Intel power PC platforms: Core 2 Extreme QX6800 and V8
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Blistering performance? Review Intel has been dancing all over AMD's financials with its Core 2 processors for the past year and it's keeping up the pressure, most recently with the Core 2 Extreme QX6800 and, more intriguingly, it's product-that-isn't-a-product, the V8 platform.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - Advanced Micro DevicesÂ (AMD) on Wednesday announced three dual-core additions to its Opteron processor lineup that use less power than standard versions of the chip. At the same time, the company added more dual-core Opteron chips to the high end of the line. Power consumption has become increasingly important in recent years, as companies look to wring the most computing performance from the power they consume, and reduce the heat generated by denser blade servers. The Opteron 1218 HE, 2218 HE and 8218 HE are 2.6GHz chips designed to require a maximum 68 watts of power, compared to 95 watts for the standard versions of the chips. The other new additions to the Opteron line, the 2220 and 8220, are 2.8GHz chips that designed for high-end servers and workstations and consume a maximum 95 watts of power, AMD said. All of the new chips are manufactured using a 90-nanometer production process and have 2MB of on-chip cache, according to AMD's Web site. The 1218 HE is priced at $432 in 1,000-unit quantities, a standard quotation method for processor sales. The 2218 HE and 8218 HE chips are priced at $611 and $1,340, respectively, in the same quantities. The 2220 and 8220 are priced at $698 and $1,514. AMD said server manufacturers such as Dell, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM, will offer systems based on the new chips. Details of these servers were not immediately available.
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When Fully buffered DIMMs attack A recent benchmark comparing quad-core chips asserts that Intel Xeon-based servers have an edge in performance but are complete power hogs when compared to the dainty energy appetite of AMD Opteron-based servers.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - AMD on Monday is giving the public an advanced look at how its pending quad-core chip will improve performance and save energy. AMD, playing catch-up to rival Intel, whoseÂ quad-core XeonÂ product launched in 2006, will discuss features of its quad-core product, code-named Barcelona, at the International Solid States Circuits Conference in San Francisco, a forum for engineers in solid state circuitry and system-on-a-chip processor design. AMD says it will present details at the conference of how Barcelona, due to be released in mid-2007, improves performance and energy efficiency over the competition and over its own dual-core processor, the Opteron, which it introduced in 2003. Barcelona will feature "Enhanced PowerNow" technology, which will dynamically adjust core frequencies as workloads change in order to power down cores when not needed to save energy, said Brent Kerby, product marketing manager for Opteron. Under the PowerNow technology already deployed in the dual-core Opteron, the OS delivers the needed power to the busiest core, but if the other core is not as busy, it will still receive the voltage demanded of the busiest core, Kerby said. But with Enhanced PowerNow, while the busiest core will receive the power it needs, the OS will reduce the frequency and voltage of the remaining cores because they aren't as busy. "We still see power savings with our current PowerNow technology, but it's going to get better with Barcelona because we're going to be able to dynamically and independently adjust the core frequencies of each individual core," he said. Also in Barcelona, the OS will directly communicate with the CPU instead of first going through the CPU driver, a more efficient approach, he said. "With Barcelona, there is no CPU driver middleman. The OS can tell the processor directly, 'Hey this is how much work I'm doing,' and the Barcelona core will determine when the best time is to make that change. It's not doing it blindly," he said. Barcelona also separates the power management of the cores from that of the memory controller, which is embedded in AMD-designed processors. That way, frequency and voltage can be reduced to the cores when they are not busy and increased to the memory controller when it is busy, and vice versa. AMD claims an 80 percent reduction in memory controller power usage with this design change. Barcelona will also feature enhanced clock-gating, which means core logic circuits can be turned on or off to save power. Like settings on a coffee grinder, the chip can do "coarse" or "fine" clock gating, shutting down increasingly finer sections of core logic as needed. AMD claims that Barcelona can deliver a 40 percent improvement in performance over "the competition." While not mentioning Intel's Xeon specifically, AMD has long pointed out that its quad-core chip will be four cores designed on the same piece of silicon, while Intel's design is two dual-core processors packaged together.
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Early reviews indicate Advanced Micro Devices' new Quad FX can't keep pace with Core 2 Extreme. In Epicenter.
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Chipmaker's Isaiah processor architecture is expected to double performance but consume same amount of energy.Images: Isaiah architecture up close
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Doubled-up processors were the big news at this year?s Intel Developer Forum. They boost performance without frying your chips ? and are coming your way soon.
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Biostar's TF7150U-M7 mobo for Intel CPUs arrives Review The vast majority of PCs use integrated graphics instead of an add-in graphics card and therein lies a problem. If you want the wow factor of the Aero interface in Windows Vista then you need a reasonable level of graphics performance, even if you have no desire to play games on your PC.â¦
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InfoWorld - Intel plans to unveil a version of its Xeon processor on Wednesday that&#39;s designed for high-end servers with multiple processors -- setting the stage for a showdown with rival&#160;Advanced Micro Devices&#39; upcoming quad-core Barcelona chip.
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Chip-making technique to fuel AMD64, PowerPC, 'Cell' production
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Intel will deliver the company's first quad-core processors for high-performance PCs and servers in November, getting the jump on rival AMD in providing the next generation of chips designed to deliver the power needed to handle high-definition video, cutting-edge games, and math-intensive number-crunching.
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Competitively priced, too Intel has followed the launch of its first mobile Core 2 Extreme processor with a handful of desktop CPUs that support the chip giant's 1333MHz frontside bus upgrade.â¦
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Intel's fastest desktop quad-core Review Intel is getting ready to move to a new generation of processors on a 45nm fabrication process, but that hasn't stopped it from squeezing some more performance out of its existing, 65nm chips. So, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the 3GHz Core 2 Extreme QX6850 with the chip giant's brand new 1333MHz frontside bus.â¦
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Bargain? Review Earlier this week, we reviewed the impressive yet ridiculously expensive Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850. Now it's the turn of another processor Intel announced this week, one that you can actually afford, the Core 2 Duo E6750.â¦
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Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) showcased its dual-core x86 Opteron microprocessor this week. The upcoming dual-core CPU for the enterprise enviornment is expected to debut in mid-2005 and was housed in a HP ProLiant DL585 server.
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The world's first 45nm gaming CPU Review Intelâs 45nm 'Penryn' update for its Core 2 microprocessor family has been an open secret for many months. It's first desktop incarnation, the Core 2 Extreme QX9650, is due to be formally introduced on 12 November, but today we can tell you how it will perform.â¦
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Four-core coming AMD has grown tired of hearing about Intel's four-core Xeon wonders and so countered today with some faster Opterons and some lower-voltage ones. If you can't beat them with cores, beat them with variety.â¦