AMD Barcelona in Action

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Damned if they do, damned if they don't. I think I said they would be AgenaFX as they are set to release with Barcelona servers.

The thing should be ridiculously fast. I mean stupid fast. Crazy fast. Insanely fast.


ALL HAIL THE DUPOLY!!!!
 
Can't wait to see the 4 and 8 socket benchmarks when they become available.
Even if Barcelona is no faster than Opteron per core. Scalability to 32 cores really is impressive, and will start giving Itanium a run for its money.
 
Can't wait to see the 4 and 8 socket benchmarks when they become available.
Even if Barcelona is no faster than Opteron per core. Scalability to 32 cores really is impressive, and will start giving Itanium a run for its money.
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Yeah, but thats not possible. K10 is 4 cores of IPC goodness. The 32Way won't come yet because it requires HT3 and there isn't an HT3 server chipset yet, but it will definitely give AMD firm ownership of HPC and TPC-H. When the 32Way chipset debuts, then I expect AMD to crack the TPC-C which is owned by 64Way Power and Itanium.

It's also good to know that Agena FX will run in a single socket. I just hope that they launch them close together. I should be ready to upgrade by July/August when the DX10 games start to appear. Tha's what I'm waiting for, not to mention multithreaded games.
 
Damned if they do, damned if they don't. I think I said they would be AgenaFX as they are set to release with Barcelona servers.

The thing should be ridiculously fast. I mean stupid fast. Crazy fast. Insanely fast.


ALL HAIL THE DUPOLY!!!!
Click to expand...
I'm quite sure it will, but the speed/power will largely go untapped in most scenarios...your usage...VM's, programming, etc. may make good use of it, but it would be a waste for me... and probably 90% of the forumz residents. Until they program some games to take advantage of 4+ cores, it's main advantage will be for audio/video encoding,etc. I have no desire for quad-core even, at this point in time....but that will change, i'm sure, within the next 5 years. For now...i think most people who buy one, are probably just feeding their ego's. :wink:
 
Damned if they do, damned if they don't. I think I said they would be AgenaFX as they are set to release with Barcelona servers.

The thing should be ridiculously fast. I mean stupid fast. Crazy fast. Insanely fast.


ALL HAIL THE DUPOLY!!!!
Click to expand...

A quick trip around the world and I'm baaaaaaaaaaack. Did y'all miss me?

Yeah. I figured... :cry:

Actually, I woulda been back earlier but I forgot my password... 😳

Baron, I have no doubt whatsoever that Wahoo is "Crazy fast. Insanely fast." In fact, if it beats 2xPenryn, I'm greasing up my MasterCard right now for one (let's see if I can beat you to the buy). But we do have to admit that just showing a fan collage is a far cry from a benchmark. I know, eight cores, real time, blah blah blah. But given the endless stalling from Hector & Co. would it really be asking too much to have one single tester from THG, Anand, whatever, even under strict AMD supervision, spend one stinkin' hour on it and run whatever he/she wanted? One lousy little hour, right under AMD's nose, would have not only quieted down the lynchmobs and boosted The Street's view of the stock, but would have gone a long way towards restoring AMD's credibility which lately has taken some serious hits. But nooooooooooooooooooooooo, Hector, Henri et al. decide to continue their "Crazy PR. Insane PR." It just simply makes no sense at all and takes their unorthodox and self-destructive recent operations policy to a new height.

That said, as soon as I arrived here I needed a quick cheap stopgap system so I got an X2 3800+, 2xCrucial DDR2-667 512MB Sticks, a Gigabyte GA-M61VME-S2 (I wanted onboard video and audio) and had the whole thing home for well under $200. I already had a PSU hanging around and brought my HD so rock and roll. I was up and running and had enough change from two C-notes to buy lunch. Verdict? Not impressed. Seems slower and more sluggish than my similarly configured San Diego 3700+. Dunno why. Just is.

Please Intel and AMD (AKA the DUPOLY :wink: ), hurry the f*** up and get a dual quad enthusiast non-FB-DIMM system out!!!

Now that's outta the way, I have to SERIOUSLY REPRIMAND TWO MEMBERS I THOUGHT WERE MY FRIENDS, Dade and Tanker. How could you guys? How could you take a dagger and stick it deep into the poor Captain's chest and twist it so hard?

Don't you know that...

CATS RULE!

