AMD: Barcelona "introduction" at end of Q2, in market Q3

An interview with Hector Ruiz and Henri Richard.

You've got to love a reporter who asks direct questions:

CRN: What will be the performance of Barcelona vs. Intel's quad-core?

RICHARD: It's in the speculation stage. [But] we know that we expect performance gains in the 40 percent to 70 percent range, and we know the scalability of our architecture is better than the competition. And it's no secret they have to introduce a new architecture at some point, so we know Barcelona will perform exceptionally well and will be outperforming the competition. The program is on track, .

RUIZ: The best measure of whether Barcelona is going to be good, great or fantastic is really our customers, and the feedback from them is so strong.

CRN: When will Barcelona ship?

RICHARD: It's slated for introduction at the end of the second quarter and will be in the market in the third quarter.

Those performance gains of 40 to 70 percent are probably rev. G quad-core vs. rev. F, which is what they've been saying all along.

40 to 70 percent? And still a 30% gap which doesn't make a whole lot of sense right now to be technical. Ok then, if this is remotely true we should see some (leaked) benchmarks within the next few weeks. Hopefully, they will be held here on this forum.

thats awesome

i wnana see some benchies as intel + crossfire = not so good of a future

and intel quad core + 680i = no fsb above 310fsb for aircooling

so mutli GPU + quad core is hard to choose

so yeah i hope K8L has good overclocking headroom. with conroe ur seeing chips OCing 50% at least

I want to see some K8L OC'd vs. OC'd Kentsfields/Conroe. Hopefully AMD gets its act back together and delivers some serious competition to the market.

It's k10 isn't it?

k8l is a low energy k8, iirc?

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Originally Posted by 3NZ0

It's k10 isn't it?

k8l is a low energy k8, iirc?

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understatement of the year. Think major upgrade and massive improvements

i hope they deliver what they promise..in fact i hope they understated themselves and over deliver.

Then it'll put Intel on it's feet...dang nabbit, i won't be able to upgrade for another 2 years..i gotta wait till the dust settles and their's a defined winner.

AMD Quad Core @ 3.0Ghz + SLI'ed Geforce 8900 GTX's + 4 GB's of DDR2 RAM...mmm I can't wait!

awwww :banana::banana::banana::banana:.... I hate to bring this up, But What does Conroe do V K8 clock for clock, is it 30% faster than K8? If so, than were looking at 10% to 50% faster than Conroe?

Very interesting.

~Mike

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Originally Posted by 3NZ0

It's k10 isn't it?

k8l is a low energy k8, iirc?

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It's not clear what this generation of cores should be called. The Inquirer has called it K8L, then Rev. H, then K10.

As far as I know, AMD has never given any official name to the set of processors based on the new cores. It sure would help if they did.

They have given names to the individual processors. The first of these will be Barcelona.

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CRN: What will be the performance of Barcelona vs. Intel's quad-core

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RICHARD: It's in the speculation stage. [But] we know that we expect performance gains in the 40 percent to 70 percent range, and we know the scalability of our architecture is better than the competition.

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I'm sorry, but am I reading this wrong? From what it says from the OP it looks to me like the 40-70% will be over Kentsfield since isn't that "Intel's Quad-Core"?

Some one I know who works at AMD said we'll see ES with benchmarks before launch. He wouldn't say anything else, except that AMD will be back.

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Originally Posted by oldblue

It's not clear what this generation of cores should be called. The Inquirer has called it K8L, then Rev. H, then K10.

As far as I know, AMD has never given any official name to the set of processors based on the new cores. It sure would help if they did.

They have given names to the individual processors. The first of these will be Barcelona.

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Actually, Henry Richard did refer to the new architecture as 'K8L' in his interview with digitimes.com....
http://www.digitimes.com/bits_chips/a20060314PR200.html

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Originally Posted by Chris Hall, DigiTimes.com, Taipei Tuesday 14 March 2006

Q: AMD has indicated it will have major announcements at Computex Taipei, in June. Would a new core be something you'll be announcing at Computex?

A: Well, if we’re going to be more open about 2007 plans, I think Computex would be a good time to start saying a little more about it since that’s where we are introducing our AM2 new infrastructure. That's not to say we're going to present K8L at Computex – don't get me wrong – but I think that that would be a good time to start to disclose more about the future because one of the strong attributes of our roadmap, both in 2006 and 2007, is socket compatibility. The nice thing we're going to do is to deliver to customers. Whatever improvements K8L will provide, they will be applicable to some of the sockets we will be introducing. Therefore, there's a certain logic, to my mind, in disclosing more at that time.

