Discussion Time...

[ares1214]

hello everybody! im am back with several question, discussion points, and thoughts...

1. about the 890gx and 890fx boards...how much better is the 4290 over the 4200, i cant really find much in the way of benchmarks. 2, when is the 890fx coming, and anybody know what features it will have that will make it better?

2. anybody know when the amd phenom iix6 is coming, and i have heard that it will be 45nm, is this true, and why??? also, it appears that it will be like intel in the fact it will have a hyperthreading like feature, so with any luck, it will come out at the same price point as the current i7s, and in combination with 890fx, and 5xxx series (maybe 6xxx by the time it comes out) it seems it might be able to take a big market chunk out of intel...which right now, i dont want to have to wait for intel cpus to come down in price by about 1000$.

3. ssds are coming way down in price, anybody know why? it seems like 30-60 gig ssds are becoming much better, much much much cheaper, and much more available. would you all say now is when ssd goes more consumer, or does it have to increase capacity, and lower cost a bit more. also, is now a good time to go ssd, or are there any reasons no to?

4. just curious, as i have been looking into tiger direct (sorry newegg, but in some cases, 8-15% off is hard to make up ) and they have the i3 for about 90$ after discount and 8%:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5581943&Sku=I69-0530

anyway, i was originally going to go with a athlon x4, with 785g, but now, the i3 530 is a bit cheaper, and i was wondering how does the power, and the integrated stack up to the amd setup...and benchmarks or feedback would be appreciated on this...

well this is it for discussion time, feel free to ask, answer, or say whatever...keep in mind, i know what im talking about, so im not really asking for help, just opinions...

 

[enzo matrix]

1. The 4290 will perform better. My guess is something like 3200 vs 3300. but really they are both integrated so you can't expect much at all. As for features, I don't believe there are any more but I can't be too sure. maybe something to do with crossfire.

2. I Sometime Q2 this year I believe last I checked. And the rumour was not about hyperthreading, it was about turbo boost. I hope they come out at a $280 pricepoint.

3. Because that's how everything always ends up. especially since so many are entering that market and people are buying. Well now would be fine to go SSD if you have the money. You can get up to 512GB drives. Still at a hefty price. But I believe all the firmware issues have been sorted out. Lots of people are getting a small SSD for a boot drive and a big HDD for storage. Performance will always be getting better with time.

4. The i3 is one of the more competitive dual cores and is on par with the Phenom IIx2 at 3.2GHz. But honestly which you choose depends on your purpose. For most cases, I would take the quad. Especially with the current trend of software and games. Put plainly, the i3 will win out on anything single threaded or using only 2 threads while the quad will win on anything with more threads. So depends on your usage.

 

[ares1214]

1. well this is a business build, so video isnt too important, but it is nice to have the extra video power, a long with the future proofing of the 890 and sata 6 usb3.

2. look here:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3674

it says that the amd bulldozer will appear as 2 cores for every one real core...so its like HT, but it says that it will be better than HT, i think due to stronger virtual cores vs the real...but im not quite sure, turbo boost would be nice too :lol: From all this, and amd always having higher clocks, it looks like this will be a solid competitor, but i HOPE it is 32nm...and yeah, 300ish dollars would be amazing, since the first intels are gonna cost more than my computer :lol:

3.well i knew all that, i was more asking if now is a good time to buy or should i wait for things to settle. prices seem to be going down, problems seem to be going down, speeds seem to be going up, and capacity is increasing, so i was just wondering if it would be a good idea to wait all this out, and wait for all the rising and falling to continue...

4. since this is a business build, i thought a quad would be better...but at that price, i looked into it more, and saw that the i3 has lower power consumption (obviously due to 32nm) possibly saving some money on psu, beats it in cache and memory bandwidth, pretty identical in gaming (dont care to much), beats it in most of the office tests, along with several other things:

http://techreport.com/articles.x/18448/10

so for that price, with that much overclockability, it seems like a good way to go...also, it will be having like 8 internet pages open and excel, so the speed of its 2 cores (even though it has HT) would be better than the 30+ pages open that a quad gives anyway.

 

[enzo matrix]

1. Well, I don't think the difference would be worth the extra cost.

2. Not quite like hypertransport.

"AMD is duplicating more hardware in enabling per-core multithreading. The integer resources are all doubled, including the schedulers and d-caches. It’s only the FP resources that are shared between the threads"

I actually believe they will be advertising a chip with 2 "modules" as a quad core. I also highly doubt it will not be 32nm.

3. Well, if you knew all that then it really is just your decision. Hardware is constantly changing and getting better. The rising and falling will never stop. Just ask yourself if you are willing to spend the money. Then wait for a good deal at a retailer.

4. Looks like you found your processor then. I certainly have no arguments against the i3 at $90 especially if power consumption is an issue Its integrated graphics aren't as good as the ATI but should be good enough and are even good enough to watch 1080p movies (as an example of non-gaming usage). Plus that power consumption for the CPU alone includes the integrated GPU.

 

[fazers_on_stun]

About #2 - the 6-core DT version of Istanbul (AMD's 6-core server CPU) is not the same as Bulldozer. BD is not due until next year some time, as it is AMD's next-gen architecture and will also be 32nm, whereas the X6 CPU is due out in Q2 of this year IIRC and will basically be an X4 with 2 more cores, on 45nm.