Cats are the best mammals on Earth, significantly better and nicer than any other species, including humans. When the day comes when the Viagra stops working, the STDs get too advanced and the last chick maxes out my credit cards and walks out the door, the Captain fully intends to fill his humble abode with felines of every persuasion, pull his pants up to his armpits, stock up on Depends, complain about the government fulltime and grumpily wait for death, surrounded by the most glorious creatures in creation: CATS!!!!!!!!

Thank you. :lol:
 
Hey, cats do have some use. They're much trickier to hit with a .22 or an air rifle than a soda can is. However, their usefulness is limited as they're pretty easy to nail with a shotgun as they more or less run in a straight line and tend to only run ten yards or so before they stop. A rabbit will go until he either is under cover or otherwise out of sight. And a rabbit will zig-zag all over and is quicker than a cat is. But rabbits have a limited season enforced by the MDC while one can nail a cat at any time, as long as it has no collar. I'm much more of a shotgunner than a rifleman, so cats are relatively simply to flatten with 7/8 oz. or #6s and a modified choke.
 
MU_Engineer: I'm having visions of dipping you in Tuna Sauce and throwing you into a pit full of starving felines, including a couple of bengal tigers.

Tanker: Ego, Schmego. I want a system that can take everything Photoshop can dish out and that I don't have to upgrade by Christmas.

Now, I strongly suggest that we return to discussions that do not involve harming felines or the Captain will be having second thoughts about remembering his password!!! :evil:
 
Of course the 3800+ feels slower. It's a 2GHz CPU w/512k L2 vs. a 2.2GHz CPU w/1MB L2. Also, AM2 really needs the extra bandwidth of DDR2-800(wake-up....where have you been the last year?). You will notice some improvement in multi-threaded apps.... do you find it slower in PS also? The RAM issue is a very real one...and is like running 3"headers, into a single exhaust, with muffler and catalytic. :tongue: Nice to see ya back, BTW. :wink:
 
According to the Tom's article, they are AgenaFX processors not Barcelona. Which is it?
Click to expand...

Yes. :)

Barcelona is the chip family name (rather than the older term "K10"). AgenaFX is the desktop part of that family (should be called PhenomFX, but don't know about numbers).

Barcelona is also the code name of the future Opteron part that will run on the K10 arch.

It's just like Penryn. Penryn is the next Intel architecture (45nm shrink of Conroe + lots of goodies like High-K and SSE4). It is also the code name of the mobile part based upon that architecture.
 
I betcha if you posted that in Other, Wingding would have an absolute field day with that 😛
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Is he a tuna fan? :twisted:

Of course the 3800+ feels slower. It's a 2GHz CPU w/512k L2 vs. a 2.2GHz CPU w/1MB L2. Also, AM2 really needs the extra bandwidth of DDR2-800(wake-up....where have you been the last year?). You will notice some improvement in multi-threaded apps.... do you find it slower in PS also? The RAM issue is a very real one...and is like running 3"headers, into a single exhaust, with muffler and catalytic. :tongue: Nice to see ya back, BTW. :wink:
Click to expand...

Yeah, I know I shoulda gotten faster RAM but hey, I was just building a temporary stopgap system and wanted enough change from my $200 for a Big Mac and fries. Photoshop is molasses time as compared to the San Diego. Much slower than you would think the 667 RAM would be responsible for. Makes no sense at all but there ya go. Maybe I should throw some Everest at it to see if the cores are running at full speed (both cores show up on Task Manager).

Nice to be back, even though I ended up in YOUR FROZEN MOOSE TURD COUNTRY GRRRRRR and nice to chat with you again EXCEPT FOR YOUR CAT HATING STATEMENTS!!!!!!! :evil:
 
I betcha if you posted that in Other, Wingding would have an absolute field day with that 😛
Click to expand...

Is he a tuna fan? :twisted:

Of course the 3800+ feels slower. It's a 2GHz CPU w/512k L2 vs. a 2.2GHz CPU w/1MB L2. Also, AM2 really needs the extra bandwidth of DDR2-800(wake-up....where have you been the last year?). You will notice some improvement in multi-threaded apps.... do you find it slower in PS also? The RAM issue is a very real one...and is like running 3"headers, into a single exhaust, with muffler and catalytic. :tongue: Nice to see ya back, BTW. :wink:
Click to expand...

