the big question. :) AMD and Intel both tend to be a bit better about avoiding the "paper launch syndrome", but there have been instances in the past where availability lagged far behind the official launch.
"AMD’s dual-core processors are being designed with today’s infrastructure in mind. System integrators will have no problem incorporating AMD Opteron processors into existing platforms and any desktop motherboard supporting a 90nm AMD Athlon 64 processor will accommodate dual-core descendants of the chip as well."
Toledo is a dual-core descendant of the current crop of 90nm AMD CPUs is it not?
I’m contemplating either nForce3 or nForce4 and I believe future Toledo support would tip the scale.
945 and 955 are scheduled to launch in Q2'05, right along with Smithfield. Smithfield will *not* work on 915 or 925 chipsets - it may also have a new socket, although that wasn't indicated on the roadmaps.
As far as what the Prescott 2M will bring, I expect more than a 5% performance increase in most applications, but probably less than 15%. It's difficult to say where it will actually land relative to the P4EE Gallatin cores, since it uses L2 instead of L3 cache, but it also has the longer pipeline. Certain applications perform better on Prescott than Northwood already, so in those instances the lead will increase. Will it catch up to AMD in gaming? Not likely, but it will close the gap. 2MB of cache might also improve HyperThreading performance a bit - that will be interesting to see.
I have a feeling that dual core will be pretty hard to comeby from intel in the 2Q thier just doing it for marketing reasons because amd was shooting for 3Q.
I agree with Darth. All I see is a revamp. Prescott is not going anywhere fast under 4.0 GHz. The Prescott needs a faster clock cycle for its larger pipeline. The die shrink made it possible for Intel to stick even more transistors onto the Prescott so it could be fitted wit a 2MB cache.
AMD is doing just fine with the 90nm. I don't see A64 Winchesters soaking up the 12v rail @ 65c like the Prescott's.Intel needed it, AMD does not.
JarredWalton, if you read, Intel had the most troubles out of them all last year trying to get their CPU's out onto the market. How many times was the Prescott delayed in 04'?
Heh. I'm still waiting for a dual core, 3GHz Pentium M derivative with SSE3 (4, if they have it by then), x86-64, and an integrated dual channel 800MHz DDR2 (3?) memory controller.
That would be the equivalent of what, a 30GHz Northwood Celeron? :D
#10 I've seen some testing... On the 6 series about 5% gain in games due to fat cache not nearly enough to overcome AMD's 15-25% lead in games right now not to mention when they release E0's and faster chips like 57.. not much gain on anything else.
For the dual core chips battle, just go look at any opteron vs.xeon/nocona to see domination by the little company that could.
so in effect, 2006 minimum before intel strikes back..prolly with some dothan derivative.
#10 - I'm not overly concerned with who has the *lead*, as I'm not into spending $3000+ on a new computer. The Prescott 2M and Smithfield processors will certainly increase the price/performance ratio of Intel processors, which has been lagging for a while. Assuming we don't have another "Prescott" with the transition to 65nm, that's where I expect things to get really interesting though, and you're right that it won't really be until 2006 before that happens.
Well, this was interesting, but I did not see anything that would allow Intel take the performance lead. I think it will be 2006 before that happens(and it is inevitable that it will see-saw again) unfortunatly, which is too bad because it keeps prices stable.
One of the scariest things for AMD, when you consider that they're like 1/8 the size (in terms of cash flow) of Intel is that they're *just* getting 90nm chips out the door, and Intel is already talking 65nm in the relatively near future. I wouldn't be surprised to see AMD go fabless at some point, as you can't continue to spend billions of dollars every year on new fabrication facilities when you're "only" making a few billion each year.
IBM and Intel are about the only companies that can afford to keep making faster, smaller fabs if trends continue. With IBM already helping out AMD in quite a few ways, I wouldn't be shocked to see them start fabbing most/all of future AMD chips.
But It seems like a total revamp still based on the less stellar prescott core...
anyway, I hope it works out for them, but I'm really interested to see AMD's tricks and I hope on a fierce but healthy competition. (though a bit in favor of the lesser company for it to grow) as it pushes both to give us great value, performance & technology for our money.
remember, "Without AMD, Intel would still be letting us work on expensive 166MHz pentiums" as the popular saying goes lol!!
Hmmm.. I thought 2005 was going to be a bum year in PCs... dual cores everywhere!!! I wanted to upgrade in April but that might have to wait until June or July to see how it all shakes out. AMD and IBM need to get on that strained Si/SSE3/dual core A64, and get ramping 200MHz per quarter if Intel delivers on time..
