AMD Undercuts Intel With Six-Core Phenom IIs 361
EconolineCrush writes "As Slashdot readers are no doubt aware, Intel's latest 'Gulftown' Core i7-980X is an absolute beast of a CPU. But its six cores don't come cheap; the 980X sells for over a grand, which is more than it would cost to build an entire system based on one of AMD's new six-core CPUs. The Phenom II X6 line starts at just $200 and includes a new Turbo capability that can opportunistically raise the clock speed of up to three cores when the others are idle. Although not as fast as the 980X, the new X6s are quick enough to offer compelling value versus even like-priced Intel CPUs. And the kicker: the X6s will work in a good number of older Socket AM2+ and AM3 motherboards with only a BIOS update."
This should drive the i7 price down (Score:1, Insightful)
finally...
Re:I need a new computer (Score:1, Insightful)
all these cores and benchmarks...
i still run computer with one core and no modern graphics card
Me too, it makes a great router.
Re:This should drive the i7 price down (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, a lot of people waiting for i7 price to drop instead of actually buying nice AMD product will surely result in drops of Intel CPU prices, right?
Re:Cores vs performance (Score:5, Insightful)
Try transcoding some video one time kiddo.
Hell if I could get 24 atoms in one socket that would be fantastic for me.
Serioulsy ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I need a new computer (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Cores vs performance (Score:4, Insightful)
Almost all those processes spend almost all their time idle or blocking on something, though, not contending for a core.
Re:I need a new computer (Score:5, Insightful)
It gives us VM's - lots and lots of VM's. I can reproduce a production app environment entirely on one quiet little box, including the load-balancer, firewall and name servers. It used to take a half a rack of loud, expensive servers all with disks and other stuff that breaks and needs monitoring and replacing. I can't wait for the 8-core chips to become affordable.
Re:Cores vs performance (Score:5, Insightful)
Well if your load average is always less than 0.10 your computer is likely overpowered.
Re:This should drive the i7 price down (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, a lot of people waiting for i7 price to drop instead of actually buying nice AMD product will surely result in drops of Intel CPU prices, right?
Of course it does. It doesn't matter why someone chooses to not buy a product, it only matters that they make that choice and thus the product doesn't sell. Companies have gone bankrupt because people chose to wait for a better deal.
Transcoding is common (Score:1, Insightful)
Way to belittle an excellent example of the usefulness of multiple cores.
Original HD production? Illegal to break DRM? So do you think it's only the occasional cinematographer or pirate who uses software based on FFmpeg and X.264 to transcode vids for HTPC or iPod? Because neither currently targets OpenCL or CUDA.
Cores is the new MHz (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, any computer organization text will inform you that as the number of cores increase - scheduling amongst those cores becomes an exponentially costly issue in itself. This scheduling/load balancing of course has to be ultra low latency to maintain a reasonable throughput.
Not to mention the fact, that on software side managing threading and choosing instructions to parallelize is a big headache. Many decent programmers cannot get it right so that in itself defeats the presence of different cores.
Secondly - unless you are continuously doing protein folding, calculating eigen values of huge matrices, or are acting as a node for traffic in your part of the world -- most people's processor cores will spend a majority of their time idling or spin-lock. Is it any surprise then that both Intel and AMD are advertising technologies to power down three cores, boosting the power for the other three?? Simply because most end-users will rarely utilize all six of their cores simultaneously. Yes, that is even true no matter if you are doing heavy video transcoding or running multiple servers, and playing games simultaneously - you will still leave your cores without any task simply because unless the bandwidth of the memory bus catches up, your cores will be waiting for data to process.
This is why Intel's i-series architecture is superior to AMDs and likely the fact their processors cost more, because they have addressed the memory bus issue.
You have to realize your computer acts like a chain and it is only as fast as its weakest link.
I have been advising people that any new dual or quad processor will suffice - they should instead spend that extra money on buying a better motherboard, speedier RAM, and of course high-speed HDD.
Trust me when I say that just that approach above will yield systems that are actually much faster than coupling an i7/Mega-core behemoth with an old hard-disk and crappy RAM.
It is an altogether different matter that computers are already so speedy that most users cannot for the love of God discern between the speeds of any recent dual-core and a top-of-the-line processor - and it is not their fault -- the advantages now we are talking about are incremental. The power is present but cannot be harnessed. So any gloating is moot.
Re:Cores vs performance (Score:4, Insightful)
Your real-world usage is what exactly? Playing badly designed games?
I want to play badly designed games *while* I am compiling, listening to some music and possibly leaving my browser on with some badly written JavaScript running. I also want my CPU not to melt.
You would need at least a 5GHz CPU to match a current dual-core CPU in this area. The ongoing trend is to have more and more things running and getting updated in real time. An it has been for a long time.
Files getting indexed, illegal files getting downloaded, stupid GUIs getting rendered, music getting played, Interpreted languages getting JIT-compiled ...
