CPUs ?

[Paranoid]

I duno if anyone on this site is into computer hardware, but i am

lol, discuss Processors, intel, AMD, any new small comapanyies...what is the best to get?

id say Intel on a smal buget, but AMD if u have money to spend.

Dual core is definately the way to go for the future, but AMD dual cores can be pricey.

ur opinion???

[Ztrl]

What’s New With Intel & AMD
The Processor Battle Changes Gears
For the past three years, Intel and AMD have been locked in an interesting contest over the merits of processor technologies. Despite Intel’s overwhelming dominance in the processor marketplace—the company still enjoys a more than 80% market share—AMD has slowly and quietly grown its share of this business from the single digits to just more than 18%. And it’s done so in large part by reshaping the field of play upon which technology dominance is decided.

For a long time—from the mid-1990s until 2005, in fact—Intel has sought to define top levels of computer processor performance with ever-faster devices. During that period, normal computer clock rates (the speed at which a CPU operates is determined by how fast the clock that controls all activity on the chip operates) have climbed from less than 100MHz to rates approaching 4GHz (and beyond in the hands of certain proponents of extreme overclocking; probably best understood as taking the notion of “high performance,” well understood in automobiles, and applying it to computer hardware components).

But faster clocks also mean higher energy levels are required to make devices work, and more energy consumption leads to more heat output from computing devices. The faster they go, the hotter they run. AMD’s fundamental discovery starting with its Athlon processor family in the late 1990s was to limit clock speeds and come up with other ways to increase computing power—most notably, by integrating the device that manages access to a computer’s RAM right into the CPU itself. This allowed AMD to offer similar performance to Intel processors while keeping clock speeds slower, thereby limiting both energy consumption and heat output at the same time.

Here & Now

Since 2000, further increases in computing capacity have been realized by doubling up on computing facilities right in the processor itself. So-called dual cores essentially involve building CPUs with two sets of intertwined computing facilities on a single chip so that the device can do more computing by taking a “divide and conquer” approach to processing the code that makes operating systems and applications run.

At the same time, however, Intel has continued to lead the miniaturization race: One way to make chips more powerful is to shrink the size of individual elements or communications pathways on the devices themselves. This is known as the resolution of the process technology used to etch the silicon dies upon which chips are built and also used to lay down the semiconductive materials used to create hundreds of millions of transistors and other device elements on those chips. Today, Intel has converted its future-looking production to 65nm technology and is eyeing a move to 45nm technology later this year or early next year, according to numerous sources that follow the giant company. (It still makes a few 120nm devices, but those are rapidly being phased out.) AMD, on the other hand, is still building the vast majority of its processors using 90nm process technology, and rumor has it that a switch to 65nm processes may not occur until some time next year.

Intel's latest generation of processors also adopts an extremely aggressive and potent take on lower-power technologies. (See the comparison in the “Intel & AMD Processor Comparison” chart for numbers that back up this observation. For a more extensive chart, go to www.Processor.com/IntelAMD). Its latest generation of processors, code-named Conroe and Merom, drop clock rates back below 3GHz, with Extreme Edition (Intel's usual top-of-the-line designation) versions running at 2.93GHz, and less powerful versions topping out at 2.66GHz (far slower than the 3.8GHz at which older Pentium processors operate). At the same time, Intel is adding interesting technical innovations to its processor architecture designed to conserve power and limit heat dissipation from considerably more powerful processing engines. One trump in Intel's hand is its design philosophy of throttling back and then switching portions of a processor off when not in use so that idle circuitry consumes either very little or no power at all. (AMD’s designs still don’t offer this kind of fine-grained control in many cases.) Other trumps include a wider instruction path (the latest generation of Intel processors can handle four instructions per CPU cycle, whereas the latest from AMD can handle only three), as well as faster processor-to-memory data lanes. (Nominal Intel memory bus speeds top out at 1,066MHz, whereas nominal AMD memory bus speeds top out at 800MHz in its top-end processors and 667MHz in the rest of the pack.)

