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PostPosted: Fri May 21, 2010 12:19 pm 
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Mega Chuck Norris
Mega Chuck Norris
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Joined: Wed Sep 26, 2007 1:39 pm
Posts: 3645
Location: Madison, MS
I have been heavily reading up on the Bulldozer architecture for a while (as it may be my next build if it can beat intel in IPC/clock-for-clock power), none of this info is new, just better explained in this article. Just a warning, its still technical for you non-geeks out there:
http://tech.icrontic.com/articles/what- ... rocessors/

"We also know for a fact that Zambezi will use socket AM3, meaning anyone with a DDR3 Phenom II motherboard will be ready to rock with a BIOS upgrade."

Good news for vman and anyone else I recommended an AM3 to over the past 6 months. Our game server is also an AM3, so if needed in the future it can be upgraded to an 8 core bulldozer setup.

A explanation of why this while while bulldozer thing matters:
Clock speed (like 3.0ghz) is NOT a measure of outright performance of a computer, its clock speed x ipc (and sometimes x cores)
Clock speed = how may times it refreshes a second (3ghz = 3billion times a second)
IPC = inter process connect, more or less how much "work" it can do per clock refresh
cores = how many processing cores per package, if a application cant use all your cores, they sit there idle/unused, so cores are not an outright gauge of performance. A dual core 3.2ghz chip will beat a 3.0 quad of the same chip in games if the game does not use more than 2 cores.

Pentium 4's were known for having awful IPC power, even worse than PIII's, but were clocked much higher, so a single 3.4ghz P4 vs a AMD64 2.0ghz would match in overall performance. GHZ should only be used to compare chips of the same core design, not different chips, hence this is why IPC is much more important today, since there is literally a wall in our tech around 4ghz for any chip (unless exotically cooled and volted beyond normal use).

So I have a 3.4ghz core2Quad (45nm) and used to have a 3.4ghz pentium 4, my computer is about 2.3x as powerful per core or up to 9.2x (4 cores) as powerful overall, even though they are both 3.4ghz

It would be really nice (for the average user) if we had a IPC rating for each chip, but that would never happen (this is another thing I asked Jarrod to make a part of our computer website if we ever go through with it).

Say you used a final gen pentium 4 (Prescott) as a baseline, these all represent a single core, you will need to multiply this number by the ghz (this will give you your minimum/single core power), then multiply your cores, so double it for dual core, 4x it for quad, 6x for 6core, etc, this will give you a MAXIMUM power if you can somehow use all your cores. The nm is the the size of the interconnects (how small the copper wires are more or less), the smaller the number the smaller the chip is and lower heat while cramming the same amount of stuff onto the chip, you can use this to cut cost by simply shrinking your chip, or use the extra space for more cores or cache, cache increases IPC somewhat, but large jumps are from chip re-designs. As you will see below, AMD has not changed their IPC much (if at all besides cache changes) since the Athlon 64, this will be their first IPC change in 7 years (they have finally ramped up clock speed though, which is very good).
2004:
P4 = 1 (up to 3.6ghz)
AMD64 = 1.7 (up to 2.6ghz)

2006:
Core2 (65nm conroe) = 2 (up to 3.2ghz)
AMD64x2 = 1.7 (up to 2.6ghz)
AMD64x2 (large cache) = 1.8 (up to 2.6ghz)

2008:
Core2 (45nm penryn) = 2.3 (up to 3.2ghz)
Phenom (65nm) = 1.7 (up to 2.6ghz)

2009:
Core I7 (45nm) = 2.7 (up to 3.33ghz)
PhenomII (45nm) = 2.1 (up to 3.4ghz)

2010:
Core I7 6core (32nm) = 2.8 (up to 3.33ghz)
PhenomII revised (45nm for the 6 core) = 2.15 (up to 3.5ghz)

So right now you would need a 4ghz quad phenom II to match a 3.2ish coreI7, this works fine since the cost is much less for the phenom II (6core 3.5ghz PhenomII = $300 vs 6 core 3.33ghz CoreI7 = $1,000).

For AMD to stay profitable they will need to be more powerful clock for clock than the Core I7 or AMD will start to fade away, or be a budget chip company.... good luck AMD with bulldozer, the fate of your company is in your hands.

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-- .:Splak|StackableNut --
Cornholio wrote:
blah thats nothing, i built houses for pirates, then do pirating myself. Then I shoot my self and perform bullet removal surgery on myself. After that I go to boot camps to train kids to kill. Then i go and fight on the Iraq war for both sides. After all i go later and drink some 7up cause ill be thirsty as shit.


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