Gamers are still stuck in the microcomputer era. The real world isn't. And there isn't really a choice in the first place, the choice is more cores and a better experience or getting stuck at XGHz and having to pipe liquid Hydrogen into your home.
I think we will see more CPUs with more cores and likely more storage units to avoid resource starvation. More speed is just not possible.
Re:Cores vs performance - VMware (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cores is the new MHz (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't know about average joes, but for work, a quad core drops compile jobs from 17 mins to 3.
For home use, I usually pull 40-80% load on 4 cores, so I would say I get good use out it.
Re:I need a new computer (Score:4, Insightful)
watching HD porn of course!
Re:Cores is the new MHz (Score:2, Insightful)
Look I am not against multiple cores - dual or even quad cores are actually beneficial since both the hardware and software can effectively utilize them without a lot of complications. But beyond quad core, I am not convinced.
The only one way I can argue for the need of more than quad cores is to allow for a future unknown resource-intensive application. But for most present day applications, even for Graphics rendering (which by the way - has its own dedicated processor!), spending money on more cores is purely money down the drain.
Parallelization of algorithms is actually not a trivial task at all.
Many programmers discover this fact after innocuously assuming that they can just do it by reading a book or utilizing a library in their otherwise procedural programming paradigm. It is only after they have banged their heads, that many realize that parallelization actually entails a completely different thinking about programming. And these are the lucky programmers.
The worst are the ones who naiively implement utilizing a library and happily go about blissfully ignorant about the issues involved.
Compound this with the fact that most common languages used today (C, C++ etc.) really didn't think of parallelization as an integrated aspect. It is mostly tacked on as an after thought. There is work being done in developing effective strategies for parallel algorithms -- but this work is still very pedantic in nature and you will need a whole new generation of software developers to catch up to that.
What bothers me is not that Intel or AMD are coming out with ever more cores... that is simply an artifact of technological progress. You cannot expect that to stop just because the rest of the world has to catch up.
But the fact that bugs me is that nagging suspicion that we are not really using all the computing power already at our disposal and we are being deluged with more. Simplistic metrics like my program runs faster, ergo more cores = faster is fallacious. It will only be valid as a metric if you change nothing on the computer except the number of cores.
But since processors are packaged with memory controllers, conducting such an experiment is only difficult for regular people. You never know whether it was the improvement in underlying memory interface that got you that extra speed or the tacking of actual cores.
Re:Apps that sleep (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I don't really care for AMD at all (Score:5, Insightful)
Intel started doing a bit more than "cut prices, but also released a huge speed bump" (BTW, remember P3 Coppermine 1.13GHz? ;p ), as shown by recent record-breaking fine from the EU and settlement with AMD (both almost $3 billion total? Supposedly Intel cheated the market for at least that much...imagine what AMD could've done with R&D and fabs if they would have the funds which were otherwise illegally funelled to Intel). The company for which you presumably do care about doesn't really share your enthusiasm for competition...the way they fought, it kept costs higher and quality lower on AMD side.
BTW, "Ok but they were still plenty good chips, they performed well enough for what most people used" in regards to P4 wasn't quite the case with first versions, which were much more expensive and slower than P3s they replaced. Plus lots of unsuspecting people of "CPU must be from Intel" type got Willamette Celerons, which were very castrated, cache-starved (as far as Netburst was concerned)...making them very slow, and a horrible deal.
Re:Holy crap this is old. (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately for AMD there is little money in being the underdog of PC processors. Intels better process technology and income from high end chips like the 6-core i7* means they can set prices on the low-midrange stuff at a level that is comfortable enough for them while being extremely painful for AMD.
*Which unlike most extreme edition chips (which tend to cost a shitload of extra money for a marginal improvement over thier regular counterparts) doesn't seem that bad a deal to me. Afaict it will get you the performance of a lower end dual-quad (and more in processes where only some stages are multithreaded) at a similar CPU cost (2.4 GHz quad core 5500 series chips seem to be about $500 each, the 6-core i7 is about $1000) without the expense of a workstation board and chassis. The dual-quad soloution supports more ram though and has more total cache (though of course in the dual-quad that cache is split between two chips) which will be an advantage in some applications.
Re:Also has nice overclocking prospects (Score:4, Insightful)
Anandtech managed to get a stable 4.0 GHz overclock [anandtech.com] with air cooling. It makes an already great deal all that much better in my opinion.
How is a $299 6 core/6 thread chip [microcenter.com] at 4GHz a better deal than a $199 4 core/8 thread chip [microcenter.com] that can also be overclocked on air to the same speed, and benchmarks far faster at that point?
Re:Serioulsy ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Warning! Car analogy comming up.
Very few things even most on /. would utilize a computer for will only see an Intel advantage maybe 1% of the time.
After all - does using an AMD or Intel chip make any difference rendering /.?
My cars spends some 23 hours a day going 0mph. Yet I'm sure glad it can go over a 100mph when I need it.