The upshot of new capabilities announced and pending from both companies is that Intel finds itself on a level playing field with AMD in terms of power consumption and with some slight performance edges in several areas. This is good for its prospects in all segments of the market, including notebooks, desktops, and servers because all can benefit from a combination of lower energy consumption and heat production at the same time that overall performance increases.

Chen Lee, director of the client/server business group at PC motherboard and equipment provider Gigabyte puts this situation into perspective when he opines that “lots of changes to the market are coming on both server and desktop fronts.” He’s particularly keen on what lower power consumption and heat output augur for the high-density server market when it comes to server blades and 1U rackmount form factors. “I’ve seen customers where they didn’t have enough power to keep all the servers running in a rack at full capacity, simply because of power draw or overheating issues. More efficient processors (and higher density devices) will mean much higher returns on computing investments for server buyers lie ahead,” he adds.

CPU specialist at Tom’s Hardware, Bert Toepelt, also observes that “increasing capability with decreased energy consumption and heat output offers incredible power and options for both notebook and desktop computers.” Various new Intel Conroe offerings appear to finally give AMD a real run for its historic performance crown, as recently published initial benchmarks of a midrange Conroe matched or bested some performance readings from AMD’s latest top-of-the-line Athlon FX-62 dual-core processor, which supports DDR2 memory and the brand-new AM2 940-pin processor socket.

What’s To Come

Later in 2006 and 2007, this battle is sure to heat up. Intel has laid out the broad outlines of future CPU architectures that include quad cores, doubling its dual-core ante. At the same time, AMD has indicated it plans to announce and release faster newer technologies (possibly, quad-core technologies) itself later this year, with 65nm process technology heavily rumored for 2007. Though Intel’s dominance is unlikely to alter any time soon, it should be interesting to watch this newly invigorated giant face off against planned counterstrikes from AMD. Numerous things appear certain, though details are sketchy: Process technology continues to shrink, while device count and core count grow, and more effective ways to parallelize and increase computing power while lowering energy consumption at the same time are on the way. For consumers of notebooks, desktops, and servers, this means that while today’s dual-core offerings are better buys than historical offerings, upcoming processors will do better still. Thus, those who need to buy soon will be well served by leading-edge technologies, but those who can afford to wait will be even better served by what’s around the corner.

[Paranoid]

Thx a lot for that article, it was very insightful, never knew about all the history of it, and all the scientic advances that u never hear about in the specs of processors.

I really apreciated it!!!

anyway...AMD has really high FSB speeds with its new AMD2 sockect. Intel has a somewhat lower FSB, but can process stuff through it 4 times per second, unlike AMD's 2 times per second with Hyper Transport.

[Ztrl]

And Hyper Threading exists right on the CPU itself, where as Hyper Threading exists between the chipset, the CPU and RAM.

[Paranoid]

omegazero said:

And Hyper Threading exists right on the CPU itself, where as Hyper Threading exists between the chipset, the CPU and RAM.

lol, u mean...hyper transpost exists between the chipset CPU and ram...lol

yea, hyper threading is sorta a different thing, its for multi threading, its a sort of fake dual core, it can multi task a bit better than single core without Hyper threading, but is worse than dual core.

[Ztrl]

that's what i said...and you say lol too much

[Paranoid]

lol, i like the topic a lot, thats why i started it

[exthinh]

hi how do you swotch from x to zero?

[Ztrl]

....

what in the hell do X and Zero have to do with Cumputer Processing Units?

[ShAuNmAn-X]

exthinh said:

hi how do you swotch from x to zero?

Please refer to the Megaman X Board...

[ZeroX]

exthinh said:

hi how do you swotch from x to zero?

Dude I would say that Intel and X have alot in common. They are both gay and quit often die on you.

[Paranoid]

lmao!! yea, if ure processor is dying, it might be cuz ur cooling isnt good enough. the fans that come with the intel CPUs suck from what I hear

BTW, we sorta have 2 threads about this one topic now, lol