I am laughing now just thinking of all the AMD fanboys chanting and hailing "the death of intel" or the thought of intel going bankrupt. All these stupid threads in the forums suggesting AMD has finally won and will reign supreme forever just go to show how short-sighted and stupid some people are. NOW! Let the games begin!
...(sigh) good rant...
I guess this happens everytime the ball is thrown back in the opposing company's half, so maybe I shouldn't let it bother me.
Wow no comments yet? I'm surprised. Looks like Intel is waking up and pushing everything ahead. Looks to be an exciting year for them. It'll be interesting to see the thermal properties of the 2M Prescotts.
I think there is something wrong with the Yonah table. All the speeds list 2.8Ghz for every model. A 2.8Ghz Pentium M with 2MB of cache. Can't wait to see that.
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74 Comments
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JGunther - Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - link
Wow, what a glowing review of Intel's upcoming technologies from Anandtech. Seems strange that this website should think so highly of the NetBurst architechure, considering how roundly criticized it is on other websites...So I guess Anandtech thinks Intel's technology is going to come out on top of AMD's next year? Guess time will tell on that one...
deathwalker - Wednesday, March 2, 2005 - link
Well..I'm from the old school..."show me". Intel hasn't shown me a thing in the last 2 years..and Im not about to give them a pat on the back now. Until they put a product in the hands of the consumer that is clearly better than what AMD has on the table they won't be getting any of my hard earned Computer toys play money, and, they will have to put it in the market place at a price that is competitive with AMD.flatblastard - Tuesday, March 1, 2005 - link
I can't help but wonder if my p4 660 would find any performance gains with the upcoming 945/955 chipset, if compatible at all. Probably not, but theres always hope, right?KristopherKubicki - Saturday, February 19, 2005 - link
kiwistag: A good point - but i think some internal documents I have seen lean twoard the idea of licensing per socket (instead of processor). Obviously, BSD/Linux won't care if you install 4 logical processors. I would not be surprised if the x64 Windows XP comes out with some little tweaks to the license and install base to take into account multiple sockets/processors.Kristopher
kiwistag - Wednesday, February 16, 2005 - link
One thing that is missing from all the discussion is what O.S's will support the new Processors?This might sound silly but...
Windows XP & 2000 Pro both support up to 2 processors, Hyperthreading or not if you have a Dual core with Hyperthreading, 2K/XP seeing 4 Processors it won't install. Only Server editions will allow this. Then again, Linux will just slurp up the new CPU's and not miss a heartbeat :P
RoosterKooster - Wednesday, February 16, 2005 - link
NEC's v20 was a popular replacement for the intel 8088. There were some compatibility issues but I can't remember what they were. I think I used a V20 in a couple XT-Clones. Yea baby!OokiiNeko - Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - link
#51 "K6 and earlier CPUs were thoroughly outclassed by Intel chips."You're showing your age. Look up the AMD 486 DX 4/100.
Now I'm showing my age ;>)
flloyd - Monday, February 7, 2005 - link
Does anyone know what advances GMA 950 will have compared to GMA 900? I'm going to be upgrading soon and will use my computer mostly for a office work and HTPC so integrated graphics should be enough for me but it would be nice to have a slightly faster graphics for very light gaming.Ozenmacher - Sunday, February 6, 2005 - link
Lol, now that is funny...and rather embarassing for that author I would suppose. But don't worry, your articles are well written and i sensed no bias in it at all.KristopherKubicki - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
Ozenmacher: There was one time where "testes" slipped past the copy editor instead of "tests"... that was fun...Kristopher
Ozenmacher - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
Naw, I have nothing wrong with writing a positive article for Intel or AMD. I mean, I understand both companies have great chips, so I don't care if a positive article is written. But yeah, I still don't understand where sleazes came from, lol.JarredWalton - Wednesday, February 2, 2005 - link
Learn to type very fast (80 WPM or more) and write a lot of articles. You get all sorts of interesting slips. I would correct the "sleazes" for Kris, but unfortunately I can't. (Not enough access.)As for Kris being an Intel "fanboy", give it a rest. So he writes a relatively positive article on the latest Intel roadmap, what's the big deal? Does a relatively postitive AMD roadmap article make me an AMD fanboy? (Obviously not, since I get accused of being an Intel supporter just as often when I provide my own take on the market.)
We're all just interested in performance - price/performance for many of us. Competition from Intel is great, because AMD needs it just as much as Intel does. Given that the last few Intel roadmaps had little information on Smithfield and it looked like it would slip to late 2005 or 2006 instead of launching earlier, how can this revised roadmap be anything but good news? We'll still give a critical look at the final performance when all the products launch, and hopefully XP-64 will even become a factor some time this decade.
