News AMD officially launches Athlon 64 X2

[WilHarris]

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/05..._64_x2_launch/

[Da Dego]

*yawn* wake me up when I care?

We've covered that dual-core is just not going to be a benefit to gamers, really, and for quite some time. The truth is, until windows can intelligently assign threads to processors (which it honestly cannot do now), dual core is a benefit to only one market: the group wanting their computer to virus scan while gaming, or burning a dvd in the background or something else. Useful? Of course. Worth all that $$? Very questionable.

SMP (dual core or otherwise) is just not yet a mainstream product...not because it can't be, but because the software support for it blows every goat in the land. I'm more impressed with intel's marketing of trying to bring these things mainstream, and I think the success of AMD's platform will hinge on intel's success and intel's bank balance (This is not a fanboy statement of AMD v. Intel, it's a business model comparison...please keep flame wars out of it). More useability is fantastic, but it means that you have to have something that can take advantage of it, and if you've ever watched windows assign threads for HT or for a dual opteron/xeon system, you know the pain I'm talking about. To get a dedicated thread for more than 20 seconds involves an act of God or meticulous management.

Maybe longhorn will make this be a beautiful thing. But until the OS goliath moves, dual core from either manufacturer is a beautiful theory with little practical application.

[ZapWizard]

(Here is my input, my ties to AMD not withstanding...)

While a Dual-core processor won't currently benifit your 3D Games, it doesn't mean it's useless as a gaming processor.
Dual-Core is more about partitioning your CPU power between applications.
(Teamspeak, firewall, Antivirus, Spamware protection, you name it)

Take a look at:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2410&p=7

Note that clock to clock the Dual core processor is the same or slightly faster then it's single core counterpart. (These benchmarks are running single-threaded games)

Gaming Performance
Gaming performance is, currently, highly based on single-threaded performance and thus, we see no benefit from dual core. The thing to keep in mind here is that AMD's dual core solutions are closer to their fastest single core offerings in clock speed, so they end up performing more like their Athlon 64 counterparts in games - which has always been quite strong.

While there isn't an advantage that you will see directly in your game, it does mean that using a (AMD) dual-core processor wont slow your games down. Which is great considering that the cores both still share motherboard resources.

Just as an example before you launch your next game press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC
or open your task manager. Note the number of processes running in the background (Indicated at the bottom left). Each of these processes share your CPU resources. Imagine having a bare, untouched CPU core with nothing on it but what YOU want running. That is what Dual-Core is good for.
If anyone wants to know you use the windows task manager to partition the processes between CPUs.

[N4N01D]

Originally Posted by Da Dego

Worth all that $$?

yes imo

[Da Dego]

Originally Posted by ZapWizard

Just as an example before you launch your next game press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC
or open your task manager. Note the number of processes running in the background (Indicated at the bottom left). Each of these processes share your CPU resources. Imagine having a bare, untouched CPU core with nothing on it but what YOU want running. That is what Dual-Core is good for.
If anyone wants to know you use the windows task manager to partition the processes between CPUs.

True enough, zap, but you miss my point. It's not that dual-core hurts games, it's that there's not a true benefit to having it because that "untouched CPU" is never there. Unless you micromanage your windows processes (which a lot of people don't do) EVERY time you boot up (windows doesn't save the CPU choices for its own processes) and then every minute after, you will end up with something besides your desired program on that CPU. Windows has a habit of opening and closing processes, restarting them, etc, which it will allocate to whichever CPU it finds free at the time, instead of where you want them. It's useful to a point, but for now it's only useful to someone who has 2 large programs, one of which not requiring a lot of ram. You do receive some minor benefit to single-thread programs, but only because some of the OS bloat is moved to the other thread. Hardly a justification to spend another $500-$1000.

For instance, HT is a great technology IF you can get windows' grubby little mits off the main thread...but you can't, at least unless you're totally anal. Please let me know if you have some different way of doing this, because I have never found any place that can illustrate differently using either windows or a 3rd party app. Windows doesn't save the processor preferences for its own programs.

I'm not saying the technology is busted, I actually think dual-core is great...just ahead of its time thanks to lousy software support. And not even the end-applications, because those will change and move with the upcoming releases (like Unreal 3)...but windows support for SMP is just horrible right now, and won't be any better until they create a little button that says "Run all OS threads on processor: (choose)" and "Run non-OS programs larger than Xmb on processor: (choose)" and "Run non-OS programs smaller than Xmb on processor: (choose)" and finally, "Special program/processor preferences: (choose program and processor)". Add a choice for "allow following programs with multiple threads to use avaiable free processors:" and you'll finally have the control you need.

THEN we will have some intelligent support for SMP. Until then, it's just not all that wonderful, because windows bulks up the free space with anything it wants.

[Tim S]

UT2007 is multi threaded

[MrWillyWonka]

Tbh, I wouldn't pay the price for them, when a single core processor at less than 1/2 the price runs perfectly fine. Unless you are a person who uses lots of applications at once, then it could be worth it, if you got the $$.

[ZapWizard]

Valid points Da Dego,

I am still waiting for someone to come out with a process manager for windows that remembers everything.

