Shiny Doom Forum

Trool · Good Karma Joined: 12 Sep 2003 Posts: 1486

I found an article that talks a bit about the upcomming AMD 64bit chip. I don't know much about this chip war, but this is the first big thing i hear from AMD in a while. Are they still a major part of intel's competition or almost dead? Anyone with more info about this please post more... Shocked

http://news.com.com/2100-1006-5080217.html?part=dht&tag=ntop
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The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, isn't 'Eureka!' but rather 'hmm....that's funny.'

--Isaac Asimov

Mogri · Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2003 5:30 pm Post subject:

I have a feeling that if AMD can't turn a profit on all the 64-bit hurrah, then that will hurt them a lot. They're still competing a bit, largely in the low-cost technology individual purchases, to the best of my knowledge.
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"A club without the right direction, is a misguided stick."
-- Master Wham

rklee · Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2003 6:34 pm Post subject:

I think that's incorrect Jeff... the Athlon 64 FX-51 chip is designed definately for high end systems. It's priced at around the same as the Intel P4 EE (extreme... it's the Xeon rebadged as a P4... with 2mb L3 cache). Toms hardware has a nice big article on comparing the chips... Athlon 64, Athlon 64 FX, P4 C and the P4 EE. The P4 EE is actually kicking ass even compared to the Athlon 64 FX however a lot of it has to do with the immature nForce 3 motherboard for the FX.. (it's FX as in the Nvidia - Geforce FX). Also of course most consumer programs do not make use of the 64 bit capabilities yet (and several big guys have decided they won't in the near future). Before the P4 Extreme was shipped I would have said that AMD had a very good chance of making a mark in the industry (like the Athlon and XP did until about 2 years ago) however.... unless they can make the consumers believe that 64bit is the way to go I don't see much of a chance. The FX which is based on the Opteron is currently no match for the P4 Extreme (Xeon). And by far most of the Athlon 64's that will be shipped will not be FXs.
I think AMD made a mistake of releasing the chips without a very mature chipset to make full use of its capabilities. I think Intel just has too much up its sleeve now so that it will b e very hard for AMD to impress the consumers much. AMD pulls out the FX and Athlon 64 and right before the reviews were done they pulled out the P4 Extreme. Right after AMD released the 2800+ and 2700+ they released the 3.0 with HT.
There's also lots of rumors that Intel has a secret team of researchers working on a consumer 64 chip. So they're prepared to jump on the 64bit bandwagon. Anotehr factor is the G5 chip that came out not too long ago. I haven't read how well that's doing... but if people are believing they need 64bit.... well AMD might do better.
I believe there's a slight chance there will be more competition between AMD and Intel again however most chances are... Intel learned its mistake underestimating AMD when Athlon was released, and will not let it happen again.

rklee · Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2003 6:53 pm Post subject:

TigerDirect has this Systemax Athlon64 3200+ system for $1200 + shipping.

AMD Athlon 64-bit 3200+ w/1600MHz Bus, 512MB PC2700 DDR, 80GB Drive

DVD-RW Drive, Radeon 9200SE 128MB, 10/100 + 56k, XP Home, 1-Yr Warranty

That is pretty nicely priced though. Smile

NOT the FX.

Trool · Good Karma Joined: 12 Sep 2003 Posts: 1486

What do you think is the better buy, a 64bit chip or hyperthreading....i wonder if intel will combine the two some time soon, or if AMD has something similar they are working on???
_________________
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, isn't 'Eureka!' but rather 'hmm....that's funny.'

--Isaac Asimov

rklee · Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2003 8:33 am Post subject:

Aren't both kinda useless unless software makes use of them?

Trool · Good Karma Joined: 12 Sep 2003 Posts: 1486

well i don't know about the 64bit thing, but with ht you can run critical programs together and they are supposed to run better since they can use different threads. I think the best example i always hear from the hype ppl is that you can now be burning dvds or cds and do other things and not worry that you will interfere with the burn...stuff like that. I think you can write software that will take advantage of the whole thing even further, but at least you get this mutple programs running together thing...
_________________
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, isn't 'Eureka!' but rather 'hmm....that's funny.'

