NudgeCast 2/11/09

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Thoughts on the DTV transition (or not), the latest from AMD, and moving on from the Atom processor.

Download the mp3 here.

NudgeCast 12/10/08

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Miscellaneous thoughts on the netbook, and the Atom processor that powers it.

Download the mp3 here.

AMD's Phenom

I've been a serious fan of AMD, and owned their chips for quite some time, to the exclusion of Intel. My recollection of the chips I've owned from them includes a K6-200, a K6-475, an Athlon XP-M 2200+, an Athlon XP 2800+, an Athlon 64 3800+, and most recently an Athlon X2 5200+. The last Intel chip I owned was a Pentium 200MMX- seriously.

Anyway, despite all of AMD's "trash talkin'," their Phenom simply doesn't deliver on any promise at this point. As I see it, they're in serious trouble if they have a guy like me seeing their only option as a Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Quad, both Intel products. I've been seeing early benchmarks, but I always wait a while to see if it holds true, which it has.

I was particularly intrigued when I saw this data over on Tom's Hardware. I was also comparing a new Phenom to my nearly year old X2 5200+. I see no compelling reason to upgrade from an X2 to a Phenom as on many benchmarks it's simply not much better, even with an overclock. To really juice up the performance, an Intel Quad chip is needed, starting with a Q6600 or higher.

So where does AMD go from here? After a year of "wait till next year"just being completed, we're in for yet another year of this. If AMD doesn't get their act together, and real soon, this just might become a one horse race.

Jonas

Tricycle of a Chip

We'll all waited with great anticipation for AMD's latest Phenom processor. In all likelihood, the very future of the company depends on it being a hit. While it really is intended as a quad core processor, there will also be dual core, and even tricore versions available. It has been postulated that perhaps the yields on this complicated piece of silicon are pretty poor, and this is a way to sell a chip with three of the cores functioning well, and not have to toss it into the bin. I've even seen forum postings about users planning to do the "new overclock:" reenabling a disabled core.

We've been talking about this new type of quad core, which connects all of the cores with each other for over a year now. The first benchmarks have been coming in, and well, they're less than impressive on the quad core. How might a tricore perform?

AMD hasn't sent any of these tricore chips out to anyone, but that's not stopping some clever Germans. It's always a little presumptive to try and simulate performance, but I think it does give a useful glimpse into what might be. Recall that for a chip that doesn't exist, I'm sure the motherboard, nor the benchmarks are quite optimized to take advantage of a three core processor. That said, here's their test setup. They clocked an AMD Phenom chip at 2.3 GHz, the fastest clock speed of introduction. They benchmarked it using all four cores, then with three cores, and finally with only two cores active. They threw in an Athlon X2 4400+ (which runs at the same 2.3 GHz speed), also clocked at 2.3 GHz, and Intel's cheapest quad core, the Q6600 for good measure. (Realize that the Intel quad's native clock speed is 2.4 GHz giving it a small speed advantage. The purist in me thinks they should have underclocked it to the identical clock speed, but it's still pretty close.)

Anyway, the results of their three benchmarks can be seen here. There's a nice performance progression between the Phenom running two cores, three cores and four cores, which is not too surprising. What is disappointing is that the Phenom on two cores is only marginally faster than an Athlon X2 which is hardly a cutting edge chip. What's also even more disappointing is that Intels' Quad, the Q6600 clearly leads the pack all around.

So, what's to make of all of this? I think that AMD will have to continue to sell their chips on the cheap in order to remain competitive. The Q6600 is selling for $280 today, so they'll have to slash, er, I mean, price accordingly. The Phenom X2 hardly seems like a major architectural advantage over the current Athlon X2's, and they can be had for a bargain, and should continue to provide plenty of power for bargain seekers. Unfortunately, the performance crowd, with their higher profit margins, will turn to Intel for their needs.

Unless this tricore Phenom X3 is priced very aggressively, I don't see users flocking to it as they'll just buy a quad core if they know anything about chips, or a dual core if they don't. I think it's intended to fill a niche so small that it may not exist.

