AMD Drops 3DNow! Support From Future CPUs

[jimmysmitty]

[citation][nom]jj463rd[/nom]Oh yeah I remember the 3DNow extensions on my old K6-2 CPU from 1998.[/citation]

Yep. It was sor of AMDs version of MMX. Then when SSE came out, AMD has a tech trade agreement with Intel so they both have SSE.

TOo bad. Was a good feature set. But its seen its time much like other technology.

 

[Honis]

[citation][nom]chick0n[/nom]Losing 3Dnow! is not really a big deal. We have all these fast CPU and now even GPU will be able to help crunching numbers really really fast.but my question is, does it take that much of a resource to "keep" 3Dnow! extension in the CPU logic? or is it causing some of the problems ? only AMD knows.[/citation]
It takes up some (unknown to us) amount of space in the processor. I doubt its anything that we looking at specs will be able to say "Ah hah! They were able to add another 256 KB of L1 cache!"

Considering it's an AMD only extension set I'm not surprised. The performance hit will be minimal considering a modern CPUs raw speed.

 

[Assmar]

[citation][nom]ajcroteau[/nom]3DNow was huge back in the day... I had a couple of K6-2 cpu's and both ran fairly well... but it looks like it's gone the way of the dinosaurs...[/citation]
3DNow evolved into the birds we know and love today!? Fascinating.

 

[rooket]

[citation][nom]San Pedro[/nom]Those of you playing still playing Quake 2 (wouldn't blame you) are out of luck.[/citation]

I was playing this game on N64 a couple days ago

 

[Guest]

Ahhhhh 3DNow, I'll miss you! Still remember the first time I patched Quake2 with 3dnow update and got like an extra 20fps. Holy crap that was impressive. Bumped my FPH (frags per hour, common measurement back in the day) from like 80-130.

 

[ta152h]

I think people miss the point on this. There's no penalty for losing 3D Now!, because nothing used it. Maybe 12 year old software did, but, I'm pretty sure you're not going to have a big problem running it on x87, on a modern processor.

By the way, x87 and MMX are dead as well. They are not part of x86-64, so can only be used in 32-bit mode. As time goes on, 64-bit will become dominant (just as we see very few Real Mode, or 286 Protected Apps today), so that pretty much all the old instructions will be at least deprecated.

However, the big difference is, x87, 286 Protected (mainly for extended memory support) and Real Mode were extensively used at one point, whereas 3D Now! never received much support, and was quickly supplanted by SSE when it came out, which was superior (mainly because AMD couldn't make the drastic changes Intel could and get industry support), and was backed by a much larger market share.

AMD saved money, and electricity by removing this worthless logic. It's a very good move. I hope they make their x87 unit smaller as well, since SSE2 and later should always be used now, instead of it.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

[citation][nom]San Pedro[/nom]Those of you playing still playing Quake 2 (wouldn't blame you) are out of luck.[/citation]
there was a 3d now patch for this. Worked great for my old K6-2, which I think I still have lying around somewhere.

 

[nforce4max]

[citation][nom]iam2thecrowe[/nom]there was a 3d now patch for this. Worked great for my old K6-2, which I think I still have lying around somewhere.[/citation]

I got my 3dfx cards on hand, V3 2k and 3500vt. My 5500 agp is the prize of the bunch.

 

[dEAne]

Yes I remember that. But at least amd will give some patch or workaround for this.

 

[blackpanther26]

it could be becuase they are adding SSE5 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulldozer_(processor)

 

[eddieroolz]

Good times, 3Dnow. Goodbye!

 

[jamesedgeuk2000]

[citation][nom]San Pedro[/nom]Those of you playing still playing Quake 2 (wouldn't blame you) are out of luck.[/citation]

Quake 2 has non-3Dnow modes too

 

[iam2thecrowe]

[citation][nom]pogsnet[/nom]This feature started before SSE comes out in Pentium III era[/citation]
correction PII era

 

[Guest]

What PII never had SSE!