Yeah, I know I shoulda gotten faster RAM but hey, I was just building a temporary stopgap system and wanted enough change from my $200 for a Big Mac and fries. Photoshop is molasses time as compared to the San Diego. Much slower than you would think the 667 RAM would be responsible for. Makes no sense at all but there ya go. Maybe I should throw some Everest at it to see if the cores are running at full speed (both cores show up on Task Manager).

Nice to be back, even though I ended up in YOUR FROZEN MOOSE TURD COUNTRY GRRRRRR and nice to chat with you again EXCEPT FOR YOUR CAT HATING STATEMENTS!!!!!!! :evil:Photoshop must be one of the few apps that takes advantage of the extra L2 cache. Buy another 3800+ and glue them together...ala Intel style. 😀

PS. I think i figured out your real job. You're a gopher for the queen, and that's why you were up in the "great white north" recently. 😳
 
Can't wait to see the 4 and 8 socket benchmarks when they become available.
Even if Barcelona is no faster than Opteron per core. Scalability to 32 cores really is impressive, and will start giving Itanium a run for its money.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but thats not possible. K10 is 4 cores of IPC goodness. The 32Way won't come yet because it requires HT3 and there isn't an HT3 server chipset yet, but it will definitely give AMD firm ownership of HPC and TPC-H. When the 32Way chipset debuts, then I expect AMD to crack the TPC-C which is owned by 64Way Power and Itanium.

It's also good to know that Agena FX will run in a single socket. I just hope that they launch them close together. I should be ready to upgrade by July/August when the DX10 games start to appear. Tha's what I'm waiting for, not to mention multithreaded games.

But there already 8 Socket Opteron system out there, ok they do not scale that well at the moment.
But even so a 16 Core (4 socket) Opteron is still speedy beast and Intel does not have a Core 2 based Xeon that can scale about 2 Sockets
 
finally some signs of life from AMD
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If it is indeed running two Barcelona, i would think it would run much cooler than the first 4x4's on 90nm. So.......why the fan overkillage? 😀 😀

Well, it may be an older stepping, first of all, so not fully optimized.

Secondly, each AgenaFX chip is going to have a TDP of at least 120W, so nice fans are definitely required!

I think someone else touched on it - this will be a very hot system, but the performance should be incredible (which makes the heat bearable).

I wonder what power supply will be required, especially with 2 R600's (4 days until release - woo hoo!) ... I think highest rumors I've heard has been 300W each. Woof. I guess it makes calculating cost of running your computer easy. If you have a power supply constantly drawing a kilowatt, the KWH that you'll have to pay for is how many hours the computer is on :).

At 31 cents per KWH in California (highest I know of), that means leaving your computer on full time (assuming full load...which probably isn't practical 😀 ) will generate an electricity bill of over $200 per month. Ouch! Even half of that is harsh. But I guess if you'll drop an estimated $3000+ on a computer system, you care little for utility costs.
 
Photoshop must be one of the few apps that takes advantage of the extra L2 cache. Buy another 3800+ and glue them together...ala Intel style. 😀

PS. I think i figured out your real job. You're a gopher for the queen, and that's why you were up in the "great white north" recently. 😳
Click to expand...

I sure hope that when the dualquads finally come out and I shell out the big bux to get one I can see the massive Photoshop speed gains that I've been hoping for. So far the single core to dual core move is a major league Photoshop lunchbag letdown.

Tell ya what, why don't I just buy three more 3800+, an economy-sized bottle of krazyglue and get my octocore that way? :lol:

Well, if you must know, I'm here on a mission directly authorized by the President of the United States. In his recent meeting with the Queen, he suspected her of being a Commie Terrorist Symphathizer and hiding nerve gas containers in her purse and thus he sent me on a tour of the Commonwealth to weed out her various international nefarious accomplices and keep the United States safe from the evil Anglo-Canuck threat which has toppled his good friend Tony Blair to replace him with a Pinko Leninist and has elected a leftist masquerading as a Conservative to Ottawa.

:wink:

Now repeat after me. Cats are lovely. Cats are lovely. Cats are lovely... :lol:
 
Damned if they do, damned if they don't. I think I said they would be AgenaFX as they are set to release with Barcelona servers.

The thing should be ridiculously fast. I mean stupid fast. Crazy fast. Insanely fast.


