“When I attended AMD technology day last Thursday, senior AMD managers poked fun at Intel’s NetBurst architecture and the fact that Intel will be “going back to their previous generation architecture, and that would be an improvement”. Most of the industry analysts in attendance began to laugh in the room and I couldn’t quite figure out what’s so funny and if they would still be laughing next month when Intel’s Core2 architecture is released,” George Ou writes for ZDNet.
“Last Friday when I saw the first set of independent benchmark results pitting a mid-end Intel E6600 ‘Conroe’ 2.4 GHz CPU (due next month) against the just released flagship extreme edition AMD FX-62 CPU, I started wondering if AMD worst nightmare was coming true. Intel’s ~$250 E6600 CPU annihilated AMD’s ~$1000 Extreme Edition AM2 based FX-62! This effectively means that AMD’s flagship desktop performance CPU will be obsolete by the end of next month when Intel released the CPUs codenamed Conroe. The 2.4 GHz Conroe E6600 CPU is a 65 watt part while Intel’s Extreme Edition Conroe CPU will operate at 2.93 GHz and still be 40 watts lower than AMD’s FX-62 which runs at 120 watt TDP. AMD’s power advantage over Intel’s current Pentium 4 NetBurst architecture just vanished in to thin air with the introduction of Intel’s Core 2 architecture next month,” Ou writes. “If that wasn’t enough of a beating, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes who writes for our new “Hardware 2.0” blog linked to these phenomenal overclocking feats with the Conroe 2.4 and Conroe 2.6 GHz CPUs clocking to 4.0 GHz and 4.26 GHz respectively! I’m hearing that these kinds of numbers can be achieved with self-contained water coolers from multiple sources while the AMD FX-62 can barely get to 3.6 GHz with sub-zero temperatures.”
“AMD pointed out that they’ve been ahead of the game for 3 years (on most benchmarks and the results were always close) and it’s inevitable for Intel to have a slight lead once in a while. The problem here is that this new Intel lead is not the usual leapfrogging where one competitor edges out the other, it’s a massive lead across the board,” Ou writes. “The Core 2 architecture will only be around for 2 more years until Intel shifts to something new. I asked Intel’s representative if this is the kind of paranoia that would make Andy Grove proud and he laughed. The truth of the matter is that AMD is what’s making Intel paranoid because they’ve taken a beating for the last 2 years at the hands of AMD. Who’s going to win the processor wars doesn’t matter because this is competition at its best and the consumer is the ultimate winner with better products at lower prices so let the wars begin!”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “LinuxGuy” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: Capitalism at its finest. Wouldn’t it be nice to see such paranoia on the part of Microsoft in regard to their flag-crate Windows? Get a Mac, force Microsoft to attempt to make a better Windows (without copying Apple’s work for once, please). And, then, may the best platform win (for a change). Anyway, it certainly sounds like Apple picked the right horse in the processor race; the one with massive resources that also has the renewed will to win.
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Related articles:
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Apple makes Intel Think Different; Mac-maker influencing Intel’s product roadmap – June 06, 2006
Intel says Core 2 Duo will ‘enable breakthrough performance’ – June 06, 2006
Report: Apple nears Xserve, ‘Mac Pro’ Intel switch – June 01, 2006
Intel gets aggressive on next-gen rollout schedules: Merom MacBook Pros, Conroe Power Macs, more – May 03, 2006
“But now I read that Sony has run into a disastrous design bug that slows down reads of the locally, per core, memory by three orders of magnitude, making the Cell a failure. What is the truth? We will have to wait for it to be sorted out.” – LinuxGuy
This has been discussed at /. and apparently the article was an exaggeration. Cell is intended for PS3 game consoles and it only needs to write to the memory very fast so that the data can be rendered on the screen. It does not need to read from that part of memory. Why does Cell need to read what’s going to be rendered on the screen? The data will be useless once the image appears on the screen anyhow.
Where is “Odyssey67” when you need him? Just goes to show you that Apple knows technology and where it is headed.
This guy writes for ZDNet? Man, is he ever in desperate need of a proofreader. I know it’s just a blog, but wow. Some of those passages border on unreadable. I guess it’s true — anyone can be a “journalist” these days.
Already old news today… check AMD’s announcements from this morning. AMD is catching up. Once both chips are out, we will see which is faster, but whatever Intel may be ahead today, in a couple months the opposite may be true. Then repeat. Intel was probably the right choice for Apple right now… maybe permanently. Doesn’t much matter in the long run. AMD is not going anywhere. They have 30% of the processor market NOW, and GROWING. Relax. Enjoy the fast computers and the processor competition driving them faster and cheaper at the same time. Good times ahead for all… Windows users, Mac users… for everyone.
KaramaData, meet MacDude.
MacDude, KaramaData.
Here is an analogy for you:
Microsoft: McDonalds;
Apple: In&Out;
Microsoft can say “Billions of Burgers Sold.”
Apple can say “Yeah, But Our Burgers Taste Good.”
