AMD Phenom II X4 (AM2+) Pricing revealed!

[roofsniper]

Why are you so convinced i5 will have such a dramatic impact on AMD?

Will the integrated PCIe controller make such a big difference for gaming?

How much better would i5 be for gaming than i7 at the same clock speed?

5%, 10%, 20%????

i7 doesn't compare with deneb. i5 does.

[Zucker2k]

Why are you so convinced i5 will have such a dramatic impact on AMD?

Will the integrated PCIe controller make such a big difference for gaming?

How much better would i5 be for gaming than i7 at the same clock speed?

5%, 10%, 20%????

i5 actually was faster than i7 in a few benches done in this thread: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...ht=core+review

This should answer some of your questions, as it comes from Blauhung:

What he said, i5 boards (was that P55?) only require a single "bridge" chip (Ibex Peak) that pretty much only has functions of a south bridge. There is no longer any north bridge. This reduces the total cost of silicon per board. Add the fact that it's only using 2 channel memmory and then you can reduce the ammount of DIMM slots and traces from/to the socket. Also with far less components on board, the power delivery requirements are dropped way down and you need far fewer expenditures in the way of power delivery circuitry.

Finally, with all these reductions, mobo makers can do this all on 6 layer PCB's rather then 8 cutting costs by a final huge ammount.

So even though the cost per die to manufacture Lynnsfield/Clarksfield is pretty much the same as Bloomfield/Gainstown. The cost of the core i5 platform as a whole is greatly reduced from the end user standpoint.


edit: Oh yeah, and one more thing. I will be willing to bet that at the platform level, we will see on the order of a 10% power reduction between i7 and i5 at equal clock speed's and performance.

[rk7p5]

PII's price may be a little on the high side upon release but as long as it overclocks well i'll be happy. I really like the 790gx mobos performance and their prices. DDR2 prices also really make it exciting to build an amd rig atm. Lots of fun overclocking plus a low entry price =

[Rammsteiner]

So is AMD going with "920" in hopes people get confused and buy AMD instead of i7....

Not sure, could be but to be honest say for your self;

If you buy a PhII 920 for an i7 platform because it was 70 Euro cheaper... Then how much of a stupid are you In such cases people dont even deserve a single transistor

For Deneb and i5, Ive said this a few times, I guess Deneb does make a chance. But this seriously depends on further steppings untill the first i5's come out though. I think Donnie said earlier i5 will be very cheap, I can imagine it wont be priced like i7 but then AMD seriously has to adjust either pricing or steppings to be more competitve. But hey, they've ~9 months to improve things, so lets see what happens

[informal]

People ,just ignore that troll,he'll get bored and go away .

Anyhow,ISA hardware lists Phenom II.

[Shintai]

Why are you so convinced i5 will have such a dramatic impact on AMD?

Will the integrated PCIe controller make such a big difference for gaming?

How much better would i5 be for gaming than i7 at the same clock speed?

5%, 10%, 20%????

HT is the key. i5 is a i7 with dualchannel. But still 8 threads and turbomode. Depending what you do, i5 could easily be 25-50% faster than yorkfield.

AMD might have something to counter it in 2011...maybe. But that would also be the second incarnation of i7 and i5.

[TL1000S]

i5 will be crazy. amd needs to have something whipped up before that comes out. maybe amd needs to think about implementing their own type of HTT.

Do you mean HT as in HyperHthreading?

I agree that ci5 probably will be a lot more interesting than ci7.

[Rammsteiner]

HT is the key. i5 is a i7 with dualchannel. But still 8 threads and turbomode. Depending what you do, i5 could easily be 25-50% faster than yorkfield.

AMD might have something to counter it in 2011...maybe. But that would also be the second incarnation of i7 and i5.

Meh... Well, ain't HT getting a bit old now though?

I can imagine why it'sn on i7, it's designed for a whole other purpose then most of us use it now. But i5 is for desktop, HT barely does a significant thing, at least for gaming. So dont trough the magic stick on the fact it has HT. Integrated PCI-e controller would most likely be more favourable than HT, only for latency though but still.

I dont know when AMD can offer something against i5, although Im wondering if it's needed. Just as i7/i5 could be in 2011 on a better process, so can Deneb have some significant improvements before the actual i5 launch

Time will tell though. Numbers hardly matter anyway, Agena was more a disaster because it couldnt OC very good. OC'ers killing people for a better benchmark number dont like that, go to Intel, average customers read and hear how and what and go with Intel. Now with the improved clocking I think they already gain a whole lot. Having a 4Ghz i7 or Deneb for gaming... Now dont tell me this difference is so significant you'd get an i7 over Deneb

[Shintai]

Meh... Well, ain't HT getting a bit old now though?

