AMD Announces 10/23 Pricing

Daily Tech ^ | July 17, 2006 | Anh Huynh

[Echo Talon]

This is a public service announcement,
there will be no price cuts on October 23rd, 2006

DailyTech previously reported AMD was planning a major CPU price cut a couple days after Intel ships Core 2 Duo Conroe processors. Those expecting AMD to announce another price cut in time for the holiday season will be disappointed. DailyTech has received an updated price list for October 23rd, 2006 that shows AMD has no plans to reduce prices on its Athlon 64 and Sempron desktop product lineups anytime soon. Pricing on Athlon 64, Athlon 64 FX, Athlon 64 X2, Athlon 64 X2 EE and Sempron will stay the same well into 2007 which may disappoint users expecting a sub-$100 dual-core AMD offering in time for the holidays to compete with Intel's $95 Pentium D 805.

The upcoming July 24th, 2006 price cut is the only planned price cut for quite a while. There’s no word on other upcoming price cuts yet, though it wouldn’t be surprising to see AMD cut prices when Brisbane production ramps up. DailyTech has previously reported on AMD’s upcoming Socket AM2 motherboard forward compatibility with Socket AM3 CPUs, upcoming AMD K8L architecture, AMD’s June 2006 product roadmap and upcoming 65nm improvements too. AMD has also been aggressively discontinuing Socket 939 and 754 products including dual-core Athlon 64 X2 4200+ and 4600+ models.

[RFC_Gal]

Both AMD and Intel have fabs located in the USA as well as all over the planet.

[Centurion2000]

Sweet .... I can spin hardware and electrons even faster while waiting for the virus with features (Microsoft) to download even more patches.

[js1138]

You have links to the game benchmarks?

[Echo Talon]

I never had a problem with viruses... Just keep your anti-virus and spyware definitions up to date and dont open spam e-mails and you should be good to go. :)

[Echo Talon]

Intel Core 2 Gaming Performance

Both the AMD Fx62 and Core2Duo seem to push current video cards to their limit, making the video card the speed bottleneck....
a better benchmark comparison for Core2Dou and AMD is with multimedia and other applications that use CPU power...

Intel Core 2 Music, Images, & Movie Performance

[Vision]

Like I said the Intel E6600 2.4GHZ is FASTER than ANYTHING AMD currently has on the market and its only going to be $316

2.4? I thought you can get computers with 4+GHZ?

[Echo Talon]

GHZ in and of itself means nothing... instructions per clock cycle is what matters... Why is an AMD Athlon 2.2GHZ faster than a 3.2GHZ Pentium? Answer: the AThlon has MORE instructions per clock cycle, the Athlon does more work per megahertz, The NEW INTEL CORE2DUO has increased their instructions per clock cycle... :)(they have adopted AMD's strategy)

[Vision]

Just when I thought it couldn't get any more confusing, it does.

I give up, thanks anyway.

[js1138]

So Intel has caught up with AMD by copying their 64 bit instruction set and copying their architecture.

But AMD has basically been milking three year year old technology, and probably not standing still in R&D.

By the way, I notice that current motherboards will not boot the Duo. Too bad.

[Echo Talon]

read this article it should help you out... :)

Intel's Core 2 Extreme & Core 2 Duo: The Empire Strikes Back

[Echo Talon]

Intel was trying to beat AMD with the Megahertz battle, in the process of doing that they have transitioned their FABS to 65NM chips to reduce heat(this has now given Intel a leg up since AMD is still on 90NM) Intel has given up on the Megahertz war and found that AMD was correct to go with higher instructions per clock... AMD needs to get to 65NM ASAP... Intel 975X chipset supports Core2Dou...

here

[Echo Talon]

So Intel has caught up with AMD by copying their 64 bit instruction set and copying their architecture.

Some numbers jumped out at me. It was clear that Intel’s EM64T architecture present in the Cyberpower, Dell, and Compaq systems was not helping encoding times in Movie Maker at all while running 64-bit Vista. However, I did see an improvement in Media Player while encoding CDs. Perplexed, I contacted Intel and asked them if they could offer an explanation as to this phenomenon. I was told that different compilers could have been used, and Microsoft may not have optimized certain applications at this point for EM64T. Being that this is a beta release, I am happy to accept this explanation at this point. Moreover, since I did see a marked improvement in audio encoding times, I can at least point to a scenario where an application is taking advantage of Intel’s 64-bit architecture.

So, EM64T isn't an exact copy of AMD's 64bit technology... :)

[Echo Talon]

here is the link to the review for that chart

here

[js1138]

So, EM64T isn't an exact copy of AMD's 64bit technology... :)

Th implementation may not be the same, but the instruction set is the same. Intel was going to have a propriatary 64 bit instruction set, but when AMD beat them to the gate by over a year, they had to give up. Windows 64 sailed without them.

[Echo Talon]

yea no doubt AMD forced Intel's hand into the 64bit arena, but
as you can tell from the benchmarks, the code IS different...

[Echo Talon]

look at the windows movie maker benchmarks.. the Dell, Cyberpower and Compaq uses Intel Em64T and both of the eMachines used AMD64... as you can tell the Intel 64bit instructions didnt have any gains over 32bit, where AMD's did...

I'm sure this will be fixed before Vista is released but it just does show that their is a difference..

[js1138]

Those benchmarks are not comparing AMD to Intel, at least not in any meaningful way. They are simply comparing 32 bit programs to 64 bit programs.

EMT64 and AMD64 are the same spec. Intel was just too embarrassed to call it by its name.

[js1138]

This is not something a compiler can fix. The instruction set is equivalent to the API. It is the interface to programs. How it works internally and how fast it is is beyond the control of the compiler..

[Echo Talon]

The three systems were our eMachines T3418 with a Sempron 3400+ processor and 512MB of RAM, the eMachines T6528 with an Athlon 64 3500+ processor and 512MB of RAM, and the Compaq SR1800NX with a Celeron D 346 processor @ 3.06GHz and 512MB of RAM.

[Echo Talon]

yea, the windows movie maker in VISTA isn't using the Em64T... im sure they will get it sorted out before Vista is released. :)