In light of recent developments I questioned whether I should post this or not. But then I realized that I'm awesome and I'm going to post it. This time though I decided I would give my IRL self some credit and tried to make it as PLAIN AS POSSIBLE as to who wrote it. Also, for reference. I put it up at my own personal web space provided by my school. You'll notice it does not have this preface and was uploaded PRIOR to me posting this here. There may be discrepancies as I tend to get confused when working with 2 walls of texts and trying to format them with different tags. Enjoy.
For those of you who want to know my previous post to try and prove my innocence was not trustworthy, so my status as a FAILURE is open-ended.
For Whom the Bell Tolls BYCHRISTOPHERUNG
Blackened roar, massive roar, fills the crumbling sky Shattered goal fills his soul with a ruthless cry
I wrote a a couple months ago that Intel’s upcoming Clarkdale processor would be Thor’s mighty hammer coming down on AMD’s Cinderella shoes. Most of my deductions were based on hearsay and rumors. Well, today reviews of the new Clarkdale are making front page of any tech blog worth its weight in bandwidth. The clock has struck twelve, will AMD find a fairy tale ending?
Now that the Clarkdales are official, let’s see their lineup.
An unexpected surprise, and not the pleasant kind. We see that the i5 line, while impressive in its own right, is priced into quad territory – a dual core no man’s land. For $196 retail we enter what I would describe as professional level pricing, at this price you can easily grab an i5-750, which presents possibly the best value per dollar in the CPU market right now, or the newly revised Phenom II 955 BE C3 stepping, which has been shown to overclock to upwards of 4GHz with just a tick of the multiplier. Don’t forget this is their mid-range i5 dual we are talking about here. What market could Intel possibly seek to grab with a dual core here? Both the i5-750 and the Phenom II 955 handle even the most intensive games with relative ease, and both can overclock to 4GHz+. Perhaps Intel is seeking to carve out a dual core niche as it did with its previous E8600 or perhaps it is simply preparing for the projected pricing wars ahead.
What is most interesting is the i3 lineup. The blue-boxed, blue-collar hero really does bring the heat, figuratively speaking of course. With the top-end i3 zooming along at just over 3GHz, and more importantly a starting price of $113 we begin to see AMD’s product losing traction. We have an Athlon II X4 alternative, a Phenom II X3 killer, and it may even be able to cut into weaker Phenom II X4 territory. How can a lowly dual core usurp the hierarchy of the multi-core elite?
Hyper-Threading.
Up until now Hyper-Threading was used mostly as a marketing gimmick. Today, for most daily and even moderate to heavy gaming use, dual cores are just starting to be pushed to their limits so it’s easy to see why introducing Hyper-Threading in the Pentium 4 era showed little to no improvements. Using Hyper-Threading on a dual core processor, today, to enable four virtual threads, effectively adding two additional processors, has shown to have real world applications in traditionally quad core dominated benchmarks. From 3D rendering to video encoding, the i3 540 keeps up, and rarely bests, Intel’s famous Q6600 while its higher clocked i5 siblings compete with the Q9400.
Another unexpected surprise of the unpleasant variety that marks Clarkdales’ christening is its gaming performance. With all its improvements and new technology it’s still, clock for clock, not that much of an improvement and in some cases shows no improvement at all over the steadfast E8000 Wolfdales. It seems no matter how hard Intel tries it simply cannot outdo its Core2 line with the potency it needs to. Socket 775 owners should sleep easy knowing that though they are outdated, they are not yet obsolete. The E8500 holds the dual core front and the Q9550 holds for the Core2Quads. That doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon.
What does all this mean?
Crack of dawn, all is gone except the will to be Now they see what will be, blinded eyes to see
AMD was the Cinderella story, the underdog, the one everyone loved to root for against the big, bad Intel. However, given the introduction of Clarkdale, AMD is nowhere near the value per dollar Intel is right now. Sure, AMD still has good processors in the Phenom II 550 BE and Athlon II 620 but I can’t see anywhere in the $120 to $160 range where an AMD would be a better choice over Clarkdale. Of course, there are always exceptions, but for the majority of mainstream users, the choice is clear.
All is not lost. AMD still remains a promising long-term cost-effective solution. AM3 will live to the introduction of the fabled Bulldozer, and possibly beyond. That means owners of AM3 motherboards can upgrade to 6 cores and possibly 8 cores without changing sockets while the Intel roadmap currently shows Socket 1156 as essentially dead as it is hitting the glass ceiling imposed by Socket 1366. Even for the high-end Socket 1366, all 2010 promises so far is a $999 hexacore, the i7 980X.