Ozenmacher - Wednesday, February 2, 2005 - link
Very good point #61, how could you "accidentally" type sleazes instead of sleeves? lolRoosterKooster - Tuesday, February 1, 2005 - link
Kris, "sleazes" can't be a typo. Even it it was, how did it escape the proofing?Perhaps you've been in a daze, but Intel has hardly been napping - just a bit on the back side of the power curve. Put all the vaporware aside and let's see what spring has in the air. Just tell the folks here, you are 100% pro-Intel.
EglsFly - Tuesday, February 1, 2005 - link
Wow, that article had Intel fanboy written all over it. To sum up: "Intel Better, and it gets better, need to see if AMD has enough up their sleazes ...."Give me a break!
Regs - Tuesday, February 1, 2005 - link
Good article Zebo. I agree with it.Intel has to slowly adapt the Pentium-M into the market. If they came out with a desk top CPU based on the PM, what would they say? "Look at this amazing CPU with twice the power with less the clock cycle!" While AMD just sits back and goes, "Hey, we've been doing this for years" Wouldn't look good.
Regs - Tuesday, February 1, 2005 - link
The reason why I think Intel won't scrap their Netburst Northwood's is because they sold the market on High Clock Speeds while also selling the mobile market with less power hungry yet more clock efficient processors. If they came out with something like AMD's processor, what would that make them look like? It seems like Intel's marketing department is running the course for Intel in the future other than their engineering department.When 939's come out with strained silicon that could possibly push through the 3.0 GHz barrier with SEE3, Intel's NetBurst processors will be looking pretty desolate.
Intel needs a knight-in-shinning armor and a 4.GHz Prescott with 2MB L2 cache is not going to do it. They would need to bring out a entire new line of CPU's to match performance with all A64's instead of pushing out one new CPU every 6 months that costs over 500 dollars.
Quanticles - Monday, January 31, 2005 - link
I liked Anandtech's point that Microsoft was delaying Windows64 until Intel was ready.Peter - Monday, January 31, 2005 - link
#38, I wouldn't say things were "even" before the Pentium-M showed up. Before that, Intel's speed step always required a deep-sleep transition and had only max and min states, while AMD's were quicker and more versatile, even the original implementation on K6-2+ (where transition time was even fine tuneable to the voltage regulator's needs).What happened at AMD for the last two years? They kept the power down in general, something Intel quite miserably failed to do on the desktop.
Note that I'm completely with you in that the Pentium-M is a very fine part, and that AMD has some catching up to do in the mobile arena. On the desktop, it's the other way around, and it's exactly this catching up that we see documented in your article.
We're both wrong on who did it first anyway. Guess what, it was Cyrix. Their 5x86 could do live transitions from its native (2x or 3x) multiplier down to 1x and even 1/2x and back up. And it actually worked. In 1995. (Separate voltage regulators for the CPU core were nonexistant back then.)
regards,
Peter
johnsonx - Monday, January 31, 2005 - link
Anytime the socket-754 Sempron has been discussed, I've said it makes little sense for AMD to purposely cripple a 64-bit processor down to 32-bits, as it leaves them no competitive advantage over Intel.With Intel extending EM64T all the way down the Celeron D line, now we see that AMD will now be at a competitive DISADVANTAGE vs. Intel because of their foolish crippling of the 754 Sempron. Dumb, AMD, dumb...
And before anyone comments, no I don't think Semprons are just a way for AMD to sell bad A64 cores that won't do 64-bit, but run 32-bit fine... that just isn't going to be a common enough failure mode. Cores with some bad cache? Sure. Cores with a malfunctioning HT link? Maybe. Cores with one memory channel on the fritz? Perhaps. 64-bit extensions not working? Nope.
Postoasted - Sunday, January 30, 2005 - link
Heat dissipation and power consumption are my main concerns.GiantPandaMan - Sunday, January 30, 2005 - link
Oops,Anyhow I was just gonna say, who cares who comes out on top?
Without AMD we'd be using Pentium 166's?
Without Intel we'd be using Apples.
I hope both AMD and Intel are around for a very long time and they keep pushing each other to make better processors faster and cheaper. Same as Nvidia and ATI.
After all, what's gonna power Doom 6 and Half-Life 4?
The PS3 Cell "4.6" Ghz processor?
GiantPandaMan - Sunday, January 30, 2005 - link
JarredWalton - Sunday, January 30, 2005 - link
^^ Don't we all, AtaStrumf?Don't underestimate Intel, though. AMD's power usage on 90nm was substantially less than their 130nm. Part of that is almost certainly due to the lower clock speeds, but regardless we can be sure that Intel isn't going to be underestimating power/heat concerns.
