|
Advice Beginners BIOS Guide CPUs Links Mainboards Memory Network Storage Video/Sound Cards Contact Forum SiteMap Sponsors WebNews Home 
|
. | . |
Prices: Mainboards ABIT ASUS Chaintech Shuttle Soyo Tyan CPU Intel P4 2.4C-800 P4 2.6C-800 P4 2.8C-800 P4 3.0-800 P4 3.2-800 AMD AthlonXP XP 1700+ XP 2000+ XP 2400+ XP 2500+ XP 2700+ XP 3000+ XP 3200+ Athlon64 Athlon64 3200+ Athlon64 FX-51 Opteron Opteron 240 Opteron 242 Opteron 244 Opteron 246 Memory Corsair Crucial Kingston Mushkin OCZ |
Summary
The long anticipated Athlon 64 is finally ready to roll and to hit the shelves. At 5 minutes to midnight, AMD has added a surprise momentum to the launch in the form of the "FX-51" edition, featuring the same dual channel memory controller found otherwise only in the Opteron series, clocked to 2.2 GHz and running a 400 MHz memory interface. This latest "trump card" should ensure that the Athlon 64 FX-51 is the undisputed king of the desktop CPUs, despite a nominal handicap in raw clock speed.
The dual integrated memory controller reduces memory access latencies but requires registered modules that, in turn, add some latencies back into the access path. So what is left of the low lateny scheme after all? WindowsXP-64 is almost ready to roll, however, there are no applications yet to follow. Are there differences between the "compatibility mode" and the 32-bit operations in "protected mode"? There are a few selected 64-bit programs already available, how do they stack up against the original 32-bit applications. Finally, with only existing software, how does the Athlon 64 FX-51 hold up against a fierce competition in form of the Pentium 4 3.2GHz.
Many questions and many answers in the following.
5 years ago we kept getting cartoons like this on a daily basis from readers with every new processor launch. Where have the enthusiasts gone?
IN RETROSPECT, without going back and counting all the different files it is almost impossible to tell how many different AMD processor launches we have covered in the past 6 years. Some were speedgrades, others were die shrinks, others added new features. It is also impossible to say which ones were the most exciting. As trivial as it may sound now, the K6-2 with its 3Dnow! technology was the ultimate achievement at the time, then came the "Chompers" core with the write-combine registers that nobody appeared to understand at the time, and then, there was the one and only K6-III, the ultimate CPU of 6 months behind schedule but a classic in any other respect.
The original Athlon600 launch in all its luxurious triumph and glory could have been staged by Giuseppe Verdi as part of Aida, so could have been the slow decline of its successors from the top. It is not that those were bad processors, on the contrary, but despite the fiery names of the ponies, the new releases weren't as thrilling as they used to be. There were still hi-lights, such as the Palomino core and the extra large cache on the Barton but even those looked pale compared to the wave of enthusiasm generated by Shiloh A. Jennings and Vince Giovannone when they posted their "AMD Quake 2" scores, enabled by 3DNow! - SIMD, on a since long-forgotten website.
Processors have not become less interesting than they used to be, probably the opposite is true but, contrary to 6 years ago, they are no longer the #1 system bottleneck and, therefore, they don't matter that much anymore. In addition, where applications like Netscape Composer used to be painful experiences in day-to-day applications with lag times of up to a few seconds between typed-in characters, not to mention Spielberg's "Trespasser", a game that turned out to be unplayable on any computer at its time, we don't see these problems anymore. Let's face it, PC hardware has become so powerful that only 5 years ago, nobody would have dreamed of the capabilities that we are taking for granted today.
Within this mind frame, there is preciously little that could really conjure up the old spirit of do or die we were used to only half a decade ago and which was, in fact, a different millennium. Back in the days, it was unthinkable to run both AMD and Intel-based systems in the same household time without being a traitor. Kids we were then, maybe old kids, except for Anand, but still, and even Kyle Bennett admits it --- and there is nothing wrong about that.
next page: => The 64 bit Challenge =>
