2006 is on track to become the most interesting year for the processor industry since the end of the Gigahertz race. With Intel prepping a new architecture and AMD set to defend its lead with its AM2 platform, customers should see a wave of innovation that goes well beyond clock speed. Tom's Hardware got a first impression of the capability of the AM2 platform.
In a seemingly effortless way, AMD has been able to counter virtually every single one of Intel's attempts to regain desktop performance leadership with its current product generation. The Athlon's architecture provided AMD everything it needed to achieve not only more performance and less heat dissipation, but also more credibility in new customer segments which increasingly soak up AMD's products, according to recent analyst reports.
While Intel will be answering later this year with its Merom/Conroe processors, AMD officially says that the introduction of its AM2 platform and DDR2 memory support in the second quarter of this year will be able to maintain its current lead. Unofficially, we know that AMD will launch six dual-core and two single-core AM2 processors on June 6 - later than initially expected but well in time for Intel's Conroe, which will be introduced in September. Tom's Hardware got its hands on a stable engineering sample of an Athlon 64 X2 4800+ for Socket AM2 and will publish benchmark results as first as a first impression of the new Socket and processors tomorrow.
However, it is clear that Socket AM2 is not just about performance, at least not until the arrival of DDR2-800 in the mainstream market. With current DDR2-667 memory, very little improvement should be expected as the integrated memory controller suffers from relaxed memory timings. It is rather performance-per-watt, which will determine the overall performance capability of most future processors.
According to our sources, AMD will be able to match Intel's 65 watt promise for mainstream desktop processors. While regular Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processors are expected to stay in an 89 watt power envelope, there will be five low-power X2 models with a thermal design power of 65 watt as well. Even more impressive, AMD will drop the power consumption of the Athlon 64 3500+ and 3800+ single-core CPUs to 35 watts.
La guerre entre Intel et AMD devrait etre asser nice cet automne...moi je veux changer mon pc a l'automne mais bon les fameux AM2 rsiquent d'être cher...mais le beau toledo dont je reve risque d'être depassé asser vite...c'est beau l'évolution mais ca coute cher!
Pensez-vous qu'à l'automne ca va etre mieux de prendre un cpu s939 ou bin un AM2?
Un geek c'est quelqu'un qui pense que dans 1km il y a 1024m!
Hmm ya un autre article sur THG asser nice sur les AM2..
There are a couple of facts that our analysis make clear:
* The Socket AM2 generation is certainly not going to outperform comparable Socket 939 (DDR400) processors at DDR2-667 memory speeds-see our benchmarks. This is why AMD decided to wait for DDR2-800 and launch in June.
* Since the production process is not going to be changed, power consumption and heat dissipation in the mainstream will remain where they are today. We did some basic testing, but as expected the difference was not worth mentioning.
* AMD is going to introduce low-powered processors for power and noise sensitive environments. The single cores will maintain a 35 W power envelope, while the dual cores won't exceed 65 W. The latter is the mainstream thermal design that Intel intends to introduce with its upcoming Conroe processors in Q3. What we find amazing is that AMD must be able to reach these envelopes using its 90 nm technology, while Intel had to switch to 65 nm in order to maintain this course.
* Moving the Sempron and Athlon families to a common socket eliminated the need for separate budget and mainstream/performance platforms.
* The current Socket 754/939 Athlon 64 processors and motherboards usually cannot cope with more than 4 GB of RAM-there are few 2 GB DDR400 DIMMs-although addressing more than 4 GB is technically possible. The Socket AM2 Athlons will be able to use attractively-priced 2 GB DDR2 DIMMs.
* The changed mounting mechanism for the CPU cooler will annoy enthusiasts who spent a lot of money on a sophisticated, motherboard-mounted solution. However, we expect average Joe to be good to go with the boxed cooler or other 3rd party products that certainly won't be more expensive due to this change.
Lisez la conclusion...y disent que ya pas si longtemps AMD n'était pas capable de fournir un preview cpu stable ni d'attendre 3-4 mois avant de faire un launch pour avoir un bon timing...en fait amd ont tjrs été avangardiste mais rappellez-vous comment c'tait dur d'avoir des athlon quand yont sorti les athlon xp...la ca va bien et ils peuvent se permettre de préparer une bonne strategie de marketing, ils attendent la sortie de la DDR2 800 et pendant ce temps la ils préparent leurs stock...ils devraient donc fair eun launch asser réussi!
Un geek c'est quelqu'un qui pense que dans 1km il y a 1024m!