--Jonas

NudgeCast #2

This time around, we've renamed the podcast as a NudgeCast. We're still talking about processors. Due to technical difficulties over at the site I hosted the other NudgeCast on, I tried something different this time known as Podbean. It took quite a while for the file to upload, but it uses a modified WordPress interface to host the audio as a streaming file on. I'm not sure if I'll use it again, so feel free to leave some input. Perhaps it'll give us some exposure we wouldn't have gotten so we'll see how this pans out.

This week's NudgeCast concerns itself with my thoughts in the new E6750 chip from Intel.

You can hear me over here.

--Jonas

Inaugural Podcast

As we've all missed the video podcast, I've decided to fill in with an occasional podcast. Not only does it elevate TechNudge to the exclusive club of websites that can take on a podcast, but I hope to bring in some more folks to the audience. Quite frankly, I can bang out a podcast quicker than I can type, so it seems like a reasonable use of my time for topics that don't need major image support. The topic for this podcast is my thoughts on some of the latest processors.

For maximum compatibility, the podcast is in the mp3 format so it will play on every iPod and other player on the market. It also plays fine on my desktop from the browser; of course, your mileage will vary. You can find it here.

Feel free to leave a comment below as I embark in an audio direction, and trying something new.

--Jonas

Thoughts on AMD's Stars Family

AMD fans, myself included, have been waiting for AMD to come out with their "true quad core" chips for a while now, while our Intel Core 2 Duo "brethren" keep reminding us over how much faster, and cooler running their current chips are. Well, today we got a glimpse into what AMD is cooking up for the next generation of silicon.

The top end chips will be dubbed Phenom FX, continuing the FX moniker. Expect a few chips, probably three, with speeds around 2.2 GHz, 2.4 GHz, and 2.6 GHz built on a 65 nm process. Supporting this will be 512 kb of L2 cache for each of the four cores, and then an additional 2 megs of L3 cache. No word on what the L1 cache will be sporting. While the clock speeds will be nothing revolutionary, the bus speed of 3200 or 3600 MHz is quite fast. The top chips of the series are expected to fit into a new Socket 1207+, and be available in the fall. No word yet on pricing, but if this thing has the goods, I wouldn't be surprised if it retailed in the neighborhood of a grand.

Moving down the line is the Phenom X4. This quad core should be more along the lines of something that most of us can afford. It is expected to fit into the AM2+ socket, and there is speculation that it may be a way of upgrading current AM2 motherboards to four core processing power, although possibly with some handicap- the jury is still out. Anticipated for the fall are chips with clock speeds of 2.2 GHz, and 2.4 GHz, with the same L2/L3 cache configuration of the FX chips. As the FSB speeds are also the same, I'm not sure how different the performance will be from the FX line, but clearly there should be one, or why would anyone pay for the FX?

Perhaps the "bang for the buck" will come from the Phenom X2 dual core variants as few applications can take advantage of the quad cores anyway. These chips are expected to come in clock speeds of 2.4, 2.6, and 2.8 GHz. They'll have 512 kb of L2 cache like many of today's X2 line (some have a full meg per core like the X2 5200+), but unlike current offerings will have 2 megs of L3 memory on board. Aslo, bus speeds may go as high as 4200 MHz which should provide some oomph, even before overclocking.

Finally, also expected for the budget crowd are an updated Athlon 64 dual core, and a pair of single core Semprons, and a trio of low power Phenom X2's.

While the details are still sketchy, and not finalized, it's encouraging to get a glimpse into AMD's future processors. They haven't been able to match Intel in the high end for a while now, but this fall, I expect to see some real shootouts for the ultimate performance crown. In the meantime, we all eagerly await some benchmark tests because specs on their own aren't really that important, it's the real performance that counts. Hopefully, we'll be getting some first benchmarks later next week.

--Jonas

View the roadmap here.