QUAD CORE AMD coming in a month! Motherboard showing off today

Well we will see, because Motherboard company showing off new socket motherboard by the end of today.
 
So, it's not a quad-core chip, it's a dual socket motherboard with sockets for 2 dual socket CPUs, or a new socket that takes two dual core CPUs at once.

The former has been done before, by both AMD and Intel. AMD has Opteron 2xx dual socket boards, Intel has Xeon DP dual socket boards. Maybe this would be new if it was something like a socket AM2 board that somehow supported dual CPUs, but that would either be A, extremely stupid as it would rob sales of more lucrative Opteron 2xx server boards and chips, at least if it is competitively priced to regular desktop boards, or, more likely b) as expensive as the FX stuff is, and thus pretty much pointless, as again, there are already server boards out there in that range.

If it is the latter (which I can't imagine why it would be...) think of the HSF issues there will be.

Either way this is fake (most likely) or marketing spin gone out of control. The bottom line though, is that AMD does not have a quad-core chip, nor will it for some time.
 
drizzt81 said:
if this is true, it's a gimmick at best.
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you mean the 'targeted at the gaming crowd'-part, right? Just to make sure: These new mainboards allegedly are able to hold two A64s? That would surely make for a darn cheap quad core workstation...

NulloModo said:
Either way this is fake (most likely) or marketing spin gone out of control. The bottom line though, is that AMD does not have a quad-core chip, nor will it for some time.
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QFT!
 
drizzt81 said:
if this is true, it's a gimmick at best.
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I agree 100%....look, it's certainly not useless, the video and content creation crowd will love it, but it certainly isn't meant for gamers (yet).

It has to be a gimmick in order to push more procs.
 
AMD's Barry said that machines with the new sockets will be to run multithreaded games at better performance levels than Intel-based machines. He said that more game companies have begun to adapt their games to exploit multiple threads in a PC, allowing them to handle more tasks at the same time and thereby run much games faster and prettier for gamers.

If I was going to spend this much money, I might as well spring for woodcrest. (I am not because I don't have that kind of money, but still)

the marketing guy has no idea or wasn't paying attention to the fact, of something we call diminishing returns. What are all of us going to run our games at 1024x786 to keep from being cpu limited :D

as for its targeted audience (the gaming crowd) it is a gimmick.
 
wizzackr said:
you mean the 'targeted at the gaming crowd'-part, right? Just to make sure: These new mainboards allegedly are able to hold two A64s? That would surely make for a darn cheap quad core workstation...
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Exactly.
 
I am guessing that the oft-rumored "inverse hyperthreading" is going to rear its head today.
 
Order said:
I am guessing that the oft-rumored "inverse hyperthreading" is going to rear its head today.
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i really don't think we'll see that until K10.. it's gonna require a COMPLETELY redesigned execution engine. ;)
 
i really don't think we'll see that until K10.. it's gonna require a COMPLETELY redesigned execution engine. ;)
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I was under that impression as well but considering AMD has been saying that they aren't worried in the least about Conroe and have alluded to something that will defeat it, they really don't have any technologies or products in the pipeline that will do so upon Conroe's release.
 
BTW - if this is no rumor and they are showing off working samples today that sure as hell makes it one of the best kept secrets ever. ;)
 
Order said:
I was under that impression as well but considering AMD has been saying that they aren't worried in the least about Conroe and have alluded to something that will defeat it, they really don't have any technologies or products in the pipeline that will do so upon Conroe's release.
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Would you expect for them to publicly state they are worried, and in the process kill off sales of AM2 motherboards and A64 CPUs by people who would then jump ship? As long as they keep stringing their customers along they can keep selling their hardware, at least until Conroe actually does ship and they have nothing to put up against it.
 
Well they're showing off working samples of something. I'm hoping that something is what I guessed above...although it probably won't be.
 
Would you expect for them to publicly state they are worried, and in the process kill off sales of AM2 motherboards and A64 CPUs by people who would then jump ship? As long as they keep stringing their customers along they can keep selling their hardware, at least until Conroe actually does ship and they have nothing to put up against it.
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I wouldn't say that they would "keep" stringing customers along considering they have shown overwhelming superiority over the last 18 months so simply hinting at a new release isn't really a problem, is it?
 
Interesting...so let's look at it this way.

Conroe comes out makes a big splash with a great price point.

or

I can purchase a new mobo for about $120.00 and pick another reduced price (because surely the price will come down after Conroe) dual core x2 4400 for lets say $250 and get a 4 core system.

For sure any content creation and folding will be much quicker than a Conroe solution but how would this really help FPS in games? ....unless AMD figured out a way to have the board and processor do the work of multithreading applications at the hardware level instead of leaving it to programs and drivers to do the work..aka the rumor about reverse hyperthreading.

Very interesting indeed....but complete and utter speculation :D
 
lemme guess, this will be marketed under the Fatal1ty brand name? :rolleyes:
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I hope not. Every time I see that smug-looking douche I want to punch him in his face.
Off topic, sure to be deleted, heh.
 
Order said:
I wouldn't say that they would "keep" stringing customers along considering they have shown overwhelming superiority over the last 18 months so simply hinting at a new release isn't really a problem, is it?
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They've shown minor to moderate performance superiority, 10fps in some games is hardly overwhelming. But, this is off topic, so I will end it there.