Prescott 2M is really the first major redesign of a 90nm core since the release of the Prescott. Dothan has shown that Intel can get very good power and heat results, and I'm certainly curious to see how Prescott 2M compares to the original. We might assume that it will use more power and produce more heat, but depending on what other tweaks have been made, it may not be so bad.
There's a LOT going on at Intel right now behind the scenes (including some serious consideration of Pentium M on the desktop, I think). Don't just blindly stick with a company because of one or two good products, but wait for actual availability before coming to a conclusion. Also, don't just blindly hate a company for one or two mistakes. If we all did that, AMD would have never even lasted this long. K6 and earlier CPUs were thoroughly outclassed by Intel chips. Only K7 and K8 have been competitive designs, and only K8 has truly beaten Intel's counterpart.
To draw a parallel, look at the GPU market. The FX line was a disaster for NVIDIA, and the R3xx ATI parts completely outclassed it. The latest NVIDIA chips, however, are arguably the better chip - not in small part due to their actual retail availability. These are two competitors that are very close together in price, performance, and market share. The AMD/Intel match-up is not nearly as close. If NVIDIA could make a "comeback" if sorts, how much easier would it be for a company with the resources of Intel to address some of their problems?
As we've said before, only time will truly answer that question.
AtaStrumf - Sunday, January 30, 2005 - link
OMG, how much hype over even more power leaking, room heating, inefficient transistors. If you think 65 nm is gonna be any better/easier/faster transition than 90 nm was, you're, well, khm, how do I put it ... WRONG. It'll be even worse! I see nothing for me from Intel in 2005 or 2006. If they offered me Dothan in desktop, then maybe I’d think about it, but MORE preshott, no thanks!!!Nice to see Intel in action once again though. Hopefully it will get AMD off their arses and start putting out something NEW. They seem to have fallen asleep since Intel got themselves in Prescott trouble. I wonna see high volume 2nd generation 90 nm SS SOI chips with SSE3, with dual core following shortly thereafter.
fitten - Saturday, January 29, 2005 - link
Actually, AMD doesn't have plenty of headroom on frequency as seen by the major overclocks only reaching 2.7GHz. If you think that clock frequency is tied to process technology (as in 90nm means that the Athlon can hit 3.8GHz just like the P4) then I'd suggest some study in processor/circuit design. Just a little food for thought is that some P4s have double clocked adders (2.6GHz P4 has a 5.2GHz adder, for example).karlreading - Saturday, January 29, 2005 - link
BTW, scuse the typos, thats cause me mum braught me a nasty TRUST keyboard for xmas, ill have to sneek a decent one in the house soon. as for the spelling, poor british education LOLkarlos
karlreading - Saturday, January 29, 2005 - link
I use mainly AMD processors, i would almost call myself a slight fanboi!! but i cant help but deel thers some amd fans on here showing themselves up.personally i dont understand why intel do continue with netburts. 65nm might help them get some more frequency from it, prhaps 4.2ghz? but generally i dont see that helping much. AMD64 (em64T) is welecome, but i doubt we will see the benefits of 64bit till all the software developers pull ther fingures out. IMHO pentium M is very strong, overclock one a bit on a oldskool platform i.e AGP4x / pc2700 / 400fsb) and it can frighten a athlon fx55. If i was intel id be binning netburst and getting the pM acheteture ramped up and on the desktop ( althouhg i know the design dosent scale well per core variation, its not ment to )
one last thing, yes, intel going for non compatibility on current chipsets regarding smithfield dose allow them to bring platform / performance benefits, whils amds upgradable stance does allow for a cheaper alternative. this dosent have to be seen as a weekness for AMD. Remeber, Intel wanted the whole world and his dog to go 64 bit there way, via Itaniums EPIC archetecture. EPIC on optimised code can probably cain x86-64 hands down. But AMD pushed x86-64 and eventually one the day. Why, ease of upgrade, cost effectivness. so by allowing opteron / a64 users a cheap dual core upgrade, all AMD are doing is repeating a act that has previously done them well.
Lets face it, to lead the desktop market into x86-64, make the 800IB gorilla conceed and bring out a product, push a product ( EM64T ) that a few month ago they even denide a said they would never consider, is a achievment AMD should be proud of.
as for these road maps, very good, certainly better than i expected for 2005, thaught it would be stagnent, but, more Pentium M actio is whats needed form intel.
karlos
justbrowzing - Friday, January 28, 2005 - link
I read these roadmap articles and gosh they always sound like intel/amd is just about to launch sliced bread in Q-X of 200Y--and occasionally they do. Northwood and Athlon 64 were great products. But this time you kinda wonder just when (if ever)it'll pay off like that with all these prescott iterations.Seems like waiting for the sweetspot--when to upgrade an intel platform for performance & longevity from the intro of Prescott & into the foreseeable future--is & will be a very long, confusing wait indeed.
