I agree that 90% of blogs, comment sections, etc are 'Political', instead of 'Technical'.
While I am a fan of AMD it doesn't mean I'm going to go into any discussion and right bias reviews and comments to reviews. Anyone smart enough looks at the technology from both sides, and than drill down from there. When speaking of both companies I'm glad they compete with one another because at the end me the consumer wins with a wide variety of products to choose from.
Only thing I find a little insulting is when Intel users calls anyone who buys an AMD product a fool, or stupid, or anything similar. Sometimes we are informed professionals who understand the pro's and con's from both sides but decided to go with an AMD product. Does this mean where bias? no. Does this mean we only like AMD no. It just simply means the product AMD had to offer fit the project we're working on.
On personal opinion is I think Intel moves to fast. Thus the reason in the past they allowed AMD to gain the crown for a short while. They are still moving fast how ever I like the different direction they took to analyze what was missing in there CPU's and make that modification. Thus creating a truly amazing architecture.
There is a post out there that explains AMD has learned some secrets behind the Core i7 line of processor and has identified several bottlenecks on there currently platform and processor. This post also states they are currently in the works to correct those bottlenecks that have been identified. Meaning in the near future we might actually see something that might scale well against the Core i7.
Notice I said 'scale' well against Intel. This means they are working on improving power leakage in the CPU that causes extra heat. And also increasing speed on the their platform to see if they can come out with something thats worth competition against Intel products.
That being said I place AMD second place. They are a great buy for those not extremely worried about power consumption. And also for those who don't particularly look alot into performance but rather the features it has to offer.
I place Intel first because with its on-die memory control they improved performance way more than I expected. They are for those who are concerned over power consumption and heat. They compete well in terms of feature offerings (Not talking about the performance here but just the fact that they offer features). And they have the performance and head room to take on just about any application and data center out there. A complete package overall.
Hopefully this can be a neutral post as I am neutral between both companies. I am a fan of AMD as I stated before however I'm in no position to talk bad Intel because they have truly amazed me.
Let me get this straight - the difference between AMD's HT Assist and Intel's inclusive L3 cache is that HT Assist is able to determine if a cache line exist in other CPU's (different socket) and Intel's inclusive L3 core X cache of CPU Y is aware of the cache lines of all the other cores in CPU Y ?
Although I have been critical of some of your posts, I am above all interested in maintaining a civil, engaged debate about all of this fascinating technology. Despite all of the hostility that can be thrown your way from the legions of crazed Anandtech commenters, I think the vast majority of readers appreciate all of the painstaking work that you do.
Thanks man, it was good to read your post. It is really a pity that some people focus on the "political" side of things, while 95% of the post is technical. Let us debate the technical part, and feel free to continue to be very critical about that part.
I am an engineer and academic like many of you, not a specialist in "safe but totally woolly" communications also known as "Politician".
You are worried about NDAs from Intel's side on a retail Nehalem-EPs, and apparently have no trouble revealing benchmarks on Istanbul.
Without Nehalem-EP performance data, how is your post relevant? The correct response is to remove the entire post and say something along the lines of "full review to come when NDA expires."
BTW, your newest blog:
HP still in denial: "SSD not ready for the enterprise" is linked improperly since yesterday. And it is not March 1, 2009 yet.
I don't know how a person with your aptitude can be legally qualified to write articles for Anandtech.
"and apparently have no trouble revealing benchmarks on Istanbul."
Those benchmarks have been disclosed by AMD. I clearly indicated this in this post, and I linked to them in the previous post. You should take the time to read the article.
"HP still in denial: "SSD not ready for the enterprise" is linked improperly since yesterday. And it is not March 1, 2009 yet. "
Where do you see this? this is an error of our blog engine.
Tshen83, your ego has made a fool out of you. You really should not accuse Anandtech of unreliable journalism. This only makes you sound more ignorant than you probably would like to come across as. You've made yourself come across as a troll.
I am relieved that there are still sensible people in this world.
Now we know how Johan wants to argue with this:
"How AMD's Istanbul might close the gap with Nehalem EP?" By complete removal of reference to Nehalem-EP's performance in the charts and only show AMD's turds.
Stupid^2. Sometimes I wonder how such incompetency can exist.