As to on the topic:

Anyone with some CPU architecture knowledge want to chime in if the A64 is even SMP capable? Isn't SMP one of the reasons the Opty 2xx have two hypertransport links? The article also doesn't say who is making the chipset does it? I really can't see this being first party AMD, the FX gaming market is a lot smaller, and a lot less important than the server market that they'd suddenly be giving a cheaper and less profitable option to.
 
Anyone with some CPU architecture knowledge want to chime in if the A64 is even SMP capable? Isn't SMP one of the reasons the Opty 2xx have two hypertransport links? The article also doesn't say who is making the chipset does it? I really can't see this being first party AMD, the FX gaming market is a lot smaller, and a lot less important than the server market that they'd suddenly be giving a cheaper and less profitable option to.
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It does not, as far as I know. The 940th pin in the Opteron 2xx and 8xx is used to allow SMP from what I've read. I don't know what all the pins in the new AM2s are for, though, except that there are 940 of them. I'm guessing if AMD is realeasing a board that allows communication between a pair of AM2s it will work.
 
So lets say for argument sake that the 939 cannot do smp naitively. Which means this new venture is for the socket 940 AM2 processors.

So AMD is banking on people not buying a very fast competitive processor from Intel but two same architecture processors even at reduced cost, with a new board and new memory type.

All the while having little or no increase in performance in gaming and still getting slaughtered by Intel's new platform
:confused:

Something is not right here. Even if this is classified as a high end setup people can go out (like I did a month ago) and put together a 4 core Opty system and have it today.

Hmmmm something is definately not right in this early rumor.
 
Even though this article seems bogus, I don't think quadcore as a technology is.

Sure it might not do much for gaming right now, but gaming is only a very, very, small part of the PC market. 4 cores would be great for video encoding, multitasking, photoshot, etc.

I am trying to decide between a single Conroe or 2 Woodcrests for my next system for the speed increases I get re-encoding ripped DVDs alone.
 
Well the aforementioned "slaughtering" is what I'm confused about. Obviously AMD is getting murdered by Conroe in the benchmarks. The fact that they're releasing a new platform knowing full well that it will be immediately benchmarked against Conroe and those scores will make or break the launch makes me think that they have something up their sleeve to at least put them closer to the realm of performance that Conroe will have with gaming.
 
NulloModo said:
Anyone with some CPU architecture knowledge want to chime in if the A64 is even SMP capable? Isn't SMP one of the reasons the Opty 2xx have two hypertransport links?
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The only reason that A64s cannot do SMP is because AMD disables any and all ccHT links. Normal HT will not do SMP. However, ccHT (Cache Coherent Hyper Transport) will. All AMD needs to do to allow SMP mode with A64 is to enable the ccHT links, and add BIOS support. I don't even think a chipset change would be needed because of the way HT works: for example, my dual opteron board uses the same nforce4 chipset as most desktop boards.

AMD is trying to lower the price of dual socket in the low-end workstation / high-end desktop market. I'm not sure how much a hit this is going to be, but I can't see it being a bad thing.
 
I'm pretty sure that link capability rests on the 940th pin which is why 939-pin chips are unable to be in a SMP configuration.
 
Isnt a dual core considered SMP? I'm guessing from the tone of the above post, that maybe its not the same thing. What is the difference?
 
Order said:
I hope not. Every time I see that smug-looking douche I want to punch him in his face.
Off topic, sure to be deleted, heh.
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QFT and agreed fully - professional gamer, more like professional tool (or assbag for the 18+ crowd).
 
Dual core is technically SMP, yes, but with the way AMD's multi-socket chipsets operate you can get additional benefits like NUMA, multi-chipset support, etc.
 
So let me get this straight, it's a board but that has dual AM2 sockets... wow this is seriously going to shaft their opteron sales.


They made this mistake with the Socket A XP's and MP's before and it backfired as no one bought MP's anymore.
 
Order said:
I reeeeally think AMD is smarter than that.
I hope, at least.
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Thats what I said about 3dfx before they slapped 4 cores on their video card pcb's instead of making them faster.
 
Thats what I said about 3dfx before they slapped 4 cores on their video card pcb's instead of making them faster.
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They are far too established in the market and they have even more to lose if this is a disaster. Intel has every right to destroy them in the gaming sector if they do something stupid.
 
Ockie said:
So let me get this straight, it's a board but that has dual AM2 sockets... wow this is seriously going to shaft their opteron sales.
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This will make a small dent in their Opteron sales. However, I don't see this as a big problem. Most people who buy servers or very high-end workstations want ECC registered memory, they want PCI-X slots, they want a 6-layer server board, etc. A dual AM2 board is not going to be server class with server features like a dual Socket F board will.

AMD is bringing the price of dual socket setups down a bit. I don't see how this could be a "mistake" or be "stupid". This may not be the hit AMD wants it to be, but it is very hard for me to see it as a bad thing.
 
No, in fact I see it as a good thing for me, personally. I don't really game and when I do I don't really care if I have 1000fps. I just want raw power as cheaply as possible. If AMD is bringing down the price of dual-socket boards then I'm happy to hear it. Besides, the K8L and the 1207-pin Opteron boards are going to have lots of things to offer that a dual-socket AM2 board cannot.
 
so on the nforce 590 sli pro quad core boards if you have quad sli, and quad core, it will sense this and dedicate 1 core per gpu. or 1 gpu per core. also we will now get to be able to buy 2000watt psu's from ocz and pcp&c.
 
I don't think they'll be 590-based.
They'll have to be whatever the "pro" version of that is.
I forget what its called but the upcoming Tyan K9WE uses it.
 
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