[Firehed]

Ok, I think we all know dual-core isn't for gamers. But have you ever wanted to game while doing that Xvid encoding? You CAN with dual core.

I think for the mainstream, Intel will whup AMD as far as DC goes, just because they're less than half the price. Indeed, I'd like one myself (of either variety, pref AMD just because I have the board but realistically I'd have a DC Intel for a media ctr and my single-core amd for my sli gamer). If you never do anything but run games when your computer is on, dual core is worthless for you *at this point*. But who likes to wait around while you're encoding a movie or whatever when there's unread threads at Bit?

Let's make it known that now dual-core is "available" to the masses (it'll really be available once they start shipping in Dells, because that IS "the masses"), software will be written to use SMP. And assuming it's a borderline decent coding job, it will scale indefinately, not to just two cores/procs. The instant you have a dual core proc and a multithreaded game, your performance could quite conceviably become GPU limited again, even with SLI G70's or something (ok, not quite that, but you get the point).

[smoguzbenjamin]

If ut 2k7 is multi-threaded, I'm guessing a single-core CPU will simply run both threads simultaneaously (damn spelling ). Wouldn't that adversely affect performance?

[Firehed]

Yeah it would. It can only do half the work because all the threads are on one core/proc instead of two. Theoretically if your game is cpu-limited and multithreaded, the limitation should be 1/#cores (ie three cores = 1/3 of the normal limitation or 3x the speed assuming it's still cpu limited) Of course there's overhead, but I think it would be safe to say you'd see in the 85-90% performance increase.

[apoogod]

Originally Posted by ZapWizard

(Here is my input, my ties to AMD not withstanding...)

While a Dual-core processor won't currently benifit your 3D Games, it doesn't mean it's useless as a gaming processor.
Dual-Core is more about partitioning your CPU power between applications.
(Teamspeak, firewall, Antivirus, Spamware protection, you name it)

Take a look at:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2410&p=7

Note that clock to clock the Dual core processor is the same or slightly faster then it's single core counterpart. (These benchmarks are running single-threaded games)

While there isn't an advantage that you will see directly in your game, it does mean that using a (AMD) dual-core processor wont slow your games down. Which is great considering that the cores both still share motherboard resources.

Just as an example before you launch your next game press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC
or open your task manager. Note the number of processes running in the background (Indicated at the bottom left). Each of these processes share your CPU resources. Imagine having a bare, untouched CPU core with nothing on it but what YOU want running. That is what Dual-Core is good for.
If anyone wants to know you use the windows task manager to partition the processes between CPUs.

I am a moron when it comes to this stuff, what I know is that with my trading, Im running 2 trading programs (both are hogs), around 5 trading calculators, 2 Im services and CT or what other game Im playing at the time. I want to upgrade to some SLI unit as well.

Basicly would going SLI and AMD dual core be the best option for me? The good thing is my trading group pays for half of what ever system I get, for exspensis. So would this be the best way to go? http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/200..._zmaxd2/1.html

thanks

[RotoSequence]

This thread management issue in Windows is one of the chief reasons I want MS to get their enterprise level thread management onto desktop systems; If they want Windows to be the ultimate gaming platform (which they say they want to be), they need to improve thread management at the desktop level to keep the customers that buy dual core CPUs happy - or at the very least, it should be in XP Professional.

[ZapWizard]

Apoogod, the Zdmax system you linked to is probably about the most powerfull PC you can build right now (and stay compact)
Their SLI version even has TWO! hypertransport links between the processors, something I have never seen before, even in the lab.

As far as their reliability and overall performance, they are awsome, two of my fellow Austin Modders (.com) members own the original Zdmax system and love it.

Can you imagine the specs:
Dual Dual-Core Opterons w/ Dual Hypertransport links
Dual DDR (Registered up to 8GB!)
Dual Graphics cards (SLI)
Raid using SATA-II drives
All inside a small form factor.

[Da Dego]

Originally Posted by ZapWizard

Apoogod, the Zdmax system you linked to is probably about the most powerfull PC you can build right now (and stay compact)
Their SLI version even has TWO! hypertransport links between the processors, something I have never seen before, even in the lab.

As far as their reliability and overall performance, they are awsome, two of my fellow Austin Modders (.com) members own the original Zdmax system and love it.

Can you imagine the specs:
Dual Dual-Core Opterons w/ Dual Hypertransport links
Dual DDR (Registered up to 8GB!)
Dual Graphics cards (SLI)
Raid using SATA-II drives
All inside a small form factor.

Oh lord that is pretty...Can someone give me a rough cost of this type of system? Heh heh...

[apoogod]

Originally Posted by Da Dego

Oh lord that is pretty...Can someone give me a rough cost of this type of system? Heh heh...

just priced this out on newegg

Iwill ZMAX-DP Socket 940 Dual AMD Opteron nVIDIA nForce3 pro Barebone - $682

Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JD 80GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive - $59

Kingston ValueRAM 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered System Memory Model KVR400X64C3AK2/2G - $213


AMD Opteron 244 SledgeHammer 400MHz FSB Socket 940 Processor Model OSA244CEP5AL - $406


XFX Geforce 6800GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI-Express x16 Video Card - $698

total.....$2056