ALL HAIL THE DUPOLY!!!!
Click to expand...
I'm quite sure it will, but the speed/power will largely go untapped in most scenarios...your usage...VM's, programming, etc. may make good use of it, but it would be a waste for me... and probably 90% of the forumz residents. Until they program some games to take advantage of 4+ cores, it's main advantage will be for audio/video encoding,etc. I have no desire for quad-core even, at this point in time....but that will change, i'm sure, within the next 5 years. For now...i think most people who buy one, are probably just feeding their ego's. :wink:

So it's basically AMDs version of C2Q? That's why I'm surprised they aren't trying to push Kuma forward. That's what's going to get their ASPs back up as AgenaFX and Barcelona (I guess it's still called Opteron) will be low volume high margin and they need high volume mid margin (they already have low margin).

But the good thing is that X2 is no slouch and would serve anyone who bought it well except for the high-end enthusiast who would at this point either wait or get C2Q.

This means AMD should mainy maintain their current share, especially now that they have demoed actual Agena boxes. I was hoping they would demo Kuma also as AMD's site does have pics of the wafers.
 
"encoding nearly ran real time"
do anyone have try same task on a C2Q ?
Click to expand...

http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html?modelx=33&model1=604&model2=464&chart=182

Take the top C2Q, divide the time it takes by 2, still takes over 5x real time

Unfortunately, they are not easily comparable because we don't know what specific software implementation they are using. Also tgdaily said it was 720P and hardocp said 1080P, so depending on which it is will skew the results by a factor of ~3.

So far all we have is a demonstration that K10 exists, which at this point is enough to make me happy.
 
Sorry Zur,

That which you point to in the link is rendering 1080 NOT 720.

That is a serious differential...
Click to expand...

I understand that, the link I had (which was on hdbits.org) said it was 1080p. I play a lot of HD stuff and chat to people which encode, I know the difference in needed CPU power lol.
 
Zur,

Sorry I was just pointing out that the article was referencing 720P rendered at near realtime (I always love those terms).

That is a far cry from rendering 1080I or 1080P.

So your number you listed would have been off that is all!!
 
Zur,

Sorry I was just pointing out that the article was referencing 720P rendered at near realtime (I always love those terms).

That is a far cry from rendering 1080I or 1080P.

So your number you listed would have been off that is all!!
Click to expand...

I read this link: http://hardocp.com/news.html?news=MjU2OTYsLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdCwsLDE=

Which says 1080p at near real time. Thus the confusion.
 
The C2Q 2.67 took 135 seconds to encode 24 seconds of 1080p video in H.264. Assuming perfect scaling, then an 8-core Core 2 setup would need 68 seconds, which is 2.8x real time. It has been mentioned that 720p encoding is about 3 times as fast as 1080p encoding. So a pair of 2.67 quad-cores could theoretically encode 720p in real-time as well. Of course this will not necessarily happen as there are scaling issues to deal with.

So the bottom line is that the CPUs demonstrated are at least as fast as the C2Qs if the video was 720p, with the scaling ability of the chips being the difference. If the video was 1080p, then the 10h *smokes* what Intel has right now by a factor of 3 or more in video encoding. However, The Barcelona has SSE4a and it is very possible that they used a tweaked SSE4a-capable encoder like Intel used for the 45 nm demo. The Yorkfield/Wolfdales showed a 100% boost in performance with SSE4a, so the video could have very well have been 1080p and encoded in real-time if SSE4a were used. That still says the 10h is 50% faster than the theoretical 8-core-with-perfect-scaling Core 2 Duo if you throw out the SSE4a enhancements.

Personally, I think that it probably was a normal SSE3 encoder and 720p video. This would put a single Agena in the same league as the QX6700, perhaps a bit better, but not a lot. However, we don't know the clock speed of the Agena FXes used nor do we fully know the top launch speeds. If the chip under those sinks was a 2.9 GHz unit, then AMD only matched the QX6700s, but if it's a 2.0 GHz model and the top goes to 2.9, they will clean the C2Q's clock.
 
I understand MU..

They also did not say which engine they were using...

There is a whole lot of speculation here.. I find it easier to just wait and see.

I hope the Agena comes in much faster. I just don't know that it will come in at, until true /less vague/trendable results start to come back.

To throw out that it was rendering 720P at near realtime is fuzzy at best given the rest of the platform/env is not stated.

Lets all hope for excellent results when the actual testing begins.
 
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