What’s AMD’s next move?
I’ll answer it this time. It needs to hit back and it needs to hit hard. There are no new quad core introductions for AMD, at least until Bulldozer comes out in 2011, which leaves 2010 riding on the success of the hexacore, Thuban. Thuban is essentially built on the current Phenom II 45nm architecture, just with two additional cores. That in itself really spells disaster when pitting it against the 32nm Intel i7 980X. However, it also provides a silver lining in the cloud. If Thuban is based on a tried and true architecture, yields should be higher, and manufacturing costs should be lower than Intel’s 32nm counterpart. If AMD is able to achieve this, retail prices should be much lower than Intel’s hexacore. This, coupled with much more affordable high-end motherboards, shows promise to keep the initial price of an AMD Thuban system lower than the stratospheric i7 980X.
Though Intel seems to be succeeding in stealing market segment from AMD the one problem I see with its strategy is that AMD has the capacity to manufacture its processors at very, very low cost. AMD is currently producing single socket processors that are backwards compatible: AM3 / AM2+; and two architectures: Deneb, Propos. Intel on the other hand is producing processors for three sockets: 775, 1156, 1366; and three architectures: Core, Nehalem, and Westmere. However, Westmere is just a 32nm shrink of the 45nm Core architecture and may prove to be cheaper in the long run.
Intel just continues to bury AMD in terms of performance and each time AMD stick one foot out the grave another wave just pushes it down. Even if Bulldozer is a huge success, it’ll have to deal with Intel’s 22nm Sandy Bridge.
For whom the bell tolls Time marches on For whom the bell tolls
gl with the plagiarism thing, and thanks for the post. I built my own computer a while back and learned a modest amount about Intel/AMD. It's interesting to see how the technology and the competition continues to develop.
Man what I want to see from AMD is another line of quad cores + dual cores. The Athlon IIs are awesome cores at this point, but the i3 and i5 line seems to completely massacre them in every possible way.
I don't see how AMD can continue without another Socket or some other innovation with their lineup because at this rate, their cores will all have superior, cost efficient intel competition. The i5 line takes a bite out of the Phenom II market, and these new i3s seem so much better than the Athlon II.
It will be interesting to see what AMD can do besides the fucking hexacore that has been hyped to mars lately.
However I disagree when you say that the i5/i3 don't show much of an improvement over the C2D and C2Q. They have the newer, more efficient architecture with the removal of the FSB, and the addition of that hypertransport thing, along with the L3 cache. I don't think the 775 can compete against the 1156. It's interesting to see you mention clock for clock, because that is something most people recommend comparing cpus with.
On January 05 2010 15:55 FragKrag wrote: However I disagree when you say that the i5/i3 don't show much of an improvement over the C2D and C2Q. They have the newer, more efficient architecture with the removal of the FSB, and the addition of that hypertransport thing, along with the L3 cache. I don't think the 775 can compete against the 1156. It's interesting to see you mention clock for clock, because that is something most people recommend comparing cpus with.
I meant that simply to mean that if you were waiting on upgrading your current 775 system for a Clarkdale, it might not be worth it compared to a simple processor upgrade.
AMD could compete if the FTC fines Intel big time in their Antitrust lawsuit. Intel will have to fork over lots of dough and then they can't sell their new processors so cheaply.
On January 05 2010 16:12 T.O.P. wrote: AMD could compete if the FTC fines Intel big time in their Antitrust lawsuit. Intel will have to fork over lots of dough and then they can't sell their new processors so cheaply.
Ah, I remember reading about a settlement between Intel and AMD recently.
It's not like that much money could bridge the technology gap between Intel and AMD.
Intel cores are just BETTER at the moment. Back when AMD first had their hypertransport on the AM3 I believe (before intel i7), they had something to brag about, but now, all they have is a fucking hexacore.
On January 05 2010 16:12 T.O.P. wrote: AMD could compete if the FTC fines Intel big time in their Antitrust lawsuit. Intel will have to fork over lots of dough and then they can't sell their new processors so cheaply.
Ah, I remember reading about a settlement between Intel and AMD recently.
Imo, AMD would be in a way better position nowdays if Intel didn't use anticompetitive practices. They had the faster and more efficient processor in the athlon days.
