Posted on 09/28/2006 8:53:12 AM PDT by Zakeet
Intel is pulling out all stops to turn up the heat on its smaller but more nimble rival AMD. The latest salvo comes with the announcement that the new quad-core Core 2 Extreme chips for the high performance games market will be available in November sporting a whopping 70% performance hike.
AMD has tried to gain a lot of political capital from the fact that Intel's new quad-core package is not really a quad-core chip but in fact two dual-core chips "stitched together". However, Intel CEO Paul Otellini has a point when he says that consumers don't care whether they're getting four cores on a single die or four cores spread across two chips. What they care about is performance.
And performance is what Intel has been focussing on and delivering in spades for the past six months.
The dual-core Core 2 Extreme blew its AMD Athlon counterparts out of the water in benchmark tests and the Core 2 Duo has proven to be a winner in both the notebook and desktop space.
With its new quad-core offering, Intel has turned the spiggot up a notch or two. The November release for the gamer market is one thing, but the real pressure on AMD will be applied with the release of the Core 2 Quad for the mainstream desktop and notebook markets in Q1 2007.
(Excerpt) Read more at itwire.com.au ...
Sweet!
must find money for IT ...............
I'm by no means an authority, or even a "computer geek," but isn't this a bit reminiscent of the Gillette Mach III, Schick Quattro thing? I'm guessing AMD will now come out with an "Octocore Chip," featuring eight processors in one. Yes? No?
Yup, but AMD won't have something comparable till well into next year.
Yea, the new razor has 5 blades. I pity those poor whiskers.
But... at least I can get a clearer picture on my monitor when I play pong.
/sarcasm off.
At the moment, Intel has really come back strong, and I am an AMD "fan". Very impressive CPU's. All thanks to their R&D over in Israel.
Not in my eyes. The more/faster the merrier. Taking a cheese grater to your face is nothing like having 16 processors under the hood of your 'puter.
One processor is adequate to download and play some media. The real winner in the race will be whoever cuts CPU power use by 100 fold or even 10 fold.
Isn't competition great? Else, we'd all be still using 8080 xt's.........
They'll have a hit with "Hard-Core Sexium" chips.........
Now, the competition will start again and the consumers will benefit.
I was just going to say that; this is clearly a gamer's product, and gamers will always be looking to trick out their boxes. But the real breakthroughs will be increases in speed/(power cost*lifetime + inital cost).
http://www.intel.com/technology/silicon/mooreslaw/
It just means that demand for the current crop is starting to slow, so they're going to put their next-up product out there to jack up interest. The next gen after that is probably already in the bullpen.
Sort of.
Writing software that can actually make use of multiple cores (called "multi-threaded") is much more complicated than "single-threaded" software. More and more programs are going multi-threaded, but the real-world benefit of additional cores does diminish pretty rapidly outside the dragstrip of performance benchmark software.
Yeah, it's pretty clear that everything will be mobile and we can't drag 12 gauge AC power cords behind us everywhere.
Windows XP and Vista can already use the multiple cores, running separate apps on separate cores. So there is some immediate benefit to those who might have, say, email running in the background while doing something in a graphics program. Considering that these new CPU's are note much more expensive than the ones they are replacing, I think its a no-brainer.
A true Quad core 64 bit chip with onboard cache and ram is next, which will not only outperform the Intel, it will run cooler, which is really the point of muli-core architecture, at least that is what I have come to believe...
You're absolutely correct. My point is that it's well known that the amount of actual multi-tasking that goes on in average PC use isn't much. That, plus the fact that multi-threaded apps are still relatively rare means there are diminishing returns for more cores.
One interesting question is O/S licensing. XP Pro only supports two CPUs/cores. I don't know about Vista. Will users have to buy Windows Data Center Edition in order to use the future 16, 32, etc. core processors? I'm thinking users might just balk at a $5000 charge to use their new toy.
That said, I'm all for the extra horsepower, especially when the price level is the same.
For that matter, most of the time, the CPU is busy doing essentially nothing, waiting for input from the mouse/keyboard.
That, plus the fact that multi-threaded apps are still relatively rare means there are diminishing returns for more cores.
True. Dual Core will be the mainstream I believe for a few years.
One interesting question is O/S licensing. XP Pro only supports two CPUs/cores. I don't know about Vista. Will users have to buy Windows Data Center Edition in order to use the future 16, 32, etc. core processors? I'm thinking users might just balk at a $5000 charge to use their new toy.
Hah! I hadn't thought of that. You raise an interesting point.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.