AM2 processors not up to snuff?

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Sparrow_69

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Taken from Anantech:

The performance gains we've been hearing and seeing are generally 5% or lower at the same clock speeds using DDR2-800, but it's still very early. The main point to take home is while the final verdict is still not out, AM2 is at least starting to look like more of an upgrade and not what we saw with Intel's DDR to DDR2 transition almost 2 years ago.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2734&p=2

Considering AM2 motherboards will start shipping in just over a month, I was kinda expecting a little more performance. Maybe my upgrade to S939 IS actually justified vs. waiting for AM2... DDR2 is still quite expensive compared to DDR1 ram. It seems that upgrading from S939 to AM2 may/may not be worth it. I guess time will tell.
 
what Im hoping for mostly out of am2 upgrade is increased memory capacity at a cheaper price.
 
Sparrow_69 said:
What do you mean by that Eclipse? That AM2 will be much faster, or not so much?
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i don't know with 100% certaincy at this point, but think about it. considering how things are now, what would surprise a lot of people? ;)

though by nature, K8 isn't very memory limited. dual cores, especially the higher clocked ones, will see a larger benefit from AM2 than say.. a sempron, but i think expecting more than 10-15% increase is a bit much :p
 
Well, the benifits are likley to be highly application dependant.
Things like video encoding where you can
A. Use both cores effectively
B. Use lots of bandwidth for long periods of time
are likely to have signifigant (upwards of 10% wouldn't surprise me) performance benifit.

For most single threaded and / or CPU / GPU bound apps, ie most of what we do most the time, that less than 5% figure sound reasonable to me. Particularly given the performance difference between S754 and S939 models of the same parts.
 
They're citing the transition for Intel from DDR to DDR2 as a good one? That's waffles. Prescott with higher temps and slower operation. Oh yeah, their switch over to the LGA775 was grand.

 
tsuehpsyde said:
They're citing the transition for Intel from DDR to DDR2 as a good one? That's waffles. Prescott with higher temps and slower operation. Oh yeah, their switch over to the LGA775 was grand.

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no, i read it to imply exactly the opposite.
 
Exactly, the DDR>DDR2 transition was crappy. Intel didn't exactly shit gold with that one. AMD should be given the same chance to make up ground that Intel got, if they even got anything.
 
I'm in the wrong business, I need to get into computer marketing :)
 
covertclocker said:
Exactly, the DDR>DDR2 transition was crappy. Intel didn't exactly shit gold with that one. AMD should be given the same chance to make up ground that Intel got, if they even got anything.
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of course intel went from an 800mhz FSB with DDR400 to an 800mhz FSB with DDR2-400 or DDR2-533 (before the CL3 stuff was commonly availible).
AMD is going from a 200mhz memory bus with DDR400 to a 333mhz or 400mhz memory bus running DDR2-667 or DDR2-800. With 4-4-4 timings commonly availible with both DDR2-667 and DDR2-800, AMD gets a 66% or 100% increase in bandwidth with latency that's around the same or better (DDR2-800) than what we have now.
This is not the same transition Intel made, and we can't use Intel's DDR2 parts as a barometer.
 
Weren't they planning on having AM2 unify the sockets for all their processers as well? So no more socket939/940 and just one single socket that does it all? This way people can fit high end opterons on regular board etc. And the availabliity of dual socket boards might pick up again on top of seeing some more dual socket/dual pciexpress combos on the market.

Plus if they get enough of the AM2 boards out there when quad cores release they most likely will be making significant use of the extra bandwidth. GIves people an easy upgrade route when quad core releases.

I'm also curious as to wheter or not they'll make quad core 4 seperate cores or give it an SSE like instruction that uses all cores like one big vector unit. That could come in really handy for some applications.
 
Anarchist4000 said:
Weren't they planning on having AM2 unify the sockets for all their processers as well? So no more socket939/940 and just one single socket that does it all? This way people can fit high end opterons on regular board etc. And the availabliity of dual socket boards might pick up again on top of seeing some more dual socket/dual pciexpress combos on the market.

Plus if they get enough of the AM2 boards out there when quad cores release they most likely will be making significant use of the extra bandwidth. GIves people an easy upgrade route when quad core releases.

I'm also curious as to wheter or not they'll make quad core 4 seperate cores or give it an SSE like instruction that uses all cores like one big vector unit. That could come in really handy for some applications.
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Not really a One-Socket strategy, more of a Socket-Per-Market-Segment with Socket AM2 for desktop/workstation/DTR (low/medium/high end), Socket F for servers, and Socket S1 for mobile (light/ultra-light)
 
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