I am not an Intel spokesperson. It's a pretty well known fact that Intel is quite ahead in terms of performance and has very recently caught up with AMD in the price per performance category.
The i5 661 dual which runs at 3.33GHz comes unbearably close to the 965 BE in benchmarks, though the 965 BE does still come out ahead. However, take into account the i5-750 quad, which is simply faster than the 965 BE in multi-threaded applications for just about the same price.
On January 06 2010 04:09 zeroimagination wrote: has very recently caught up with AMD in the price per performance category.
Not really man. The i5 might be competing with the Phenoms II x4 but the Athlons II x 2 / x3 / x4 aren't challenged by any proc made by Intel ( i3 is just way too expensive atm and dead and overpriced sockets don't count xD ).
The release of the i5 750 was a great blow for AMD but the i3 is meh. Haven't read a lot about the new i5 yet to comment.
I never said Hyper-Threading helped in games, though ironically it did in DA: Origins according to Anandtech. Also, the screen shot is done with Intel's IGP which no serious gamer would settle for either way.
4 physical cores at the moment is still holding strong in 3D rendering and video encoding, but Hyper-Threading provides a cheaper alternative for gamers who still want to be able to do those things, play games at high frames, and not spend an exorbitant amount of money.
On January 06 2010 04:09 zeroimagination wrote: has very recently caught up with AMD in the price per performance category.
Not really man. The i5 might be competing with the Phenoms II x4 but the Athlons II x 2 / x3 / x4 aren't challenged by any proc made by Intel ( i3 is just way too expensive atm and dead and overpriced sockets don't count xD ).
The release of the i5 was a great blow for AMD but the i3 is meh.
If you take a look at benchmarks, you'll see that the i5 is quite competent when compared to lower end quads in multi-threaded applications. The i3 is practically the same except with no turbo and a slight clock decrease. i3's also start at $113 which is not a very large price to pay for what you are getting - q6600-like rendering and encoding coupled with e8500-like gaming.
On January 06 2010 04:18 zeroimagination wrote: I never said Hyper-Threading helped in games, though ironically it did in DA: Origins according to Anandtech. Also, the screen shot is done with Intel's IGP which no serious gamer would settle for either way.
4 physical cores at the moment is still holding strong in 3D rendering and video encoding, but Hyper-Threading provides a cheaper alternative for gamers who still want to be able to do those things, play games at high frames, and not spend an exorbitant amount of money.
except that you can get the athlon 620 quadcore for 100$
On January 06 2010 04:18 zeroimagination wrote: I never said Hyper-Threading helped in games, though ironically it did in DA: Origins according to Anandtech. Also, the screen shot is done with Intel's IGP which no serious gamer would settle for either way.
4 physical cores at the moment is still holding strong in 3D rendering and video encoding, but Hyper-Threading provides a cheaper alternative for gamers who still want to be able to do those things, play games at high frames, and not spend an exorbitant amount of money.
except that you can get the athlon 620 quadcore for 100$
I mentioned specifically in my OP that the Athlon 620 is still a good choice. Let's face it though, the 620 is not nearly in the same league in terms of gaming. Most people would spend the extra $13 for the possibility to hit 4GHz, as well.
On January 06 2010 04:09 zeroimagination wrote: has very recently caught up with AMD in the price per performance category.
Not really man. The i5 might be competing with the Phenoms II x4 but the Athlons II x 2 / x3 / x4 aren't challenged by any proc made by Intel ( i3 is just way too expensive atm and dead and overpriced sockets don't count xD ).
The release of the i5 was a great blow for AMD but the i3 is meh.
If you take a look at benchmarks, you'll see that the i5 is quite competent when compared to lower end quads in multi-threaded applications. The i3 is practically the same except with no turbo and a slight clock decrease. i3's also start at $113 which is not a very large price to pay for what you are getting - q6600-like rendering and encoding coupled with e8500-like gaming.
Some people still prefer cheaper Athlons II :p
The main problem of the i3 is that he is more competing with the Phenom and i5 than with the Athlons II lol
Also i think it is quite retarded to say that AMD is doomed and dead when:
1- they will release a new architecture next year and are still competitive on the bottom of the CPU market. 2- Intel crooks had to give them billions because of anti competitive practices. 3- the merging with ATI is now a success and the performances on the GPU market are quite good.
Actually i would say that AMD is in a way better situation than one year ago.
On January 06 2010 04:09 zeroimagination wrote: has very recently caught up with AMD in the price per performance category.
