Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD7

[essenbe]

Contrary to what they say publicly, AMD has always pushed overclocking. Why else would you pay more for a black chip if you wern't overclocking? I have a P67 Asrock board and called tech support once. First thing he said was you're not OC are you? I told him why else would I pay more for a k serise chip and a p67 board? And why do you put overclocking utilities with those boards? Just thought that was humorous. But AMD is the same way, they want you to overclock and make it as easy as possible.

I just hope you are right. I would love to see Intel squirm. I hope AMD beats the heck out of them. I just have my questions as you know from earlier in this thread. But make no mistake, I am pulling for them and would love to see a chip as you described above.

 

[Rhammstein]

Honestly, I feel very, very confident Zambezi, these first chips, coming in Auguest/September, will compete greatly with Sandy Bridge, there's no doubt in my mind. I've studied quite a bit, both architectures. Although I can't say I understand it all, but the interpretations I've looked over along with what I've understood myself, is all very impressive. More than anything I think the power savings are going to be mind blowing at idle, for the Bulldozer chips. Every single core can run a different frequency, and because of the shared components in their modular design, the amount of circuitry they can turn off is awesome, combined with all cores running various speeds, from I think as low as 400mhz all the way up to Turbo Core 2.0 speeds, ....yeah, the power savings may be the best part of the architecture. Really amazing, you should look into it. Just imagine how much power you can save by turning off entire cores and related circuitry.

My only concern is Ivy Bridge, these will be 22nm. As far as I know, even the second revision of Bulldozer, for early 2012, will be 32nm, I'm not sure, but pretty confident. Therefor, IB will be...well, insane! Imagine the overclocking, as long as the chips can handle it, they should OC well above SB, which already sit at 5.0 to 5.5Ghz on air!!! Now, I'm not sure the chips can even handle such high frequencies, regardless of how well they'll do with power consumption, but, if they can handle it, AMD will in a short time be faced with serious competition, again. And this must be why the second around of chips are so important for AMD, as they say.

I think it'll come down to the architecture, how well these Bulldozer modules run, compared to Intel's Hyperthreading.

It seems logical having 2 physical cores gang up on one thread, is plenty better than one core working two threads, and because AMD will had double the core count, well it seems like AMD has a good chance to compete, against these 22nm chips. At stock clocks overall it, on paper looks like AMD should have the advantage, when it comes to extreme overclocking, we'll have to see if these IB 22nm chips can break into the 6Ghz area, or even beyond!

This is all so exciting, I can't wait

 

[essenbe]

The way you explain it makes sense. But I agree about IB. It sounds like it may come down to a horse race when they are both released. I really hope it is. Competition is good for everyone and pushes technology too. Competition will push both sides to find new twchnology to do more and better things. That only benefits us all. I really don't understand the technology and arcitecture of BD. Many 'experts' have said one cell containing 2 cores is not really 2 cores. But, then later in the discussion state that by strict definition of what a core is, it does qualify as 2 cores. I just dont understand all of that. I've been accused of being a black or white type, like seeing everything as right or wrong. So maybe I am. To me, the 'experts' are practicing double talk. I mean really, it is either 2 cores or it's not. Don't tell me it is then say it isn't. They must be politicians. All's I know is that I don't know.

 

[Fumz]

I don't know what it is about AMD, but ever since they bought ATI it seems like they've just plain forgotten how to make really good chips. They once dominated the performance arena; from the Thunderbird (first to break 1GHz) to the Athlon 64, AMDs were just straight up the best cpus to get... now... now they're relegated to boasting about power savings, as if cpu's use a lot in the first place.

Nobody buys 1K PSUs for their CPUs.

I sure hope they're able to pull this one off, but we're hearing the same thing they said about their last set of 6 core chips. Oh just wait, AMD is back... yeah, sure... show me. Their current gen chips are still only able to compete with Intel's last gen chips, and that's even their hex cores.

It's actually a bit depressing as I've owned and loved many of their chips over the years, but hey, it's still my money, and I'll only buy them if they're worth buying. Being sentimental about cpus is for the birds... and guys with slow rigs. (oh come on, that was a little funny, right?)

 

[essenbe]

Seeing how you mentioned it, I have thought the last several years that AMD has been more concerned with their graphics than the performance. They have accomplished that. As far as integrated graphics goes, Intel can't compete. As it stands today, as far as performance goes, AMD can't compete. The SB chips are the best there is for price/performance. Do you realize that a 2500K costs about the same as an i3-540 about 1 1/2 years ago. But, I'm hoping the AMD hype is right this time. They are going to have to compete on performance even if they get a 6950 on chip GPU. I just believe that relatively few people make decisions on integrated graphics. I buy a CPU for performance. If I want better graphics I'll buy a graphics card. The laptop market is different though.

 

[Fumz]

I didn't realize there was any competition in the integrated video market? If AMD is winning, it might be because nobody else knows there's a race going on... and even if they did know, they must not care, it's integrated video. Just how fast do graphics have to be to watch youtube? Now that you mention it, once they iron out Z68, this could all change... at least for video encoding?

Besides, don't most laptops (I'm ignorant on the subject) that market themselves as gaming laptops have a dedicated card anyway?

Yeah, I was shocked to pay so little for the 2500k. lol, I think my i5-750 was more expensive... or at least about the same price?

 

[essenbe]

That was kind of my point about integrated graphics. And I know little about laptops, but the gaming ones do have dedicated cards but the mainstream laptops I've looked at use integrated graphics.

 

[Fumz]

I swear I wasn't looking for this, but if AMD was winning the integrated graphics war, that's no longer the case: Duke Nukem Forever Performance Test > 1920x1200 - Gaming Performance - TechSpot Reviews

 

[essenbe]

My comments were related to AMD's CPUs and that it seemed to me that they were more concerned with their integrated graphics than their performance. And so far they have had better integrated graphics than Intel. As far as dedicated GPU cards, I don't know enough about cards to make any meaningful comments about that. I was just stating that they seemed to be more concerned with their integrated graphics than their performance.

 

[Fumz]

I'm afraid I'm lost.

I thought you said/meant that AMD was more focused on their graphics division than they were on their CPU division, and that as far as CPU's go AMD can't compete, but as far as integrated graphics go, Intel can't compete?

The link was for Duke Nukem graphics performance, true, but because the game isn't demanding, they were able to run it with integrated graphics chips. They're at the bottom of the list, and I'm sure nobody would want to play it with one, but the Intel's beat the AMD's. Since we were just having this discussion, I thought you might find that interesting?

Did I misinterpret things?