I can imagine why it'sn on i7, it's designed for a whole other purpose then most of us use it now. But i5 is for desktop, HT barely does a significant thing, at least for gaming. So dont trough the magic stick on the fact it has HT. Integrated PCI-e controller would most likely be more favourable than HT, only for latency though but still.

I dont know when AMD can offer something against i5, although Im wondering if it's needed. Just as i7/i5 could be in 2011 on a better process, so can Deneb have some significant improvements before the actual i5 launch

Time will tell though. Numbers hardly matter anyway, Agena was more a disaster because it couldnt OC very good. OC'ers killing people for a better benchmark number dont like that, go to Intel, average customers read and hear how and what and go with Intel. Now with the improved clocking I think they already gain a whole lot. Having a 4Ghz i7 or Deneb for gaming... Now dont tell me this difference is so significant you'd get an i7 over Deneb

Even i3 got HT

And saying you wouldnt need anything like i7/i5 etc is like saying you could run anything fine on a K6. Just as dumb as the slower but smoother agument. Also i5s purpose with ondie PCIe is a whole other thing than you think. We talk cheap boards and design. Smaller sizes. And the CPU will be cheap aswell. Tho i7 920 is already extremely cheap.

AMD will need HT and they gonna need it fast. You could end up with a dualcore i3 with HT whooping a deneb. Thats not gonna be fun. Nehalem got higher IPC than Yorkfield. Yorkfield got higher IPC than Deneb. Both Yorkfield and Nehalem outclocks Deneb. And Nehalem utterly destroys Yorkfield in performance not even to mention Deneb. This chip thats behind these 2 already is what gonna carry AMD to 2011. And on 45nm all the way.

Hopefully AMD will have both more cores and HT in 2011 to stay afloat. Even Larrabee got HT like Power, Itanium, Sparc, Atom etc
AMD is more or less the last one without HT, and they desperately needs it.

[Chad Boga]

Shintai - you overestimate HT - it is not such a big deal, yeah there is some performance improvement but HT ain't no winning card

I wonder if HT on Nehalem Dual Cores will be much more effective than it is on Quads, as the real cores on the Quads are probably making the HT still largely superfluous on much of today's software.

Francois/Dr.Who seems pretty convinced AMD needs to implement HT.

[Shintai]

nope, HT efficiency is bound to core design, not to the overall core count
it's happening in the core, not across the whole CPU

thou it could work, at least as a concept, done across the whole cpu, but it would probably be too complicated - IMO in such a scenario a quad should have more efficient HT

it is quite obvious now when intel has integrated the MC and has a hyper transport like interconnect, that the amd bashing horde will catch the only thing amd doesn't have and use as an argument in the ridiculous thread hijacking thats happening all over the forum

A quad have less benefit than a dualcore due to amdahls law. Plus you have less pressure on cache and memory on the DC. And to compare QPI with Hypertransport is almost like comparing hypertransport with FSB...

You seem to like to think very macro oriented and basicly whine.

[Shintai]

it is very relative and too dependent on the workload, I agree that 4 cores will load the cache and the interconnect more than 2 cores, but thats only one of the things that affects HT performance

Another one is diminishing returns with the scaling of cores on software thats dependent on serial execution aswell.

Hence 2 cores will scale better than 4, 4 better than 8 and so on.

[Rammsteiner]

Even i3 got HT

Never heard of i3, then again this doesnt change my mind about HT. It almost sounds like we'll have to see HT threads over New Section for the next 9 months

And saying you wouldnt need anything like i7/i5 etc is like saying you could run anything fine on a K6.

I didnt say you dont need anything like an i7/i5. Maybe you forgot, I almost had one my self.

Also I'd like to see a K6 running any recent game without issues

Just as dumb as the slower but smoother agument.

Did you experience it your self to rightfully say so?

Also i5s purpose with ondie PCIe is a whole other thing than you think. We talk cheap boards and design. Smaller sizes. And the CPU will be cheap aswell. Tho i7 920 is already extremely cheap.

Yes, a relative cheap CPU. Then it needs special DDR3, new board which is only the price of the best boards from previous generation. Yeah, awesome

AMD will need HT and they gonna need it fast. You could end up with a dualcore i3 with HT whooping a deneb. Thats not gonna be fun. Nehalem got higher IPC than Yorkfield. Yorkfield got higher IPC than Deneb. Both Yorkfield and Nehalem outclocks Deneb. And Nehalem utterly destroys Yorkfield in performance not even to mention Deneb. This chip thats behind these 2 already is what gonna carry AMD to 2011. And on 45nm all the way.