MacDailyNews Take: “Capitalism at its finest. Wouldn’t it be nice to see such paranoia on the part of Microsoft in regard to their flag-crate Windows? “
Right on brother – you preach the word from the depths of your soul. I am right in this grove with you MDN.
I think I meant I’m in the “groove with you.” Anyway… So much for my preaching career.
Posting this here just in case (and it is more relevant to this thread):
Want to know more about the new Intel Core 2 Duo that will be used in up and coming Macs? Loyd Case (and this guy is an EXPERT) talks about it on DL.TV episode 67 here:
http://gearlog.com/blogs/digitallifetv/archive/2006/06/07/13443.aspx
*** Fast forward in to 8:00min if you don’t care about the other stuff
4 instructions per clock cycle, 4MB L2 cache, SSE in one cycle instead of two (video encoders will be happy about this) and more. Very interesting stuff. He also tells a bit about AMD’s newest offerings and sort of does an opinion comparison. About a 5 min long segment but very interesting.
Apart from effectively being able to put a G5 in a laptop (which is a huge thing, admittedly), I am still waiting to see the promised fruits of the intel switch.
The low power usage roadmap was alleged by Steve to enable Apple to produce all sorts of products we would never have previously imagined.
Any ideas? I am still a bit confused, I have to admit.
^^^^ Brad, I have to agree with you, but it is still VERY early in the Intel switch. Personally, I wish they would have stuck with PPC, but I don’t run the company nor know the “inside info” that made them go with Intel. Right now it’s wait and see. I still hate to see the PPC go, considering IBM was already making the next generation of the chip (G6?) after the G5 was anounced. The tech industry is a crazy world – you never know what’s going to happen next.
NewMacDude: I’m here – just a few days behind catching up on my reading
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Namely, I’ve been reading up on Merom/Conroe/Woodcrest. Things are a lot more promising on this core version than was the case with Yonah, but these preliminary benchmarks aren’t worth anything. For one, Intel and Intel fanbois have had way too big a hand in their implimentation. Tin foil hat be damned, the fact is Intel has a horrible track record of rigging this stuff, so these results just can’t be trusted yet.
Two, the huge caches on these CPUs will skew certain results, not giving a true idea of what’s capable under the hood. For example gaming benchmarks; typically games are single threaded (high clockspeed friendly) and feed info into the CPU at sizes that fit well within these exaggerated caches Intel is running now. If the CPU never has to leave cache, to go to main memory for info, then that’s hardly a good test to see how the CPU performs across the widest performance range. When caches were smaller, gaming was a fine benchmark b/c things like memory latency (which affected the whole system) were exposed as good or bad too. Plus, with most programs being rewritten for multicore/threads, single core intensive gaming benchmarks just aren’t as representative of potential real world gains anymore.
Last, Intel still has a huge problem with it’s mobo based FSB. It’s not only slow, but apparently it’s an energy hog too. Also, word is these FBDIMMs Intel is pushing are going to be a real turkey – the second coming of RAMBUS. Since they’ll also support DDR2, lets hope Apple stays as far away from it as possible. However, Intel hasn’t announced support for DDR3 at all, while AMD has, and that’s expected to be a much better performer. So in some very important ways, Intel is behind the 8Ball in the long term.
In the near term, Conroe will probably put a hurtin on AMDs current AM2 K8s, but that will be mitigated by very limited availability and – probably – much higher prices (not to mention that the current K8s won’t be the best available by the time Conroe is available in numbers that matter).
Speaking of prices, this is going to be a problem for Apple, as I’ve said countless times before. Intel is going to have to make up revenue from their Netburst firesale somewhere, and I’d expect a high performing Core2 to demand a lot of coin. due to the limited numbers being made, even preferential buyers probably won’t get too much of a break. The other reason is that Intel will only have this high ground to itself for a limited time. Bt the time the K8L hits, I think we’ll see a very swift swing back in AMDs favor. DELL forsees this as well, which is why they gave up their exclusive Intel deal. So Intel will leverage it’s moment in the sun for it’s best financial advantage.
Basically, as I see it, all AMD really has to do is widen the data pathway for their SSE instructions to 128bit, and maybe tweak their integer and FP registers a little, and they will have done everything Intel has of any consequence. Cache sizes are already expected to rise, though they won’t need to match Intel MB for MB. After that, all of AMDs other longstanding architectual advantages should simply reassert themselves & put them back on top.
In the meantime, my best advice is don’t get too complacent Mac Fans.
PS – I’ll say it again; the financial costs of going to Intel are not going to be worth the performance gains. None of these developments are things that weren’t/aren’t being done on the PPC side, among ALL the players. Apple knew this, which just goes to show that performance wasn’t what Jobs saw the future of the company being tied to. He went with Intel for DRM and how that would help him create a multimedia, video paradigm. His (IMHO) miscalculation, that technological lockdown will be more important in that arena than technological innovation, is his Big Mistake.
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