--Isaac Asimov

rklee · Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2003 12:36 pm Post subject:

I thought the main problem with the burning of cd thing was that it uses your hard drive so much... like the transfer through the IDE cable is bad. That's why it's supposed to be good to have CDR on non HDD cables for stuff like that or have the CD original and CD new copy to be on two different cables. But... I see your point Razz

Can programs multiply two huge numbers in one step (that 32bit can't do but 64 should be able to) without modification? like... a program made for 32 bit that needs to do a huge number multiplication that should take multiple steps (that's how I understand how a 32 bit system processes numbers that are larger than 32bit.... correct me if I'm wrong) in one step just by changing hardware and not the program itself? Would OS change affect this?

Trool · Good Karma Joined: 12 Sep 2003 Posts: 1486

From what i remmember from i remmember from my sys architecture class is that i think if you modify the OS that would do most of the speed up. I think the programs are made into assembler and then the os figures out how to load them into and run, that might be were the speed up will come from. Also and this is me guessing so it's probably wrong, but 64bit means that the chip can take in 64 bits worth of data and send it to memory or harddrive and such and so sending 64 bits would take only one instruction routine rather then 2, but does that mean that hardware also has to support this 64bit thing, for example if the harddrive can only accept 32 bits of data at a time the 64bits wouldn't make any difference right...? But if it can write 64bit to the drive at once then going to 64 should double the speed of that process. I think for HT only the chip and motherboard needed to be upgraded and everything else worked kinda the same and one got speed up, but for 64 everything around would have to be 64 too right???
_________________
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, isn't 'Eureka!' but rather 'hmm....that's funny.'

--Isaac Asimov

rklee · Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2003 4:34 pm Post subject:

Does the hdd have to be upgraded? The hdd works on a different system right? I think it's the OS that determines how the memory's stored on the hdd... the FAT systems and stuff right? Does it actually have anything to do with how the processing's done? The hdd doesn't actually store in 64 bits right? Seems to me more like... the computer processes a calculation in 64 bits... however it writes on paper the answer... the paper is not segmented in a way like the processing is. The 'brain' can handle 64 bits at a time... but on paper you don't have to write at 64 bits each time... like if u are processing 1+1 it doesn't mean u have to store a 64 bit number on hdd right?

Mogri · Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2003 5:32 pm Post subject:

HT improves multitasking. Instead of scheduling 10 tasks on one processor, it can schedule 5 tasks on two processors. It's probably just as easy to underburn a CD with an HT system as a normal system. I personally have never been able to underrun a CD on any system over 500 mhz with an NT kernel.

HT can be taken advantage of by most any multi-tasking OS, while 64-bit things need to be specially compiled, and aren't extremly common outside of server and rendering applications.

And also, just because the new 64-bit processor is designed for high-end systems doesn't mean it will get significant market share, and doesn't make it a large competitor.

I would much rather spend the extra money on an HT system than a 64-bit system, be it from any manufacturer.

I also still have much more faith in Intel hardware, because AMD is continually killing themselves with bad chipsets. We'll see how things go, but I don't have a good feeling that AMD will pull themselves into the black anytime soon on the 64-bit chips, and if they don't seriously start turning profits in the next couple years, they won't be around for a whole lot longer, at least in their current form.
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"A club without the right direction, is a misguided stick."
-- Master Wham

Mogri · Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2003 5:34 pm Post subject:

64-bit does largely mean it can pass around 64-bit chunks of information, be it to cache, memory, or other interfaces. For storage such as HDD's and CD's, you can send however large chunks you want over the interface, but it'll get put on the device the way they always did.
_________________
"A club without the right direction, is a misguided stick."
-- Master Wham

rklee · Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2003 6:56 pm Post subject:

Ya... AMD has a huge support base... problem is none of us want to spend the money Razz

. I think competition will be beneficial to us not only that it might give us lower prices... I think it's good for advancing the technology also.