StriderGT - Friday, January 28, 2005 - link
What really strikes me is why intel keeps trying to keep the clearly sinking P4/netburst afloat... ? More cache, more FSB, more DDR2 more laughable stuff, that would really benefit database servers... and power bills.I can not understand the reason they do not promote dothan/derivatives as their desktop solution and put there all their latest hype/duo letters. The only reason I can think of is that they might be working on something bigger for dothan, like on-die controller (ala AMD) and keep it under wraps for a later launch
PS1 Dual core in, HT out for the desktop or to put it otherwise: our HT did fail miserably...
PS2 Those lads that bought the 925, well you need to upgrade in less than 6-9 months (dual), because intel is always thinking with the customer in mind and changes the chipsets/sockets like T-shirts. Don't you love to change T-shirts?:-)
PS3 Same applies to DDR2, why don't they launch tech stuff when they are ready to be launched?!? What is the point of having a memory tech we do not take advantage of.
What would be the difference if they launched DDR2 with the 955 or the next chipset, where it could actually make some difference? Answer:
Pure marketing hype...
jiulemoigt - Friday, January 28, 2005 - link
#42 the problem with Rambus was the company tried to make the entire industry pay them for DDR2 because of tech they suggested to the Industry standards comision without telling them they patented it already when the Standards comminty was tring to find open standards. That and it is like P4 a long pipe when forced to branch wastes clock cycles{way to often}.Zebo - Friday, January 28, 2005 - link
Unless they get 2-2-2 DDR2 out AMD is wasting it's time (and performance) with DDR2. Negitivty twards Intel? Probably because they keep pimping that marketing gimmick called netburst. And heaters called prescott, but worse this time with two. EVERY, I mean every CPU in history has worked twards more effecientcy. Not intel.You can read about it all here.
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/pentium...
That article includes the excellent Dothan too, which they should have done in the first place instead of raising our power bills and room temps.
JarredWalton - Thursday, January 27, 2005 - link
#34 and #35 - Why all the negativity towards Intel? I certainly don't think this is all the greatest thing ever, but it's a welcome change from the last 3 months of Intel roadmaps where chips were canceled and release dates were postponed. AMD is still way back in terms of revenue, and that isn't going to change over night. I hope they continue to make improvements in their design, but anyone that thinks Intel is just sitting still is loco, plain and simple.As for the technologies you "poo-poo" above, DDR2 is an industry standard. AMD is avoiding it initially because they don't really need it yet, so when they do need it they can just join the club. That's fine, but at the same time it's good to have one company pushing things forward. AMD pushed 64-bit and forced Intel to join them, and Intel is pushing DDR2 and FB-DIMM technologies, which will benefit everyone in the long run.
In retrospect, do you REALLY think Rambus memory was that bad? It wasn't necessary on the Pentium 3, and it was more expensive than DDR at the time, but economies of scale come into play. If the public had not had a huge backlash against RDRAM, it would probably still outperform equivalent DDR on Intel platforms. The only real problem with RDRAM was that it was a closed standard, so you had to pay royalties.
If you look at the big picture, none of these companies are really out there trying to make the world a better place just for altruistic purposes. They all want to make money. If AMD gets bigger, it will be because they're making more money, and generally speaking that means that they'll be acting more like Intel. To #39, I would say that it *IS* a competition, and we want it to stay that way. If it just becomes another ho hum update each year, we'll end up just like the car industry.
danidentity - Thursday, January 27, 2005 - link
One more question, is there any confirmation to the rumors that the 6xx series of P4's will have downward unlocked multipliers because of EIST?Anemone - Thursday, January 27, 2005 - link
From what I"ve seen a 600 series @ 3.6-3.8ghz should keep up with the FX55 in a lot more games than you'd think. That's based partly on results of EE's clocked @ 3.7-3.8... Of course we will see soon, but of course AMD might easily find another 200 speed bump somewhere too.If you all remember the performance bump from the 845 to the 875, I think you might want to give some thought as to just what "could" be provided by the 955.
I'm also rather sad the 925XE 'may' not accept the dual core. Oh well. If they'd get rid of that idiotic oc lock, I'd spring for the 955. Would be nice to get back to 875 days or better imo.
I'm mostly glad the two are so tightly in competition. I bet that doesn't make Intel happy but it is sure doing nice things for customers. Again, with the exception of the OC lock which was a stupid mistake...
Quanticles - Thursday, January 27, 2005 - link
#8, AMD partners with IBM for their fabricationAll of this is the same old inefficient core slapped together with a little bit more cache, a faster FSB, blah blah blah. Their dual-core setup with have an amazing 10% performance increase I'm sure, maybe that extra cache will make up the last 5%. Now if only this stuff wasnt being released a year from now, cause I'm sure AMD will have better than this in the next 6 months - they just keep their cards to themselves.