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Originally Posted by EternityZX9

I'm sorry, but am I reading this wrong? From what it says from the OP it looks to me like the 40-70% will be over Kentsfield since isn't that "Intel's Quad-Core"?

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When they say "performance gains", I don't think they mean "performance advantage." I think they mean that this is the amount by which their performance will improve. This is consistent with the numbers they put up at the Virtual IT Experience. Skip ahead to 2:30 to 2:40. That's where the 40% and 70% probably come from.

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Originally Posted by VulgarHandle

Actually, Henry Richard did refer to the new architecture as 'K8L' in his interview with digitimes.com....
http://www.digitimes.com/bits_chips/a20060314PR200.html

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That's true, but it's only after the Digitimes interviewer said, "There have been reports, notably on The Inquirer website, that AMD will in fact return fire with its own new core in 2007, the K8L." I believe Richard was just repeating the terminology that the reporter was familiar with.

More recently, in the Virtual IT experience there was a chat session in which an AMD representative said, "K8L is not a real product - this was something that was created as a guess by the Inquirer." And then there is this. AMD refers to the first quad core processor as "Barcelona," but I still don't know what to call the new family of processors.

Let me get this straight. Isn't the "Barcelona" version of the K8L/K10 a socket F+ Opteron? And the "Agena" (quad-core) and "Kuma" (dual-core) are desktop versions of K8L/K10, right? Isn't "Agena" a socket F+ too?

If so, will mobo makers be releasing socket F+ mobos in Q3 for the destop?

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Originally Posted by xenolith

Let me get this straight. Isn't the "Barcelona" version of the K8L/K10 a socket F+ Opteron?

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Barcelona is an Opteron, rumored to be socked F+, and definitely compatible with socket F. Here's the official server roadmap.

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Originally Posted by xenolith

And the "Agena" (quad-core) and "Kuma" (dual-core) are desktop versions of K8L/K10, right? Isn't "Agena" a socket F+ too?

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To my knowledge, AMD has revealed very little about the desktop K8L generation. Even the code names are just rumor at this point.

With that said, metro.cl recently dropped this. (Thanks metro!) So according to rumor we would have

Agena FX: Socket F+
Agena: AM2+.

I think it would be similar to how we currently have

FX-7x: Socket F
X2: AM2

Thanks oldblue. Agena FX w/Socket F+ and Agena w/AM2+ makes sense to me now.

Damn I wish AMD would leak some benchies or start sending out ES samples soon. I just hope this Quad Core chip is as good as AMD says it will be. I remember back in the day when everyone was waiing for the first A64 benchmarks:D and look how well K8 turned out.

bah! Now another thing giving me buyers remorse even before i buy... darn it!

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Originally Posted by LOE

That means 40% faster in some apps, faster in other apps, up to 70%

I don't think 40-70% faster than core 2 quad is possible, but 40-70% faster than K8 is somewhat doable.

Dunno bout you but I cant wait for some benches, I want to get a new workstation and want to know if its worth waiting

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IT'S AMD :stick:

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Originally Posted by LOE

That means 40% faster in some apps, faster in other apps, up to 70%

I don't think 40-70% faster than core 2 quad is possible, but 40-70% faster than K8 is somewhat doable.

Dunno bout you but I cant wait for some benches, I want to get a new workstation and want to know if its worth waiting

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40-70% faster than the COMPETITION. He's talking about Intel Quad-Core :stick:

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Originally Posted by LOE

I think he isn't, if you try thinking harder you will get it.

Here is the original:



Now let me break it down a bit:

The question
CRN: What will be the performance of Barcelona vs. Intel's quad-core?

The answer
RICHARD: It's in the speculation stage.




He says GAIN - GAINING is adding to what you already have. That means they expect 40-70% improvement compared to K8

If he indeed wanted to say 40-70% better than kentsfield, he would say they expect 40-70% performance LEAD, or ADVANTAGE

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Maybe you're right :(

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Originally Posted by oldblue

You've got to love a reporter who asks direct questions:

Those performance gains of 40 to 70 percent are probably rev. G quad-core vs. rev. F, which is what they've been saying all along.

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A direct and clear question, a direct a clear response and still you manage to take the wrong conclusion... The 40 to 70 percent is against the Intel Quadcore, not against Intel dual core, not against a imaginary AMD rev.F quadcore.

On topic, it's hard to believe the 40 to 70 percent to be true... personally i dont' believe it.

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Originally Posted by LOE

He says GAIN - GAINING is adding to what you already have.

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What you already have, is a Intel quadcore in the market, a Intel quadcore that was the subject of the question. :fact:

"In the speculation stage"... well if it's 40 to 70% faster than the K8, we just need to do the math, to know how much faster it will be against c2d, so where's the speculation?