"Core 2 Duo -- The Embarrassing Secrets"?

[Ycon]

IIRC AMD is hitting the 65nm thermal wall with 2.5 GHz and half the cores.

Lets say Intel really did make C2D a bench CPU. But wouldnt C2D development have taken Intel like 100 years to complete since it wins in any possible application?

 

[dasickninja]

There is a big difference between optimization and building your processor for benchmarks.

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

Just an observation... but arent we talking economics here?

All that aside, I wouldn't say Intel was unethical (since I use to word to denote actually evil actions). Instead I'd say it simply tried to prevent competition, instead of allowing it. If you made a product and your competitor went to all the re-sellers and paid them kickbacks to sell either none or very small amounts of your product, with non-disclosure agreements, you'd think of them as....______?

The reason why I post this is for context. Under our economic context, what Intel did there IS unethical in a free and open capitalistic economy. Its why we have government. But generally I agree with you both to most exstent. I live in California. A few years back, the "government" (pregovernator) chose to give everyone a chance to be winners in HS sports. IF they wanted to, they could be in the playoffs, regaurdless of record. To me, thats what this article reminds me of. If you want everyone to be able to play, then YOU pay for it, not me. And dont try to tell me that just because this team or that team needs a chance by whatever logic, or fogged distortions, is just as good cause they play too, I aint buyin it. ONLY when its worth buying it, THEN Ill spend my money and takes my chances

 

[cryogenic]

what did intel do? what is the proof?

Intel, awww, they did nothing wrong!!! ????!!! In fact they, as good fellas as they are, they even tried to help AMD to sell more CPU's, they event told Dell that it should buy CPU's from AMD too. Dell is the evil part in this story.

Be real man, you're not the judge to ask for prof and I don't see a court room around here! If you truly believe that Intel's business practices so far were totaly onest and never have abused their monopoly then ... I realy don't know what to say afte all these years of articles and trials reagardin Intel's monopolistic behaviors.

 

[MarkG]

I think the "author" (I use that term loosely) of the "article" (again, I'm being generous) was trying to state that the C2D line of processors was built to excel at benchmarks instead of actual applications. Think of stuff like 3DMark... sure, we all want higher scores, but that's not an actual game any of us play. I think that's where he was going with that.

How do you make a CPU that runs 3DMark better than applications?

If I remember correctly, when nvidia were 'optimising' 3DMark they detected the camera movement and replaced the shaders with different ones to improve their performance. Do you think that Intel have a 'cheat unit' in the C2D which detects 3DMark and runs different code?

3DMark runs the same instructions as applications do. If Intel improved the performance of some instructions that 3DMark uses, then the same performance boost will be achieved by applications which use those instructions. If Intel increased the cache to make 3DMark run faster, then other applications that want a large cache will run faster too. How would they 'cheat' to make 3DMark run faster without making other things run faster?

 

[No1sFanboy]

How do you make a CPU that runs 3DMark better than applications?

It would be cheaper to buy Futuremark and optimize the benchmark.

 

[cryogenic]

How do you make a CPU that runs 3DMark better than applications?

Easy, usually benchmarking applications run different tests in isolation and after compute a score based on individual test's score.

Now if you improve parts of CPU like for example integer multiplication using a high order of magnitude like 4 times faster but memory access stays the same. in the benchmarks like SpecInt you will see a great increase but the real life applications won't see that much of a difference because the system didn't get an overall improvement, and SpecInt is a specific benchmark.

(Well I'm not implying that this is the case for Core 2 as tests clearly confirm that's it's a architecture that's improved overall even for memory access despite using old fsb)

So the answer to your question, optimizing a CPU for benchmarks means not making overall optimizations to the architecture, but local ones which results in greater benchmarks scores but possibly lower real applications benefits.

 

[dasickninja]

Yeah.. spend all that money just to make the CPU good for benchmarks. They'll optimize the bench, not the CPU.

 

[cryogenic]

Yeah.. spend all that money just to make the CPU good for benchmarks. They'll optimize the bench, not the CPU.

I just explained to him what the expresion 'optimized for benckmarks' means or could mean, I din't sugest anything. Where did the money part came from?

 

[dasickninja]

Money is always part of the equation.

 

[will14]

Indeed. Embarrassing is that article.

No I think that article is good for it's purpose. Re-assuring fan boys that AMD is fine and kicking ass. However C2D is the least of their problems. If Intel manufacturing side can kick out Penryn before barcelona hits critical channel mass AMD might end up never getting Barcelona to market very well and losing more share/cash. At that point the R600/graphics side or the possibility of re-integrating graphics/chipsets or hitting critical mass in cheap computers for asia/third world to continue. Words/statistics can prove anything. Sure we can always look at the downsides of something. Ok I'm tired and cranky nm back to work so I can go home.

 

[r0ck]

"No I think that article is good for it's purpose."

The purpose was to show how "embarassing" Core 2 was and how every site out there is evil and how games, encoders, compressors, 3D renderers aren't "real code".

"Re-assuring fan boys that AMD is fine and kicking ass."

Yes he does that a lot.. 2007 a great year for AMD, Core 2 is a scam, Intel is evil.

"If Intel manufacturing side can kick out Penryn before barcelona hits critical channel mass AMD might end up never getting Barcelona to market very well and losing more share/cash."

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/31804/135/

"At that point the R600/graphics side or the possibility of re-integrating graphics/chipsets or hitting critical mass in cheap computers for asia/third world to continue. Words/statistics can prove anything. Sure we can always look at the downsides of something. Ok I'm tired and cranky nm back to work so I can go home."

That's just what they need, more low margin parts Intel will also have GPU+CPU.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20070116234458.html
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070328-intel-aims-nehalem-at-amds-fusion-integrated-graphics-on-die-memory-controller-smt.html

 

[will14]

are you debating me or commenting.
I didn't have any major point nor am I an AMD fanboy I have my intel OC'd but I would love to get a K10 and a Penryn.
While I know the entire change in CPU/GPU /CGPU will be interesting to see what happens if anything along those lines I'd still favor ATI integrated over Intel although who knows regarding their re-organization and pickup of graphics people(employees) last year.
A lot is in the air.
I'm not sure why you decided to dissect my post as I said my mind is failing as I'm finishing a few last things before leaving work.

 

[r0ck]

What was good and what was the purpose?

 

[will14]

What was good and what was the purpose?

It was on AMDZone. To prop up AMD/dig at Intel and it did that. *shrug* I'm out for real now tho and I get it now =P

 

[cronic]

what did intel do? what is the proof?

Intel, awww, they did nothing wrong!!! ????!!! In fact they, as good fellas as they are, they even tried to help AMD to sell more CPU's, they event told Dell that it should buy CPU's from AMD too. Dell is the evil part in this story.

Be real man, you're not the judge to ask for prof and I don't see a court room around here! If you truly believe that Intel's business practices so far were totaly onest and never have abused their monopoly then ... I realy don't know what to say afte all these years of articles and trials reagardin Intel's monopolistic behaviors.

intel were paying dell not to use AMD cpus ,or at least so i hear. i think it was around $1b or something around that number.

again so im told it was only due to a lawsuit that dell started selling AMD cpus.

could someone verify this?

 

[r0ck]

Sharikou props up AMD and digs at Intel