I dont know what numbers you read but from my understanding all CPU's are pretty close at an average resolution of 1680x1050, Nehalem sometimes even being beaten by Kentsfield.

Also Nehalem doesnt out clock Deneb thus far, [sarcasm]unless I missed the handpicked super Nehalem from DrWho[/sarcasm]

Only reason why AMD would need HT is servers, nothing else. Only thing that's slightly disappointing is its power consumption. However, I dont care about that stuff, if I'd care I shouldnt have a PC in the first place.

Hopefully AMD will have both more cores and HT in 2011 to stay afloat. Even Larrabee got HT like Power, Itanium, Sparc, Atom etc
AMD is more or less the last one without HT, and they desperately needs it.

Ehm, no. What they need is a more efficient architecture. HT was usefull on dual cores, not on quad cores used in desktops for average usage.

Where people said IMC's were useless on desktops, I think HT is a lot worse.

Spoken about Atom, saw the new Neo CPU's

[Chad Boga]

At one of the better pricing stores in my city, Phenom II has arrived and is priced at :

AMD Phenom II X4 920 $AUD439
AMD Phenom II X4 940 $AUD535

For comparison, the two closet Intel alternatives from the same store as priced at:

INTEL CORE 2 QUAD Q9400 $AUD419
INTEL CORE 2 QUAD Q9550 $AUD515

Actually I'll throw in the lowest i7 too, but obviously it comes with a platform cost penalty:

INTEL CORE i7 920 $AUD468

As the PhII's have just shown up, I would expect their prices will adjust downwards each week that passes.

[Macadamia]

On a side note Chad I always thought you were from Central Europe.

I've seen Aussie prices putting it lower than the respective C2Q models here though, but forgot the exact links.

[Chad Boga]

On a side note Chad I always thought you were from Central Europe.

Nope, never even set foot in Central Europe.(Unless Italy is regarded as Central Europe )

AMD even named a processor core after my city.

[Zucker2k]

Meh... Well, ain't HT getting a bit old now though?

I can imagine why it'sn on i7, it's designed for a whole other purpose then most of us use it now. But i5 is for desktop, HT barely does a significant thing, at least for gaming. Having a 4Ghz i7 or Deneb for gaming... Now dont tell me this difference is so significant you'd get an i7 over Deneb

I'm not exactly sure what you mean, but just because a few games don't benefit from HT doesn't make the technology "a bit old;" especially because the overall benefit, when enabled outweighs the cons in a few games As for gaming, no game ever utilizes a cpu at 100%, so games are not necessarily going to give you a true reflection of the raw processing power of any cpu. If one were building a gaming pc on a budget, then Deneb becomes a true competitor; but even there, C2Q offers a faster and more power efficient and stable platform.

Yes, a relative cheap CPU. Then it needs special DDR3, new board which is only the price of the best boards from previous generation. Yeah, awesome

Well, you make me wonder if AM3 is an upgrade path for current AM2/+ users or not? See? DDR3 is the future, and as usual more expensive than older tech. As for the cost of boards, all you need to do is go to AMD section, where a lot of members are complaining about the finicky boards/components. Sorry about your board and blown mosfets Ramm, but cheaper components always sell cheap. You and a few others have debated the quality of AMD boards enough to make this point moot.

I dont know what numbers you read but from my understanding all CPU's are pretty close at an average resolution of 1680x1050, Nehalem sometimes even being beaten by Kentsfield.

If those are the numbers you choose to concentrate on, then I have news for you - it's called gpu-bound, or gpu-limited. Throw in a second gpu and you'll see that seemingly close numbers disappear fast.

Also Nehalem doesnt out clock Deneb thus far, [sarcasm]unless I missed the handpicked super Nehalem from DrWho[/sarcasm]

Which did 5Ghz on air No, that's the one thing Deneb has proven to be better at than Agena.

Only reason why AMD would need HT is servers, nothing else. Only thing that's slightly disappointing is its power consumption. However, I dont care about that stuff, if I'd care I shouldnt have a PC in the first place.

Should I quote you on that?

Ehm, no. What they need is a more efficient architecture. HT was usefull on dual cores, not on quad cores used in desktops for average usage.

I really don't understand your point; if you don't like HT, disable it. It doesn't impact performance if you do, and you still get all your 4 cores to play with. You're making no sense at all, because nehalem without HT is still unbeatable; unless you want to argue the opposite, in which case you'd be contradicting yourself. Please take those green shades off.