Your car analogy is lousy, because my 2000 Toyota Yaris can and does sometimes go 160km/h, and in relative terms it cost me much less than my CPU. If I was buying a car comparable to my CPU, I would be driving an SUV twice the size. Hm, on the other hand, thanks for that analogy, it put things into perspective. Maybe next time I shop for CPUs it will save me some money :)
Re:Transcoding is not common (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand Youtube is filled with people doing HD-video, so I guess it's not such a small fraction of the users anymore, it's very close to mainstream actually.
Re:Holy crap this is old. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:ill pit my i7-920 against any AMD 6 core (Score:3, Insightful)
I have found that it doesn't matter for computer life if you have Genuine Intel, or Authentic AMD.
Want to know the stuff that actually matters?
1: First and foremost a decent PSU. This means the difference between a well made, stable machine versus one where components die of mysterious causes every few months. I have had great luck with Corsairs and Antecs. Just make sure to get one that has significant headroom between the estimated wattage and its rated wattage. Mainly because one of the most reliable ways to feed USB devices power is through hanging them from your machine, and a couple USB PCI cards. When in doubt, find a quiet 1000 watt power supply, and call it done.
2: A decent enclosure. Yes, people talk that cases are cases, so go with the cheapest. However, I've had enclosures last multiple motherboards. So might as well get a case that has rolled metal edges to minimize getting cut, a solid rack for hard disks, etc. Cooling is important, so it can't hurt to get a case that can support multiple fans.
3: Cooling. What can kill a machine is not enough air blowing through it. Getting a case and decent fan setup can make a machine last a long time.
4: Motherboard. Yes, it might be easy to go cheap on this, but this is what is controlling your CPU, and going cheap on this may mean major headaches in the future, especially if something partially works. You want to get a decent name brand motherboard, because the better ones actually have true hardware RAID on board (not hardware-assisted), which allows you to use two drives for your OS.
5: RAM. I've seen people buy pulls and then wonder later on why they keep having subtle problems, until I fire up a RAMtest utility and find areas with problems.
6: This is one thing that is important as everything else, but something not often checked after. A UPS. Unexpected power cut outs are horrific for equipment. Not just software with unexpected downtime, but hardware. Putting your machines on a solid UPS will easily prolong their lives a number of years.
Re:Serioulsy ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Your car analogy is faulty. Let's say you have two cars; an Intel and an AMD. The Intel car cost 50% more and has 25% poorer gas milage. Also it's air conditioner doesn't work as well. It can, however, go 10% faster. Let's say the max speed of the AMD car is 150mph, but the Intel car can hit 165mph. Either speed is well above the speed limit, but it is undoubtedly true that the Intel car is faster.
Which car is better? Unless you have a really good reason to need to go 165mph, I'd rather have the AMD car, honestly. Not for my race car obviously; but for most day to day travel needs the AMD car is cheaper to buy, cheaper to operate, more comfortable, and fast enough by a long margin.
Re:Cores is the new MHz (Score:2, Insightful)
This is a bit of a rant, and I don't really mean to direct it at you, so I apologize if it sounds that way.
Are you suggesting that chipmakers should apply their shiniest new memory controller technology to their 3+ year old processing technology and try to sell that instead of the latest and greatest? To be blunt, the technical community would cry foul. We know better, and would not be satisfied with anything other than their absolute best (at the top of the line). Neither side would dare make that decision, since the competition would simply release all their best tech in one package and annihilate them in every benchmark known, possibly aside from pure memory throughput.
Each use case is a little different. Even generalizations for types of data processing (graphics rendering, compiling, transcoding, etc.) are not as homogenous as they appear. The best solution is to decide what you can afford to spend, then get the best performance and reliability that you can get for that money. Sometimes that means going for 6 cores instead of 2 or 4. Sometimes that means Intel instead of AMD. Sometimes that means an old, cheap processor and a really nice motherboard and power supply.
To slashdot readers in general: I don't know where you get your average joe examples, but the average joe users I know have XP or Vista (eating 1 and 2 cores respectively [yes, I'm in the vista-hater fanboi camp]), heavy-duty antivirus (eating a core and half the hd bandwidth all by itself), and they have purchased dvd backup software and cd ripping software to go with their (or their kids') ipod. They like to watch movies on hulu or netflix, they like to transcode whole dvd's and they get pissed if it takes more than half an hour. They also use big, bloated MS Office to take simple notes. Their kids play flash games, rip cd's, chat, and pretend to do their homework all at the same time. My personal examples are all of people that would benefit more from a 6-core processor than they would from a x% improvement in memory bandwidth. Certainly they would notice a difference in either case, so the best choice would be a chip that has both and that's what AMD is offering. If they had more money than they could possibly spend, sure I'd set them up with a kilowatt PSU and a dual-quad Intel box and a SSD raid and four top of the line graphics cards and 4 big widescreen flatscreen monitors. Of course at that point they could have bought nice AMD systems for every kid on their block and a very nice machine for themselves at the same price.