HEXUS.beans :: AMD Athlon 64 FX-64 Launch date?

[DR]

AMD raised the performance bar by launching its AM2 Athlon FX-62 back on the 23rd May and at the time we said it would have to do something special to compete with Intel's Conroe, which we exclusively reported about here. It looks like this ramp in performance is AMD's best shot at the moment against the big, bad Intel processor.

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=5990

[sawyen]

So the FX-64 is a 3.0Ghz Athlon64? Havent we already shown that the current hammer wont have anything majorly threatening against Conroe even with a speed bump all the way to 3.2Ghz?

Unless AMD have something else they havent told us.. or perhaps a driver update that allows 40% performance increase..

[MadduckUK]

Originally Posted by sawyen

or perhaps a driver update that allows 40% performance increase..

Hmm nope i think not. K8L had better hurry the hell up

[ExceededGoku]

40% driver update

[Steve B]

not to mention a retail price of $999. More than double the price of conroe...?

[Noli]

it simply won't be enough for AMD if what all the conroe previews have said is true (which is likely given the substantial amount of corroborating evidence. Can only hope for K8 as someone said. CPU and GPU manufacturers sometimes leapfrog past one another and this time intel wins, which is fine - it's been a while...

[Veles]

Originally Posted by Noli

it simply won't be enough for AMD if what all the conroe previews have said is true (which is likely given the substantial amount of corroborating evidence. Can only hope for K8 as someone said. CPU and GPU manufacturers sometimes leapfrog past one another and this time intel wins, which is fine - it's been a while...

Has no-one heard the rumours of the false claims given by intel, and that anything that uses more memory than the 4Mb of cache on the chip (basically every program) will not show the claimed 40% speed bost.

Those rumors may have been dispelled though, but I havn't heard anything to deny that fact.

[awm]

I think clock bumps will rarely propel one archetecture beyond another. Look at Netburst, it would take alot of 1X bumps on the multiplier to have it surpass the K8 archetecture, just now the tables are turned. When you think about it a 200 Mhz increase is less than 10% which will do little to counteract a significanty better archeture (though Intel needs to get around to an onboard memory controller).

[rad]

I am starting to think that conroe is not going to be that great.
I have just had another look at some benchmarks.

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/91...a_r/index.html

On FEAR at 640 x 480 the Conroe X6800 extreme scores 109 FPS and the FX 62 scores 103 FPS.
At higher resolutions the difference will be even smaller.

I know that conroe has a killer super pi score, but who cares really.
I think for most people, games are the reason they upgrade their computer, and anyway, who plays games at 640 x 480 ?
I am confident Conroe will still outperform AMD, but not by much in games, espescially at high resolution (eg 1600 x 1200).
My prediction is that it will only be 5-10%.
Anyway I hope I am wrong, and if I am right at least there is going to be a good reduction on cpu pricing, for us consumers.

Rad

[awm]

AMD's archetecture has always been strong in games, so does that mean that if Conroe can beat it it's even better in everything else? Dunno really, but it's something to think about, proably boils down into the nitty gritty of the pipeline, prediction, and memory (cache and main memory).

[DeMilo]

Originally Posted by rad

I am starting to think that conroe is not going to be that great.
I have just had another look at some benchmarks.

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/91...a_r/index.html

I don't have too much trust in this 'benchmark' to be honest. Hardware used (excluding the chip) wasn't even specified.

I think we are gonna need to see some 'real' benchmarks when the conroe chips are released. Although i trust Hexus, i feel the benchies in august will probably come out different to previously published. I Hope the conroe is as good as expected, Nice to see intel thinking about performance over green notes....

[kalniel]

Originally Posted by Steve B

not to mention a retail price of $999. More than double the price of conroe...?

More like the same price as the conroe extreme edition. Extreme edition and FX chips are set apart from the rest as you get no multiplier lock, the best binned parts etc. Whether the FX is competative with the EE conroe, or indeed other conroe members is another matter. The pentium 4 EE's weren't especially competative with the AMD solutions, so the shoe is likely to just be on the other foot for a while. *Shrugs* it swaps around all the time.

[Veles]

Well I'm not expectiong anything from the K8 family to be a conroe killer, nor do I think AMD indended them to be (same for thier new AM2 platform, that was just a late upgrade to DDR2 when the DDR2 market had some good stuff to be had).

Ireally doubt AMD are sitting on thier arses just doing clock speed bumps like intel used to do, I'm sure they're working on something new to rival conroe.

[Robert]

If AMD think they can win this round by launching a processor that the vast majority of people will just turn away from due to it's high cost, they'd better think again. What a shocking piece of business.

"Oh I know, we'll introduce a stupidly high cost CPU to compete against a whole range of processors ranging from $200."

[kalniel]

Originally Posted by Robert

If AMD think they can win this round by launching a processor that the vast majority of people will just turn away from due to it's high cost, they'd better think again. What a shocking piece of business.

Er.. they won't. It's called a flagship product, like the quad SLI systems from NVidia or the $999 EE from Intel. It's not pitched at the majority - they'll be selling their $200 AM2 parts for the majority.

[Robert]

Yes, but AM2 isn't exactly that competitive to the conroe is it?