Anandtech - tnx for hyping this for Intel. Every page had even "better" news, although I'm not sure who the news was better for. You make it sound almost like a competition.
KristopherKubicki - Thursday, January 27, 2005 - link
Peter: Surely you jest. The predecessor to PowerNow! technology showed up in spring 2000. The first real production processor with PowerNow was the mobile Athlon4 line in May 2001 - which had 5 frequency stages and 6 core voltage stages.Not to split hairs or anything, but the first P3 to show up with speedstep was the 600MHz variant which showed up 3 months before K6-2+ in Jan 2000. In Q2'01 SpeedStep improved and which allowed dynamic clocking, but also allowed voltage adjustment with deepsleep.
Concerning latency: EIST today requires a 30microsecond delay to transition frequency, 100microseconds for voltage. Last I checked the AMD driver for CNQ had a 0.03 second hard delay on frequency/voltage adjustment.
OK fine - things are even up until 2003. Then something called Pentium M showed up in Q1 with EIST. EIST goes beyond changing the clock speed and voltage and will actually switch processor logic on and off when it isnt needed. On the Yonah processor EIST will actually disable portions of the cache it isnt using.
CNQ just isn't doing this yet, but Intel already has 2 years of experience doing that with Banias/Dothan. If we want to talk about innovation, what has AMD been doing for the last 2 years with PowerNow other than renaming it to Cool N Quiet for the K8?
Kristopher
KristopherKubicki - Thursday, January 27, 2005 - link
Live: there are two launches - one of the 6xx line, another a little bit later for 945/955. I dont know if the dual core launch falls at the same time as the 945/955 launch but there will be more data available then at least.Kristopher
Live - Thursday, January 27, 2005 - link
O I whish we could edit our comments. CeBIT is of course in February not March. My whole guessing game kind of falls a part if it would be in March.“So launch in February it is, which coincides with CeBIT Hanover 10-16 February.”
miketheidiot - Thursday, January 27, 2005 - link
First of all I see nothing on here that will allow intel to take back the performance crown. Of course I already see that intel probably will win the dual core publicity/prestige/etc, even though I think their design will probably be garbage.#8, amd has had 90nm out for 3 months and it has worked much better than intel's 90 IMHO. Second they are well into the construction of another fab, so I highly doubt they will go fabless any time soon. On top of that intel was, and still is, getting its ass handed to it by AMD 130nm
#34 there was some news about AMD unfortunately going to ddr2 in '06. This will require a new socket, so if there is to be a Hypertranport2, which I do remember hearing, it probably accompany that change.
I do hope that Intels accelerated dualcore will get AMD to start moving a bit quicker. They demoed dual core quite a while ago, I would suspect that it could go into production very soon if they really needed it to.
phantom505 - Thursday, January 27, 2005 - link
Whoppee, the paper launch king launches a lot more paper.I'll believe it when I see it.
BTW, where is that 4GHz CPU? SOI anyone? They need 65nm to keep from cooking. AMD has PLENTY of headroom on frequancy, something Intel doesn't (obviously). Now how about more cache, it will fix it, right?
Any word on Intel figuring out how to make a good FPU yet? Who needs that? The rest of world minus the internet... because it takes a monster machine to crunch full screen video?
How about a bus that can handle the data? 1066FSB? Isn't there something about AMD going 1.4GHz plus with HyperTransport II?
How about that slapped together dual P4? Wasn't the K9 being considered even during the design of the K8?
How about that DDR2 junk? Rambus part deux? At least AMD is going to watch Intel sink or float before you jump on that boat. I'd bet they would prefer to go to DDR3 directly.
Folks, I see a desperate company trying to fend off from something that is 1/8th of its size. And you think that's happens by chance? It's called screwing up.
AMD fanboy am I? Sure, at least they are going somewhere, other than down. (look at the Intel stock prices for 5 years).
Peter - Thursday, January 27, 2005 - link
EIST maturity? *laughs to tears*If one of the two contenders does have maturity and experience with processors capable of scaling their clock speeds and supply voltage on the fly, then it's AMD. Remember K6-2+? First one to do this on the x86 stage, even before Transmeta iirc. Mobile Athlons had it, all Athlon-64 have it, Opterons will get it soon.
Intel? They had nothing but the clunky original SpeedStep (which required a high latency sleep-wake cycle to change speed, and had only two steps, slow and fast) before the Pentium-M showed up. Now that technology is getting retrofitted to P4 core. Good move, but the innovation was invented elsewhere ...
