Who will have the speed over dollar ratio?????

[qurious69ss]

What I find interesting is that the conroe which Intel put up against the FX60 Amd chip was a midrange processor, which I believe will run around $300. That means that even if Amd makes up the performance difference with the AM2 revision they would still have to drop the price of their FX60 from $1100 down to $300 to stay with the speed over dollar ratio. Any thoughts?????

 

[luminaris]

I agree, I think the top line processors from Intel and AMD are way to expensive as it is. If this competition brings the price down then I'm all for it.

 

[moozh]

Intel has an advantage with 65nm technology from a price point. However their processors will also have twice the cache so more cost to make them.

The processor reviewed will be the highest end non-Extreme Edition desktop chip in the lineup. It is comparable to today's Pentium D 950 which sells for about $700 (which will be replaced by a 960 3.6GHz model, but prices may drop by then), which puts the Conroe E6700 likely at about a $700 price point.

The correct processor to compare it to will be the 5000+.

So we need a benchmark like this...

In this corner...

Intel E6700 2.66GHz 4MB Shared Cache 1066FSB

And in the other corner...

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ 2.60GHz 2x1MB Cache 2000MT/s

Game on!

 

[qurious69ss]

I'm just wondering if amd will be able to drop their retail bread and butter from $1100 to $300? That's a huge loss of revenue.

 

[moozh]

You're missing the ponit. The AMD FX series of processors is not their bread and butter. They are for enthusiasts. Once socket AM2 is out, nobody will want to buy a 939 socket FX anyway.

They will still sell some now since Conroe is not actually on the market and if someone wants the best gaming machine RIGHT NOW (or for the next while) AMD is clearly the way to go.

 

[qurious69ss]

I thought I read an article here or anand that had the prices for the conroes. I remember the low end being $240 and the EE being $1000. The 2.6 was @$340. Anyone know for sure?

 

[qurious69ss]

I understand that but if intel can offer a midrange processor that can compete or as some have said beat, then in order for amd to compete with intel then they will have to drop prices. The high end model from $1100-$300 and the X2 5000 from say $700-$300. Don't quote me on the numbers. Just the fact that the midrange conroe will have that great of a speed over dollar ratio will have to make amd drop prices. The question is how much?

 

[Action_Man]

However their processors will also have twice the cache so more cost to make them.

Not really since its twice as much as the P4 it should cost the same amount of real estate.

I'm also pretty sure conroe will go for 500 not 700.

 

[RichPLS]

That sounds about what I recall. And it looks like from the low end through the mid to the upper to the enthusiasts, that Conroe will be the low wattage, highest performance, and most overclockable by a large margin, judging from early tests. I mean a faster than a FX-60 chip for only $400 or so that will easily overclock to 4 GHz!

 

[moozh]

By costs I'm talking about transistor counts not yields.


But this is all speculation. I will ask my Intel rep how much the E6700 is projected to retail at tomorrow.

 

[Action_Man]

From memory it'd be around the same, I'll check out the die shots later on.

Sweetness.

 

[RichPLS]

I predict it won't cost more than $500 US, since it is a 2.66GHz mid to lower mid line chip. There will be a top end comprised of the 3GHz and the 3.33GHz EE chip on launch.

 

[Action_Man]

They'll probably save higher clocked ones for AMDs response, no?

 

[RichPLS]

Might, but if they have high yeilds with most hitting 4GHz, it would make sense to ramp them up quicker and make competion really scramble. :twisted:

 

[Action_Man]

4ghz might be hard to hit with the EE hitting 95W @ 3.3 or so the rumours go.

 

[moozh]

No, the E6700 is the highest end chip. If I remember correctly the lineup is as follows:

E4200 1.60GHz 2MB Cache 800FSB (Windsor or whatever)
E6300 1.86GHz 2MB Cache 1066FSB (Windsor)
E6400 2.13GHz 2MB Cache 1066FSB (Windsor)
E6600 2.40GHz 4MB Cache 1066FSB (Conroe)
E6700 2.67GHz 4MB Cache 1066FSB (Conroe)

The E4200 also won't support VT, most likely for political reasons.

 

[Guest]

The 2.66 is the highest mainstream chip.
After that you get on or two extreme edition.

But its certainly possible to see higher clok coming along not too far since these are introduction speed. Speeg should'nt "stall" like the Pentium-M, at least not for the desktop parts. Even if its a Power Consumption oriented design, it remains a desktop!

 

[moozh]

Yes there will most likely be a follow up series of processors with higher clock speeds and a 1333FSB. Not sure how soon, might have to wait for Intel 45nm to boost the internal clock up noticeably.

The official specs of the EE chip(s) has not been released but it will be interesting to see... I predict the first one will be a Conroe with HT enabled on each core clocked at around 3GHz (it might be 1333FSB but not likely) with 4MB shared cache. The second one on the other hand will probably be a quad-core Kentsfield with HT enabled on each core and 1333FSB and 2x4MB cache.

I can't wait to find out, I might be able to get one very cheap.

 

[Action_Man]

They don't have HT. They could use woodcrest for the EE with its extra cache and higher bus speed and clock. Or maybe a quad core.

 

[Spitfire_x86]

I hope by the end of 2006, A64 3800+ will go for $100 or less.

 

[Ycon]

Well, if the EE has a 95W TDP, it MIGHT BE POSSIBLE that it has HT.

Even considering that HT wouldnt have that much of an impact on performance, (heck, it will be far away from the 25% speed up on NetBurst) it would still take care of all the small background-tasks and increase performance by a little bit.

Maybe Intel has developed a completely different top-secret EE-only technology which will be introduced when the performance of the regular EE is matched. Oh, wait, I forgot, that will never happen *lolz*

 

[Guest]

I might be wrong but I really doubt HT will be back with us, at least for a while. As I recall it takes quite a bit of die real estate and onn a 14 stage pipeline architechture, it will bring diminishing result. Thats one of the reason AMD did'nt brign any equivalent.

Although some PowerPc processor have some sort of less granular HT so we never know(anyone correct me if I wrong, im not that informed on PPC).

 

[TabrisDarkPeace]

Even considering that HT wouldnt have that much of an impact on performance, (heck, it will be far away from the 25% speed up on NetBurst) it would still take care of all the small background-tasks and increase performance by a little bit.

If they add Hyper-Threading to a 4-issue processor core, with the new Conroe features implemented it will actually help signifcantly more than it did with the Pentium 4 'NetBurst' architecture, they'll still be logical processors, but they'll perform as close to physical seperate cores as possible if HT is re-introduced.

Looking at the improvements to the feature set in Conroe it is actually quite likely they are planning to re-introduce Hyper-Threading, perhaps as HT v2.0 😛

For an rough idea have a look at Sun Microsystems take on multi-threading designs:
http://www.sun.com/
and
http://www.sun.com/servers/coolthreads/overview/index.jsp
They are calling it 'CoolThreads' now, but they have older UltraSPARC processors that demonstrate it equally well.

Even ATI are doing similar things in the GPU of the Radeon X1900 series.

=============================================

Can AMD make an Athlon 64 / Opteron clocked at apx 3.72 GHz and sell it for under US$550 ? (to compete with 2.66 GHz Conroe)

Can AMD make an Athlon 64 / Opteron clocked at apx 3.33 GHz and sell it for under US$320 ? (to compete with 2.40 GHz Conroe)

By November 2006 ?

Or can they make mainboards cheaper to offset it ?, They can save costs on mainboard as the memory controller is in the processor


These are the questions we should be seeking answers too.

Note: All the above processors would be dual-core btw.... and going quad-core does not, and will not help for some time, in games.