Not really man. The i5 might be competing with the Phenoms II x4 but the Athlons II x 2 / x3 / x4 aren't challenged by any proc made by Intel ( i3 is just way too expensive atm and dead and overpriced sockets don't count xD ).
The release of the i5 was a great blow for AMD but the i3 is meh.
If you take a look at benchmarks, you'll see that the i5 is quite competent when compared to lower end quads in multi-threaded applications. The i3 is practically the same except with no turbo and a slight clock decrease. i3's also start at $113 which is not a very large price to pay for what you are getting - q6600-like rendering and encoding coupled with e8500-like gaming.
Some people still prefer cheaper Athlons II :p
The main problem of the i3 is that he is more competing with the Phenom and i5 than with the Athlons II lol
I know people still have reason's to go Athlon II which is why I mention in the OP that $120-160 is where the Clarkdale's really light up. Truth be told even the lowest clocked i3 is not a shabby performer, though I can see why some would prefer the 620. We'll just have to wait for i3 overclocking benches!
I never said AMD was dead. They have certainly lost a large portion of the price range to Intel though. I also believe the earliest new architecture we are seeing from AMD is Bulldozer which is schedule for Q2-Q4 2011. The only thing AMD has coming in 2010 is Thuban which I mention in the OP.
On January 06 2010 04:18 zeroimagination wrote: I never said Hyper-Threading helped in games, though ironically it did in DA: Origins according to Anandtech. Also, the screen shot is done with Intel's IGP which no serious gamer would settle for either way.
4 physical cores at the moment is still holding strong in 3D rendering and video encoding, but Hyper-Threading provides a cheaper alternative for gamers who still want to be able to do those things, play games at high frames, and not spend an exorbitant amount of money.
except that you can get the athlon 620 quadcore for 100$
I mentioned specifically in my OP that the Athlon 620 is still a good choice. Let's face it though, the 620 is not nearly in the same league in terms of gaming. Most people would spend the extra $13 for the possibility to hit 4GHz, as well.
these days gaming is very gpu limited. a athlon 620 with a hd 5870 would easily beat a i7 920 with a hd 5770 source
also do you know how much the chipsets will cost? I don't think it's only going to be 13$ extra
On January 06 2010 04:18 zeroimagination wrote: I never said Hyper-Threading helped in games, though ironically it did in DA: Origins according to Anandtech. Also, the screen shot is done with Intel's IGP which no serious gamer would settle for either way.
4 physical cores at the moment is still holding strong in 3D rendering and video encoding, but Hyper-Threading provides a cheaper alternative for gamers who still want to be able to do those things, play games at high frames, and not spend an exorbitant amount of money.
except that you can get the athlon 620 quadcore for 100$
I mentioned specifically in my OP that the Athlon 620 is still a good choice. Let's face it though, the 620 is not nearly in the same league in terms of gaming. Most people would spend the extra $13 for the possibility to hit 4GHz, as well.
these days gaming is very gpu limited. a athlon 620 with a hd 5870 would easily beat a i7 920 with a hd 5770 source
also do you know how much the chipsets will cost? I don't think it's only going to be 13$ extra
edit: not many people as you think overclock
Well, i3/i5 duals are socket 1156. Some good and cheap P55 motherboards can be had right now for around $100. Newer, supposedly more mainstream H57 motherboards will be out but I have no idea about the price of those.
Sure, an Athlon 620 with a 5870 will probably outperform an i7 980X with a 5770. But an Athlon 620 with a 5870 will probably be outperformed by a i3 530 with a 5870.
If we aren't taking into account overclocking, the Athlon 620 falls even further behind. As it won't be as near as competent in gaming.
On January 06 2010 04:18 zeroimagination wrote: I never said Hyper-Threading helped in games, though ironically it did in DA: Origins according to Anandtech. Also, the screen shot is done with Intel's IGP which no serious gamer would settle for either way.