Live - Thursday, January 27, 2005 - link
As for the release date and availability I don’t know, but you could always speculate a bit :)The article mentions an NDA coming up and launch next month. So launch in February it is, which coincides with CeBIT Hanover 10-16 March. So we can expect launch in conjunction with that. Then we know Intel will release its new 64 bit ready CPUs to be ready for the launch of Windows 64 that is supposed to be in April. So at the latest by May we should have it all in retail.
So if February is launch then I guess March would be the optimistic and April the pessimistic and May if Intel or M$ stumbles and summer if they screw up.
danidentity - Thursday, January 27, 2005 - link
Is there any more detail on a release time frame for the 945/955 chipsets, other than Q2?footballfan - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
I forget...how big of a gap was there between the official announcement of 915/925 chipsets and being able to actually buy a motherboard based on those chipsets?I'm putting together an Intel system and I don't know if I should get an 925XE motherboard or wait it out for a 955.
Hmmmm
JarredWalton - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
28 - The comment in regards to AMD vs. Intel is that AMD is keeping dual-core backwards compatible while Intel is not. From a performance standpoint, that means Intel can potentially improve aspects of the chipset. AMD is in a sense more limited in that they're constrained to the original S939 specifications. Neither approach is *better*, per se, although a lot of people like the AMD approach simply because it doesn't require a new motherboard. As far as we're aware, *all* S939 motherboards will be capable of running Toledo.When will we see all the new hardware? That's the big question. :) AMD and Intel both tend to be a bit better about avoiding the "paper launch syndrome", but there have been instances in the past where availability lagged far behind the official launch.
Live - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
Always a real treat to read these top insider stories, good work!This makes buying/upgrading decisions at least a little bit easier. I want more ;D
One question tough. You mention that AMD plans "to enable existing hardware (nForce4, K8T890, 8xxx) to run multiple cores."
Those this exclude earlier s939 chipsets? I was under the impression that both nForce3 and K8T800 Pro would be compatible with dual core Toledo.
If you read here (Registration required): http://www2.amd.com/us-en/protected/Weblets/1,,783...
"AMD’s dual-core processors are being designed with today’s infrastructure in mind. System integrators will have no problem incorporating AMD Opteron processors into existing platforms and any desktop motherboard supporting a 90nm AMD Athlon 64 processor will accommodate dual-core descendants of the chip as well."
Toledo is a dual-core descendant of the current crop of 90nm AMD CPUs is it not?
I’m contemplating either nForce3 or nForce4 and I believe future Toledo support would tip the scale.
RockHydra11 - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
I'm quite interested in what kind of response nVIDIA will have to the barrage of new chipsets.footballfan - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
How long from launch to being able to actually buy a motherboard with one of those new chipsets will it be?JarredWalton - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
945 and 955 are scheduled to launch in Q2'05, right along with Smithfield. Smithfield will *not* work on 915 or 925 chipsets - it may also have a new socket, although that wasn't indicated on the roadmaps.As far as what the Prescott 2M will bring, I expect more than a 5% performance increase in most applications, but probably less than 15%. It's difficult to say where it will actually land relative to the P4EE Gallatin cores, since it uses L2 instead of L3 cache, but it also has the longer pipeline. Certain applications perform better on Prescott than Northwood already, so in those instances the lead will increase. Will it catch up to AMD in gaming? Not likely, but it will close the gap. 2MB of cache might also improve HyperThreading performance a bit - that will be interesting to see.
danidentity - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
When are the new chipsets launching? Do we have an exact date? You say next month...as in February? That's earlier than I have been hearing.Falloutboy - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
I have a feeling that dual core will be pretty hard to comeby from intel in the 2Q thier just doing it for marketing reasons because amd was shooting for 3Q.footballfan - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
it could be that all a 925XE based motherboard needs to support dual core is a BIOS update...I'm hoping.That article didn't really specify that 925XE won't support dual core.
I'm hoping I'm right.
ksherman - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
interesting how Intel current gen chipset wont support dual core... I thought that AMD's dual core only required a BIOS update, not a new chipset...footballfan - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
When would motherboards with the new chipsets come out?footballfan - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
Interesting developments.The 915 and 925X chipsets don't support dual core. So I'm guessing that the 925XE won't support dual core either.
KristopherKubicki - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
Palek: Sorry about that - I thought you were joking the first time around.Typos Happen :-X My bad.
Kristopher
Regs - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
I agree with Darth. All I see is a revamp. Prescott is not going anywhere fast under 4.0 GHz. The Prescott needs a faster clock cycle for its larger pipeline. The die shrink made it possible for Intel to stick even more transistors onto the Prescott so it could be fitted wit a 2MB cache.AMD is doing just fine with the 90nm. I don't see A64 Winchesters soaking up the 12v rail @ 65c like the Prescott's.Intel needed it, AMD does not.