[Brother Esau]

Why has this AMD Thread turned into a Intel Banter Thread yet again?

[Rammsteiner]

I'm not exactly sure what you mean, but just because a few games don't benefit from HT doesn't make the technology "a bit old;" especially because the overall benefit, when enabled outweighs the cons in a few games As for gaming, no game ever utilizes a cpu at 100%, so games are not necessarily going to give you a true reflection of the raw processing power of any cpu. If one were building a gaming pc on a budget, then Deneb becomes a true competitor; but even there, C2Q offers a faster and more power efficient and stable platform.

I didnt mean the technology is getting old in such way, more as that using HT to back up arguments is getting old.

Like "Oh, AMD doesnt have HT, as long as they dont have it they're nowhere" which could also be translated to "Intel's succes is because of HT". In servers prolly, for desktop, no.

I know games do not demand full power from CPU's, but there's seriously only a few things for desktops that really do though, more aiming at media apps. For the rest, it doesnt really matter.

Well, you make me wonder if AM3 is an upgrade path for current AM2/+ users or not? See? DDR3 is the future, and as usual more expensive than older tech. As for the cost of boards, all you need to do is go to AMD section, where a lot of members are complaining about the finicky boards/components. Sorry about your board and blown mosfets Ramm, but cheaper components always sell cheap. You and a few others have debated the quality of AMD boards enough to make this point moot.

My point was more that if you owned say a 775/DDR3 combo now, you would still need new DDR3. Of course DDR3 is the future, sooner than later Ill have it my self. Although at some point I start to dislike all the moves for RAM, it's simply technology which grows, just like sockets etc.

And indeed, quality from AMD motherboards is shocking to say the least. I hope having better cooling on MOSFETs is going to save me from that hell when Deneb arrives. There's however a few also relative cheap boards for AMD, which are SB600 though, which have good quality stuff.

The thing I was aiming at is that even the cheapest motherboards for i7 are still like the same price as the top notch 775 boards. And those top notch 775 boards are a lot better regarding quality than the cheapest i7 boards.

If those are the numbers you choose to concentrate on, then I have news for you - it's called gpu-bound, or gpu-limited. Throw in a second gpu and you'll see that seemingly close numbers disappear fast.

I know, they said so in the review as well (still wondering why there was only a GTX216). However, by adding more/better card(s) would only show Deneb beating Agena very soon and pushing out incredible numbers. Probably it would be beaten by Nehalem, if not then Yorkfield and/or Kentsfield would pick it up anyway, but what does 300fps vs 250fps tell me? I should waste about 1K on new hardware for that extra 50fps? Yes, and I never denied this, Nehalem is a nice thing, but at some point a line has to be drawn. And then if someone jumps up and down screaming Nehalem is that much better Im seriously wondering what the point is of that.

Which did 5Ghz on air No, that's the one thing Deneb has proven to be better at than Agena.

5Ghz on air, no LN2 results? Meh, although 5Ghz on air is nice though.

As Ive said before, if only Deneb brought better clocks, leaving IPC/DDR3 increases out of it, it still would be a massive gain for AMD. OC'ers would be more likely to get a Phenom II CPU, tweaking and messing with it and when they're done enjoy it. Whether you've a 4Ghz Nehalem, Yorkfield or Deneb, I seriously doubt if you're going to notice anything from that apart from your wallet.

Quite some people who actually do almost nothing with PC's who are looking to get one wont see all the negativism around AMD and are more likely to get one again.

And as you said, compared to Agena, Deneb is going to be awesome.

Should I quote you on that?

Sure, I dont see much wrong with it. I think the benefits from HT are due to the lack of efficient core connections/communication, since adding more cores seem to be the new hype for Intel and AMD the true benefit from HT will only become less. Over a few years they'll either hype about Mhz or IPC again or maybe do something about efficiency from the connections/communication among cores.

I really don't understand your point; if you don't like HT, disable it. It doesn't impact performance if you do, and you still get all your 4 cores to play with. You're making no sense at all, because nehalem without HT is still unbeatable; unless you want to argue the opposite, in which case you'd be contradicting yourself. Please take those green shades off.

I dont hate HT. If I had it I would use it. mWhat I was saying, quite clear I think, is that HT is a useless argument where Intel's succes and/or AMD's drawbacks come from.

If you had an architecture which has a good IPC, good clocks and efficient communication with the other cores and RAM, HT wouldnt be needed and wouldnt show an advantage.

That's how I see it though, not a fact

PS Leave those immature 'green blabla' out of posts man, doesnt do you much good, Im used to it now and only makes me ROFL instead

[Cooper]

I think price discussion is over