Watch out Intel, there's an uprising in Barcelona...

[HEXUS]

With the launch of AMD's much-anticipated Barcelona native quad-core processor around one month away, we were invited to London to pick the brains of Felipe Payet about why he thinks Intel should be worried.

Felipe came away brain intact (he's a tall guy, we couldn't reach) and so we took solace in some tasty morsels of information instead.

Read more.

[Biscuit]

One month.... is this particualy likely? I seem to recall AMD drawing out the release date fro the 2900xt for god knows how long. Lets hope the barcelona does better because tbh, i dont particualy wanna move to intel.

Have they made any comment about how they will deal with DDR3?

[DR]

I don't think they are doing anything to mislead anyone... they are making these claims, and you can be assured that HEXUS will be following every movement... and judging them from these claims

[funnelhead]

in my opinion, given AMDs horrible finances since Core2 Duo/quad came out..... if the barcelona chips really were amazing, they would have been shouting it from the rooftops for months now, trying to put people off buying that £165 quad-core.

Since they've been relatively silent... either they're mad or barcelona isnt a quad killer.

Personally i think both.


f

[BrianS]

Is this actually worth waiting for (unlike the 2900 HD they hyped up last time) I'm just about to put down £1100+ on a Q6600 system, should I wait?

[Biscuit]

Is this actually worth waiting for (unlike the 2900 HD they hyped up last time) I'm just about to put down £1100+ on a Q6600 system, should I wait?

That depends on what you have now & if it does what you want. If you dont REALLY need to upgrade then there is no harm in waiting to see how things pan out. However, if you want to go C2D i dont think you will be overly dissapointed when the new AMD chips are out as its not going to be quite demolisher that the K8 was over p4.

[kalniel]

Have they made any comment about how they will deal with DDR3?

This chip doesn't. There are new chips with DDR3 controllers.

I think with Barcelona AMD will have stopped the recent rot, but they won't be taking the lead. Keeping to three issue width is particularly disappointing.

Bulldozer is what Barcelona should have been, and that will beat the core architecture. But then I'm really looking forward to Nehalem and I think that'll probably keep the lead with Intel by some way.

[Sinizter]

I dont think its going to revolutionise anything. Just an AMD evolution after Intel got there first.

But I would like AMD to do well with these processors for two reasons
- Keep the pressure on Intel, so that prices are lowered
- Give Intel a reason to bring out faster processors quicker

I will buy AMD if I havent got my desktop built yet and the performance and power consumption is better. But I am not going to delay building my desktop over this. If its there I will consider it, if its not I already know what Intel processor I will be using.

[Blitzen]

I dont think the Head Honchos at Intel are going to lose alot of sleep over this news.

AMD have been so far behind Intel recently (ATI dragging them down probably) that its a gimmick for the AMD fans.

[DR]

The market cap is what gets me - AMD were 9.xBillion, ATI were 5Billion - combined you would expect other side of 15B but no - they are 8.2 billion at the moment...

[redlight]

I think they may be a bit more worried than they are letting on.
Dropping the price of quads so much before the AMD launch seems to be to grab the punters money before they have time to compare cpus.
I know if I buy Intels quad I wont be able to shift again this side of Christmas.

[Blitzen]

I think they may be a bit more worried than they are letting on.

You think?

For well over a year now, AMD/ATI haven't been doing a great deal.
The things that they have been putting to the market are average compared to their Intel/Nvidia counterparts.

The balance is bound to swing at some point...it always does......but certainly for the next year at least, AMD/ATI will play definitely second fiddle i think.

[badass]

I would expect Barcelone to see off the Intel equivalents where opterons do currently, and to lag behind a fair bit where they currently do.
I rekon running Exchange clusters with tens of thousands of users, barcelona will wipe the floor with anything Intel can throw at them until Nehalem.
However I expect Phenom to be playing second fiddle to Core 2 Quad in games and other applications that are not so memory intensive.

[Clunk]

Lets hope the barcelona does better because tbh, i dont particualy wanna move to intel.

Is there a particular reason for not wanting to use Intel?

[redlight]

You think?

For well over a year now, AMD/ATI haven't been doing a great deal.
The things that they have been putting to the market are average compared to their Intel/Nvidia counterparts.

The balance is bound to swing at some point...it always does......but certainly for the next year at least, AMD/ATI will play definitely second fiddle i think.

You think?

[drunkenmaster]

well i for one am very happy someone finally pointed out, and maybe it should have been in bold, that the power ratings don't include northbridge mem controller on intel systems, which is what a pretty large portion of the northbridge power consumption is down to on intel systems.

When we all went ath 64 suddenly chipset cooling was really not at all important, on nf2, and intel p4 setups cooling the norty was massively important, as it is for the very highest fsb clocks on core 2 duo systems.


I have to say i was a little surprised to see 3Ghz Barcelona's demo'd that should see the light of day(i would assume as a FX branded cpu sometime in nov/december) this year. i've been guessing that firstly, you have to ignore the speed's opto's demo at, like the K8 opto's demo'ing at 1.4Ghz shortly before release. I would assume that desktop will be launching with chips probably up to 2.5Ghz, and people have been saying for a while, and it looks entirely possible, that a 2.5Ghz could beat a 3Ghz kentsfield, probably even their 3.33ghz penryn that was benched on hexus. I can't see a penryn beating barcelona. as for are intel worried? why else would you annouce expected release speeds for server chips on the next core, because you think you know roughly what speeds AMD are bringing out , but refuse to post info on speeds of any of the desktop range, due out after barcelona. Looks to me, and the world, like Intel don't know how AMD will compete, and even think they might have to pump up their speeds to compete.

I would assume that AMD will simply be faster, Intel will play the numbers game, as in, we have 545 fab's, AMD have 4, we'll sell our quads for a number you simply can't compete with. Now, some people buy for the pure performance and damn the money, most people buy on value.

the other problem is, jumping to 2 cores , then 4 put us massively ahead of the software need for power. there just aren't any games that will show a big enough difference between a £60 dual core and a £600 quad core at the moment, or for a while. since the home market is mostly gaming + internet + movies, gaming is where you want power.