A+E Interactive: AMD Puts Pressure On Intel In PC Gaming With New Socket
For Two Dual-Core Processors
http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/200...essu.html#more

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips Yousuf Khan <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> A+E Interactive: AMD Puts Pressure On Intel In PC Gaming With New Socket
> For Two Dual-Core Processors
> http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/200...essu.html#more

So is that basically a quad-core in the Intel/Smithfield model? (Two dies,
two cores each, on a single "chip" in the retail sense of chip.)

Or is that just a double socket, analogous to getting two Opteron 280s
today?

Either way, pretty cool.

--
Nate Edel http://www.cubiclehermit.com/

"What's the use of yearning for Elysian Fields when you know you can't get
'em, and would only let 'em out on building leases if you had 'em?" (WSG)

"Yousuf Khan" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
newsa6dndgrm7teS-(E-Mail Removed)...
> A+E Interactive: AMD Puts Pressure On Intel In PC Gaming With New Socket
> For Two Dual-Core Processors
> http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/200...essu.html#more

There was the suggestion that AMD was going to release something to try and
compete with the Conroe at the top end, but if this is it, then it's
disappointing. Most games are only single threaded, or dual threaded at
best. So effectively you will have 2 cores not doing anything.

Nate Edel wrote:
> So is that basically a quad-core in the Intel/Smithfield model? (Two dies,
> two cores each, on a single "chip" in the retail sense of chip.)
>
> Or is that just a double socket, analogous to getting two Opteron 280s
> today?
>
> Either way, pretty cool.


Although the story I quoted didn't make it clear, AMD had a technology
presentation today, and they explained it. It's a 2-socket system, two
AM2 sockets to be precise. This means that AM2 is multiprocessor
capable, and I bet it's likely that its predecessor Socket 939 was also
multiprocessor capable. It's a hidden feature that was never revealed
till now. Multiprocessors were something only available to Opterons
until now, I figured.

Yousuf Khan

>A+E Interactive: AMD Puts Pressure On Intel In PC Gaming With New Socket
>For Two Dual-Core Processors
>http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/200...essu.html#more

about as desperate as when Intel came up with the Gallatin Xeon-based
P4EE almost 3 years back.

On Thu, 01 Jun 2006 23:03:20 -0500, lyon_wonder <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>>A+E Interactive: AMD Puts Pressure On Intel In PC Gaming With New Socket
>>For Two Dual-Core Processors
>>http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/200...essu.html#more
>
>about as desperate as when Intel came up with the Gallatin Xeon-based
>P4EE almost 3 years back.

Is it as desperate as the Paxville attempt at a dual core Xeon?

--
Rgds, George Macdonald

Bitstring <e5o7kh$107$(E-Mail Removed)>, from the wonderful person
Mark <(E-Mail Removed)> said
>
>"Yousuf Khan" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
>newsa6dndgrm7teS-(E-Mail Removed)...
>> A+E Interactive: AMD Puts Pressure On Intel In PC Gaming With New Socket
>> For Two Dual-Core Processors
>> http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/200...essu.html#more
>
>There was the suggestion that AMD was going to release something to try and
>compete with the Conroe at the top end, but if this is it, then it's
>disappointing. Most games are only single threaded, or dual threaded at
>best.

Fires up 'Oblivion' and looks at thread count .. 12 .. yeah, right
...... damn, these facts surely do spoil a good speculative argument.

Not that I'm claiming they can all execute in parallel, or even that
it's a shining example of multithreading (alt-tab to desktop and it gets
in a real twist, unless you use task manager 'switch to' to get back to
it.)

--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Google may be your friend, but groups.google.com posters definitely aren't.

GSV Three Minds in a Can wrote:
> Bitstring <e5o7kh$107$(E-Mail Removed)>, from the wonderful person
> Mark <(E-Mail Removed)> said
>>
>> "Yousuf Khan" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
>> newsa6dndgrm7teS-(E-Mail Removed)...
>>> A+E Interactive: AMD Puts Pressure On Intel In PC Gaming With New Socket
>>> For Two Dual-Core Processors
>>> http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/200...essu.html#more
>>
>> There was the suggestion that AMD was going to release something to
>> try and
>> compete with the Conroe at the top end, but if this is it, then it's
>> disappointing. Most games are only single threaded, or dual threaded at
>> best.
>
> Fires up 'Oblivion' and looks at thread count .. 12 .. yeah, right .....
> damn, these facts surely do spoil a good speculative argument.
>
> Not that I'm claiming they can all execute in parallel, or even that
> it's a shining example of multithreading (alt-tab to desktop and it gets
> in a real twist, unless you use task manager 'switch to' to get back to
> it.)

I wonder if anybody has found a review on how the games in average are
getting into parallelizing the code. That should be a substantial trend
now, considering that 2x became a mainstream for high-end systems.

Basically such review would not even require access to the code -
somebody would run a set of different newly released games on single CPU
vs multiple (2x, 4x) and see how performance difference is.
Looking on number of threads could also be instructive.

Regards,
Yevgen

GSV Three Minds in a Can wrote:
> Bitstring <e5o7kh$107$(E-Mail Removed)>, from the wonderful person
> Mark <(E-Mail Removed)> said
>>
>> "Yousuf Khan" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
>> newsa6dndgrm7teS-(E-Mail Removed)...
>>> A+E Interactive: AMD Puts Pressure On Intel In PC Gaming With New Socket
>>> For Two Dual-Core Processors
>>> http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/200...essu.html#more
>>
>> There was the suggestion that AMD was going to release something to
>> try and
>> compete with the Conroe at the top end, but if this is it, then it's
>> disappointing. Most games are only single threaded, or dual threaded at
>> best.
>
> Fires up 'Oblivion' and looks at thread count .. 12 .. yeah, right .....
> damn, these facts surely do spoil a good speculative argument.
>
> Not that I'm claiming they can all execute in parallel, or even that
> it's a shining example of multithreading (alt-tab to desktop and it gets
> in a real twist, unless you use task manager 'switch to' to get back to
> it.)

There is an interesting article discussing multi-processor in games
with design architect of Unreal:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2377&p=3

It is somewhat dated, but prediction he gives is that by second half of
these year most game-making teams will be seriously working on
parallelizing critical portions of their code.

Regards,
Evgenij

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips YKhan <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> Nate Edel wrote:
> > So is that basically a quad-core in the Intel/Smithfield model? (Two dies,
> > two cores each, on a single "chip" in the retail sense of chip.)
> >
> > Or is that just a double socket, analogous to getting two Opteron 280s
> > today?
> >
> > Either way, pretty cool.
>
> Although the story I quoted didn't make it clear, AMD had a technology
> presentation today, and they explained it. It's a 2-socket system, two
> AM2 sockets to be precise. This means that AM2 is multiprocessor
> capable, and I bet it's likely that its predecessor Socket 939 was also
> multiprocessor capable. It's a hidden feature that was never revealed
> till now. Multiprocessors were something only available to Opterons
> until now, I figured.

Sweet.

I was under the impression the 939 was identical to 940 except for not
requiring registered memory, and would have supported multiprocessors had
the other things needed been there (not to minimize the importance of the
lack of a 2/800-series opteron for it or any 2-socket motherboards.)

--
Nate Edel http://www.cubiclehermit.com/

"What's the use of yearning for Elysian Fields when you know you can't get
'em, and would only let 'em out on building leases if you had 'em?" (WSG)