4 physical cores at the moment is still holding strong in 3D rendering and video encoding, but Hyper-Threading provides a cheaper alternative for gamers who still want to be able to do those things, play games at high frames, and not spend an exorbitant amount of money.
except that you can get the athlon 620 quadcore for 100$
I mentioned specifically in my OP that the Athlon 620 is still a good choice. Let's face it though, the 620 is not nearly in the same league in terms of gaming. Most people would spend the extra $13 for the possibility to hit 4GHz, as well.
these days gaming is very gpu limited. a athlon 620 with a hd 5870 would easily beat a i7 920 with a hd 5770 source
also do you know how much the chipsets will cost? I don't think it's only going to be 13$ extra
edit: not many people as you think overclock
Well, i3/i5 duals are socket 1156. Some good and cheap P55 motherboards can be had right now for around $100. Newer, supposedly more mainstream H57 motherboards will be out but I have no idea about the price of those.
general speaking the am3/am2+ boards are still cheaper
Sure, an Athlon 620 with a 5870 will probably outperform an i7 980X with a 5770. But an Athlon 620 with a 5870 will probably be outperformed by a i3 530 with a 5870.
by a several frames yes, still you are saving money on the cheaper cpu & mobo
If we aren't taking into account overclocking, the Athlon 620 falls even further behind. As it won't be as near as competent in gaming.
On January 06 2010 04:18 zeroimagination wrote: I never said Hyper-Threading helped in games, though ironically it did in DA: Origins according to Anandtech. Also, the screen shot is done with Intel's IGP which no serious gamer would settle for either way.
4 physical cores at the moment is still holding strong in 3D rendering and video encoding, but Hyper-Threading provides a cheaper alternative for gamers who still want to be able to do those things, play games at high frames, and not spend an exorbitant amount of money.
except that you can get the athlon 620 quadcore for 100$
I mentioned specifically in my OP that the Athlon 620 is still a good choice. Let's face it though, the 620 is not nearly in the same league in terms of gaming. Most people would spend the extra $13 for the possibility to hit 4GHz, as well.
these days gaming is very gpu limited. a athlon 620 with a hd 5870 would easily beat a i7 920 with a hd 5770 source
also do you know how much the chipsets will cost? I don't think it's only going to be 13$ extra
edit: not many people as you think overclock
Well, i3/i5 duals are socket 1156. Some good and cheap P55 motherboards can be had right now for around $100. Newer, supposedly more mainstream H57 motherboards will be out but I have no idea about the price of those.
Sure, an Athlon 620 with a 5870 will probably outperform an i7 980X with a 5770. But an Athlon 620 with a 5870 will probably be outperformed by a i3 530 with a 5870.
If we aren't taking into account overclocking, the Athlon 620 falls even further behind. As it won't be as near as competent in gaming.
Actually an Athlon II x3 425 is ~ x4 620 for gaming ( in many games the higher freq >= the extra core ). You can get it for 75$. Now if Intel had something to beat that it woud be impressive.
On January 06 2010 04:18 zeroimagination wrote: I never said Hyper-Threading helped in games, though ironically it did in DA: Origins according to Anandtech. Also, the screen shot is done with Intel's IGP which no serious gamer would settle for either way.
4 physical cores at the moment is still holding strong in 3D rendering and video encoding, but Hyper-Threading provides a cheaper alternative for gamers who still want to be able to do those things, play games at high frames, and not spend an exorbitant amount of money.
except that you can get the athlon 620 quadcore for 100$
I mentioned specifically in my OP that the Athlon 620 is still a good choice. Let's face it though, the 620 is not nearly in the same league in terms of gaming. Most people would spend the extra $13 for the possibility to hit 4GHz, as well.
these days gaming is very gpu limited. a athlon 620 with a hd 5870 would easily beat a i7 920 with a hd 5770 source
also do you know how much the chipsets will cost? I don't think it's only going to be 13$ extra
edit: not many people as you think overclock
Well, i3/i5 duals are socket 1156. Some good and cheap P55 motherboards can be had right now for around $100. Newer, supposedly more mainstream H57 motherboards will be out but I have no idea about the price of those.
Sure, an Athlon 620 with a 5870 will probably outperform an i7 980X with a 5770. But an Athlon 620 with a 5870 will probably be outperformed by a i3 530 with a 5870.
If we aren't taking into account overclocking, the Athlon 620 falls even further behind. As it won't be as near as competent in gaming.
Actually an Athlon II x3 425 is ~ x4 620 for gaming ( in many games the higher freq >= the extra core ). You can get it for 75$. Now if Intel had something to beat that it woud be impressive.
Who actually plays at 800x600? I don't think that is an effective way to benchmark CPUs, it may help eliminate the graphics bottleneck but lower res would mean less polygons for the CPU to draw.
EPT![[image loading]](http://img710.imageshack.us/img710/400/64537101.png)
![[image loading]](http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/cpu/intel/Clarkdale/dao.jpg)
