HEXUS.beans - World Exclusive – AMD Dual Core desktop processor details

[arthurleung]

Yay for dual core...so seriously guys...for an unlimited budgest gaming system, number crunching just no holds bar performance, is a dual opteron better? Or would you think a dual FX would be better? Frankly I dont understand the basic difference between an FX and an Opteron...anyone care to elaborate please?

Dual Core is basically 2 CPUs packed together. But since the 2 Cores are closer to each other and interconnected, the effeciency is a bit higher than 2 CPUs through HT. Clock for Clock, Dual Core is 0~5% faster than 2 Independent processors depending on application used.

Opteron requires ECC+REG memory modules which are more expensive, and Athlon 64/FX does not. Opterons are meant for Workstations and Servers and AFAIK they have a upper multiplier lock unlike the FX.

The ECC+REG memory is slightly slower and is not suitable for overclocking.
Since ECC+REG memory with slow timing is pretty slow compared to Fast DDR500+ type low latency memory, Opterons have 1M Cache each core and A64 only have 512K. A64 Dual Core should have the same performance as Opteron 24x/25x Clock for clock.

[StormPC]

Yay for dual core...so seriously guys...for an unlimited budgest gaming system, number crunching just no holds bar performance, is a dual opteron better? Or would you think a dual FX would be better? Frankly I dont understand the basic difference between an FX and an Opteron...anyone care to elaborate please?

Opteron = 940 Pin, locked multiplier, registered memory, dual core available

FX = 939 Pin (except for FX-51 and some FX-53), unlocked multi, unregistered memory and will NOT be dual core.

For most things a singlecore A64 or FX will be faster. If you crunch or do anything that takes advantage of multiple CPUs then the dualies are great whether it is dual CPUs or dual cores (or even more).

If you are a gamer dualies are not for you (unless you insist on ripping video while playing Doom3).

Also, a correction: Many A64's have 1MB cache also. Someone mistakenly said A64's have only 512k cache. It's actually split about 50/50 depending on the core. NewCastles, Winchesters and a few ClawHammers (very few) have 512k cache. SledgeHammers and most ClawHammers have 1MB cache.

Oh, and ECC Registered DOES overclock very well if it's the highend Corsair stuff, but there is a small latency hit.

[ikonia]

be very interesting to see how gamers rate these.

obviously 2 cores = faster cpu, but previous attempts to run games on dual cpu's could actually prove a lot slower performance based on the games code not being scalable to dual cpu/core configuration as games write code optimised for majority desktop configurations, eg: they would right for i686 instead of P4 and Amd-XP cpu's

Intel's P4 HT technology seems to work with the games ok so this should be interesting to see how the games rate it.

[suryad]

Thanks for all the replies to my question.

I really hope that with various improvements and revisions AMD will be able to have a multicore 3 ghz setup out in the market soon. I have been waiting for a while for AMD to achieve that watermark. I am pretty sure Intel will not scale beyond 4 ghz.

Intel's mobile cores might be able to give the AMD 64 for its money though...just might.

[GuruJockStrap]

Even if games don't take advantage of dual cores, I'm sure you'd feel an improvement by allowing the OS and background apps to use one core and the game to use the other only.

Hell, it would be great if for games one core handles the physics of the game engine and the other core everything else.

[moshpit]

I'm unconvinced of the truth of the HKEPC benchmarks at all. They show the dual core, dual proc 866 beating a single 866 in several gaming benchmarks and that just doesn't make sence at all considering they've always shown better performance on single threaded apps with single CPU's. Aquamark and 3Dmark don't show improvements with multiple CPUs, ever. So why do they on THIS CPU? Does the 866 have something up it's sleeve that's changed the rule of SMP causing games to run a tad slower?

[QuadOpteron]

Maybe I am late to this discussion, but here is a thought. AMD can create great products, but they should name the products better than just following other companies.

Brief History:
Athlon XP sounds like Microsoft Windows XP
Athlon 64 FX ... nVidia, anyone?

And now the Athlon 64 X2 looks very similar to the "X" in Intel PEE's logo.

For those who have not seen the PEE logo, here it is.

[Rys]

I'm unconvinced of the truth of the HKEPC benchmarks at all. They show the dual core, dual proc 866 beating a single 866 in several gaming benchmarks and that just doesn't make sence at all considering they've always shown better performance on single threaded apps with single CPU's. Aquamark and 3Dmark don't show improvements with multiple CPUs, ever. So why do they on THIS CPU? Does the 866 have something up it's sleeve that's changed the rule of SMP causing games to run a tad slower?

I'll answer the gaming question at some point () but before I do, I'd just like to point out that the CPU you'll maybe see as an Opteron x66, such as the 866 on HKEPC, is now an Opteron x75. Slight renaming from AMD, which is confusing some CPU identification tools before the official documentation is launched and they can pick up the OPN data and decipher it correctly.

More on dual-core from us very soon.