JarredWalton, if you read, Intel had the most troubles out of them all last year trying to get their CPU's out onto the market. How many times was the Prescott delayed in 04'?
Illissius - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
Heh. I'm still waiting for a dual core, 3GHz Pentium M derivative with SSE3 (4, if they have it by then), x86-64, and an integrated dual channel 800MHz DDR2 (3?) memory controller.That would be the equivalent of what, a 30GHz Northwood Celeron? :D
Palek - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
Kristopher, forgive me for pointing this out again, but your very last sentence does say "sleazes" instead of "sleeves".mikecel79 - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
#12 it's right there on the first page under Top Insider Stories.Zebo - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
#10 I've seen some testing... On the 6 series about 5% gain in games due to fat cache not nearly enough to overcome AMD's 15-25% lead in games right now not to mention when they release E0's and faster chips like 57.. not much gain on anything else.For the dual core chips battle, just go look at any opteron vs.xeon/nocona to see domination by the little company that could.
so in effect, 2006 minimum before intel strikes back..prolly with some dothan derivative.
Zebo - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
your aticle does'nt show on main site even written today/.. luckly I found it by clicking CPU tab looking for an older article.JarredWalton - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
#10 - I'm not overly concerned with who has the *lead*, as I'm not into spending $3000+ on a new computer. The Prescott 2M and Smithfield processors will certainly increase the price/performance ratio of Intel processors, which has been lagging for a while. Assuming we don't have another "Prescott" with the transition to 65nm, that's where I expect things to get really interesting though, and you're right that it won't really be until 2006 before that happens.Reflex - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
Well, this was interesting, but I did not see anything that would allow Intel take the performance lead. I think it will be 2006 before that happens(and it is inevitable that it will see-saw again) unfortunatly, which is too bad because it keeps prices stable.JarredWalton - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
#3: Cedar Mill is a single core 65nm NetBurst chip (presumably) while Presler is a dual core 65nm NetBurst (again, presumably) chip.JarredWalton - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
One of the scariest things for AMD, when you consider that they're like 1/8 the size (in terms of cash flow) of Intel is that they're *just* getting 90nm chips out the door, and Intel is already talking 65nm in the relatively near future. I wouldn't be surprised to see AMD go fabless at some point, as you can't continue to spend billions of dollars every year on new fabrication facilities when you're "only" making a few billion each year.IBM and Intel are about the only companies that can afford to keep making faster, smaller fabs if trends continue. With IBM already helping out AMD in quite a few ways, I wouldn't be shocked to see them start fabbing most/all of future AMD chips.
Darth Farter - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
Nice 4 intel.But It seems like a total revamp still based on the less stellar prescott core...
anyway, I hope it works out for them, but I'm really interested to see AMD's tricks and I hope on a fierce but healthy competition. (though a bit in favor of the lesser company for it to grow) as it pushes both to give us great value, performance & technology for our money.
remember, "Without AMD, Intel would still be letting us work on expensive 166MHz pentiums" as the popular saying goes lol!!
Doormat - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
Hmmm.. I thought 2005 was going to be a bum year in PCs... dual cores everywhere!!! I wanted to upgrade in April but that might have to wait until June or July to see how it all shakes out. AMD and IBM need to get on that strained Si/SSE3/dual core A64, and get ramping 200MHz per quarter if Intel delivers on time..KristopherKubicki - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
mikecel79: had a problem with that graph, its fixed now though.Kristopher
Palek - Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - link
Kristopher,Are you sure you wanted to say "... Now we just need to see if AMD has enough up their SLEAZES ..." in the Final Thoughts section? :)
MasterYoda - Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - link
So what's the difference between Cedar Mill and Presler?IamTHEsnake - Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - link
I am laughing now just thinking of all the AMD fanboys chanting and hailing "the death of intel" or the thought of intel going bankrupt. All these stupid threads in the forums suggesting AMD has finally won and will reign supreme forever just go to show how short-sighted and stupid some people are. NOW! Let the games begin!...(sigh) good rant...
I guess this happens everytime the ball is thrown back in the opposing company's half, so maybe I shouldn't let it bother me.
Idiots will be idiots.
mikecel79 - Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - link
Wow no comments yet? I'm surprised. Looks like Intel is waking up and pushing everything ahead. Looks to be an exciting year for them. It'll be interesting to see the thermal properties of the 2M Prescotts.I think there is something wrong with the Yonah table. All the speeds list 2.8Ghz for every model. A 2.8Ghz Pentium M with 2MB of cache. Can't wait to see that.