Trool · Good Karma Joined: 12 Sep 2003 Posts: 1486

I agree about the competition, but is 64bit that AMD is doing is really that new and enovating? I think i have to agree with morgi on this one. HT can be done by just about anything and does need new hardware to take advantage of it, while 64bit needs all new things to get the speed up. I'm not sure also how much that speed up will be noticed. It's kinda the same way with HT, my new comp has that and I can't really tell if it's doing anything or not. I'd be curious to see benchmarks once they are released comparing both chips...
_________________
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, isn't 'Eureka!' but rather 'hmm....that's funny.'

--Isaac Asimov

rklee · Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2003 10:48 am Post subject:

the Athlon 64 is impressive even discounting the 64 bit. That is not it's only strength. Despite it's immature chipset at the moment (there are good chipsets out there for it... but the nforce is the one that's officially supported... I think and that one is immature) it is performing very well. considering that Intel's extreme chip has DOUBLE the cache as the 64.... we can expect it to perform better and it does but only slightly.

rklee · Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2003 12:52 pm Post subject:

http://www.overclockers.com/articles840/
Nice article describing the near future of CPU technology. I think this really goes to show that competition is very good for the technology. Since the 3.0 came out with HT really the only thing Intel has done is to upate their old chips their 2.4-3.0's. While AMD has done nothing. Their 2700 and 2800 wasn't worth anything since the 3.0 PIV came out. Now... it seems like new stuff will be comming out soon. I'm sure that they were being worked on during the past year but it just seems to me that having them compete really forces them to work hard. BTW I know overclockers.com is very pro AMD generally... I'm really not believing that PIV needs to get to 4ghz to beat the FX Razz

. Overclockers have traditionally went with AMD's though so it's understandable (although recently the PIV C's overclock great... and a lot of people got into overclocking with their older celerons...).

Trool · Good Karma Joined: 12 Sep 2003 Posts: 1486

That was a fun article for comparisons, also one they linked to that taked about the PV, i hope AMD does stay competetive with intel, i think that would be good, but i don't know if they can. Intel has a huge brand awareness name outthere and when regular ppl buy computers they'll generaly go for the intel name. I think AMD made a mark when their processors were cheaper then intels and then intel advertised like crazy to get their name out there...and now there are very few amd computers being sold in retail. When amd does release the new chip i think it not only has to be good, but also cheap or they have to put together a marketing campaign, though i don't think they'll be able to. Does anyone know how much of the pc market amd owns now? Also does AMD have other sources of revenue...i know intel is branching out, but is AMD??
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The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, isn't 'Eureka!' but rather 'hmm....that's funny.'

--Isaac Asimov

rklee · Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2003 2:39 pm Post subject:

AMD I believe owns about 9 percent of the market... and I don't think AMD's branching out... they've been loosing money. And the reason is mainly they produce cheap chips.... In fact they're trying to increase prices on their chips... that's what people think will save them. That's why they tried to release the Duron... to make the Athlon the high end and Duron the low end. The FX is definately not a cheap chip... and it's built for people who want the best computers...

Trool · Good Karma Joined: 12 Sep 2003 Posts: 1486

I think that with targeting the ppl who use highend systems AMD might live, but they will loose more of their marketshare. AMD is not a house hold name like Intel and their pentium brand is, so anyone who doesn't know much about comps won't buy them as much, that means that other companies won't sell prebuild machines with the chip inside as much as they do of intel chips. Though considering that it's usualy the highend ppl who buy computers more often, I wonder if that will be enough for AMD to survive on...
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The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, isn't 'Eureka!' but rather 'hmm....that's funny.'

--Isaac Asimov

Trool · Good Karma Joined: 12 Sep 2003 Posts: 1486

Anchordesk today had an article about 64bit chip from AMD, he's very pro it, but has same reservations about it being used in buisness and by the masses who aren't interested in games and other highend math apps. One thing he did bring up that i didn't think about was the addressing system. With 32bit there are only 4 gigs of addresses with 64bit he counts into the terrobytes. I think that just means that now one can have more then 4gig of ram, wich is important for servers and such also it means possiblilities for a much large cache and things like that.

http://reviews-zdnet.com.com/AnchorDesk/4520-7297_16-5082999.html?tag=adts
_________________
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, isn't 'Eureka!' but rather 'hmm....that's funny.'

--Isaac Asimov