AMD launches Barcelona

http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20070910/tc_pcworld/137003

If you read the comparison between the Kentsfield and the Barcelona, its no surprise that AMD took this long to release their competitor. Still, competition is important; we've seen what it does to companies like Microsoft.*coughVistacough*

 

hmmm are there any benchmarks out or do we need to wait for those?

 

i hope AMD can keep up though. with ATI and all.

 

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3092&p=1

These guys got the new CPUs

 

I perfer Inter because Amd use much power and do less job in notebook.although it much cheap than inter ,it will also sent more calorific than intel.
but I would choise Amd if use in table pc.

 

its intel, not inter, the L and R are very far from each other, how did you made this mistake twice

 

I am thinking big hands.

 

AMD's server and desktop CPU's use less power than Intel's.

The benchmarks on Anandtech look really interesting. It seems a kick-ass server chip. On the desktop, it's harder to say (although I'm guessing things will improve there as well. For one thing, getting rid of the buffered memory requirement that they tested with should help)

 

whats does the buffered mem req mean? does it help with performance?

 

I actually read both articles on Anandtech this morning, and I must say, I'm very impressed. Like Jalf correctly said, these processors look really good from a competitive point of view. The other thing is that these processors tested, have somewhat lower clockspeeds that what AMD wants to relase later this year,m and early into the next.

They also seem to use alot less power than Intel ones. However, that maybe partly due to the fact Intel is using FB-DIMM, which consume quite a bit more power than standard DDR2 modules.

 

A 95W TDP...Dam. Anyone know how much power do desktop cpus consume when idle ?

 

Well you know a RAM stick is made up of maybe 8 or 16 individual RAM chips? Can clearly see them when you look at the stick.
On regular unbuffered or unregistered RAM, each of these chips has their own connection to the memory controller.
The nice thing about this is the obvious, there are no stops in between to slow things down. So you get lower latency.

The downside is almost as obvious. If you have 8 or 16 channels going out of the RAM stick, across the motherboard, and to the memory controller, it's much harder to keep in sync.
Now imagine you're running a server where you want to be 110% sure no errors occur. You also want to be able to plug in, say, 64GB RAM. That'd be a lot of RAM chips. Which means a lot of individual connections to the memory controller. Which is virtually impossible to keep in sync.

So on server memory, they add a little register (or a buffer) on each RAM stick, which accumulates data from all the chips on that stick, and which then sends them along one single connection, to the memory controller. Then you only need one connection per RAM stick. Which means more stable operation, and simply the ability to use more RAM.
But of course it takes a bit of time for this buffer to accumulate data from all the chips on the RAM stick, so latency goes up.

That's what registered/buffered RAM is, and why it's used on servers.
Current Barcelona chips (being made for the server market) require this. And AMD is going to remove this requirement when they launch their desktop chips.

Other desktop CPU's, you mean? Mine consumes 30w or so at idle, I think. 65w under load, according to TDP.

But keep in mind that AMD's TDP figures are far higher than idle power consumption. (They're usually higher than actual consumption under load as well, but ever since the K8, AMD's CPU's have been able to scale down really well when idle. Far better than Intel's server/desktop CPU's)

 

I found these

Core 2 Duo (E4300 - E6850 65W

Core 2 Extreme X6800 75W

Core 2 Quad (non-extreme) 105W

Core 2 Extreme QX6850 130W

 

I'm interested in seeing K10 on a real enthusiast platform with proper RAM and chipset. The current X2's run like ass with DDR2-667 compared to DDR2-800 or DDR2-1066. We need something to stretch that memory controller's legs out a bit. I also want to know how it overclocks. If these things can hit 2.8-3.0Ghz routinely, they're going to sell like hotcakes if they're priced even remotely competitively.

Even at 3Ghz, though, it probably won't be enough to fend off Penryn & co.

 

Impressive - when until these hit the mobile market?

 

2mb l3 cache

 

Its likely that it will be a fair bit after Barcelona is released in desktop form. AMD probably are going to use the same core, or at least, base a new mobile core on Barcelona. Its not going to happen this year, but it should be within the first half of 2008.

 

AMD has a separate core coming up for mobile. (Bulldozer, I think?)

So I wouldn't expect Barcelona to show up for mobiles at all.

At least that's the last I heard

 

a separate core? last i heard AMD were releasing new versions based on the K8 CPUs

i dont see how AMD could afford a separate architecture for their mobile models, probably the codename for a future implementation of the K10

lets hope the Phenoms are decent

 

Yes, Jalf, you are correct. However, Bulldozer is a brand new architecture, which is different from both Barcelona and K8. Barcelona isn't a "brand new" core, as AMD says its somewhat derived from the K8. Bulldozer, on the other hand, is a totally new architecture, made from scratch, and its for the desktop market. Again, AMD hasn't issued much information on it, but its likely to be both desktop and mobile based. AMD will simply make optimisations to the core, and adapt it for use on a mobile platfrom, or at least, I think they will. They don't seem to have any other dedicated mobile core on their roadmaps.

 

since when did they ever have a dedicated mobile core? all their mobile CPUs have been based on desktops

So when will this bulldozer come out? Im guessing it is obviously not gonna be anything related to the coming Phenom CPUs

 

Intel had a dedicated mobile architecture for years, when AMD had just one for both desktop and mobile. Intel did very well with two different architectures, but thats only because they had the resources to support and develop two architectures at one time.

Bulldozer has no relation to Phenom. It will be appearing sometime in 2009, under AMD's grand plan. Like Intel, AMD has decided to go for a new architecture every few years, and at the same time, shrink the previous architecture, to get as much performance from it as possible.

 

I just found this:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2668&p=1

200 watts when idle for pentium extreme !! Its a dam heater !!! At that power consumption, the electricity bill becomes non-trivial. Say its on 24/7 Then per month energy consumed = 0.2x24x30=144KWH
My baseline rate is $0.114/KWH, so per month bill = $16
Per year = $192

 

Last I heard, it was derived from K8, and targeted at the mobile market. Barcelona is also derived from K8, but seemed to differ more from K8 than Bulldozer. (Just like Pentium M was very closely related to the P3, it looks like Bulldozer will be very similar to K8, only more power-efficient, and with a few performance improvements here and there)

Supposedly, both architectures will overlap into the desktop market (with Bulldozer supplying the low-end low-power chips, and Barcelona taking care of the high-end desktop market)

That's what I read a couple of months ago, anyway.

Since Never. Intel has done it for years though.

Ironically, Intel are pretty much merging the two back together now (Core 2 on both mobile and desktop), at the same time as AMD splits them out.

 

Zero yeah i meant since when did AMD cuz i know AMD used the same for their K6 and athlon XP-M range. i even had some of their mobile CPUs in my nforce2 mobo back in the days, overclocked great!

yeah well Intel eventually admitted they had effectively killed their Pentium brand with the overheated and underpowered Pentium D