I know a lot of the AMD employees read Anandtech, and possibly pay anandtech for outrageously favorable reviews. I am taking off. If I was AMD right now, I would do the following:
1. Dual Socket market is dead. All of it will be canibalized by Westmere by 2010.
2. AMD would have no choice but to pitch the quad socket solutions against Intel's dual socket Westmere, which means that for the only metric that matters to datacenters: performance per watt per dollar, AMD would have no choice but to cut quad socket CPUs to less than $500 dollars per CPU. So consumers would have to make a choice
between a dual socket (2x$1000) solution from Intel or a quad socket (4*$500) solution from AMD. Even this doesn't solve the fact that quad Socket will draw at least twice as much power vs dual socket Intel. Only markets left for AMD are virtualization and database. Sad but true.
I am glad that Hector Ruiz the moron is out. But watch him ruin the manufacturing spinoff.
Jesus Christ... we really need to make up our minds and decide once and for good whether AnandTech is pro-Intel or pro-AMD... This is getting confusing, ya know?
You know, I get tired of reading about how this site is biased one way or another, and particularly when people say it is so for Intel, and now you for AMD. The fact is, Intel is much better right now than AMD, and if the site didn't point that out, they would be remiss.
In your case, I'm fully in agreement, but I don't think it's everyone on the site. I've noticed that Johan is very AMD biased, and even when he ostensibly is talking about how good an Intel product is, he always puts a mitigating remark to offset it. Now he's comparing a dual with a quad, and doesn't really draw too much attention to the facts you mention. Clearly he's smart enough to know them, and know how important they are, but, he kind of let's it slip and doesn't mention that a quad core might actually take more power than a dual core, and forgets how often he mentions how important power consumption is. He's right to mention it, of course, but in this article, strangely, it's not brought up.
Europeans broadly seem to favor AMD, because, somehow, they consider it more European than Intel. I guess the Dresden plants may have something to do with that, or maybe they like the underdog, or maybe AMD does a lot more advertising there, or something like that. I don't know, but Europeans tend to favor AMD, and he just hasn't gotten past his bias, and thinks he's hiding it well.
Face it, the Nehalem is best x86 processor out there. PERIOD. If you have to compare a quad to a dual, then you're proving that point while ostensibly trying to prove the opposite. The performance/power of the Nehalem is untouchable. AMD is fine for the mainstream surfer, and I'd definitely consider a Phenom II for home, but show me someone that buys it over a Nehalem, and I'll show you an idiot in most cases. Nehalem is just a better processor, as the P8 was, but now it has proper technology around it to eliminate the problems that its predecessor had.
I agree that the Nehalem is the better processor out there. There's no comparison between a quad core vs a dual-core setup. Its like comparing 4 apples to 2 oranges. Regardless of its gap-closing performance, I would have to agree that its much less practical to go forth with AMD's quad core computer setup. Nehalem is hands down the better x86 processor. This doesn't make AMD's processors bad...it's still one of the best...just NOT the best.
Okay, let me get this straight: an article is titled "How AMD's Istanbul might close the gap with Nehalem EP" and Johan is now totally AMD biased. Amazing! We could call it, "AMD isn't totally dead in the water" and also be AMD biased, I suppose?
http://it.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=555">This wasn't very pro-AMD as one example. Staying in the slipstream of Intel means you can be close, but you'll still be behind. There are http://it.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=480">more articles from Johan discussing how Nehalem is shaping up to be the IT wunderkind CPU. All this particular article shows is that there are some improvements to Istanbul that ought to help it remain in the ballpark of Intel for some situations.
You took one line, and even then we can talk about that, and from that extrapolate the entire article? OK, so why write the article?
The latter response would not have been AMD biased, but even the title gives AMD more credit than it deserves, but, again if you read my post, you probably saw the writing after the title is what I objected to.
Mind you, I am often defending AMD products to people that only consider Intel. I do consider them fine for mainstream users, at least the Phenom II (I see absolutely no use for any previous processors at this time, but, that's probably a bit extreme), and often times tell people that Intel only is too simplistic, since in some cases the AMD solutions, particularly the 790GX and and Phenom II make more sense than an Intel with G45. So, I'm not against AMD at all.
But, Istanbul isn't even close to the Nehalem. When one says closes the gap, there's a purely literal interpretation, which could mean even a 1% improvement, and the interpretation one perceives when reading it. If you are writing, you have to know the difference, and the choice of words does reflect a gross exaggeration of the capabilities of the Istanbul when you consider how even the title is interpreted.
Let's put it a different way. If someone with 15 career home runs hits a homer, do you think a correct headline for it should be that the player has closed the gap to Hank Aaron (let's forget Bonds for the sake of discussion)? It's technically correct, but the implication is inaccurate, and that's how people who are biased properly approach their trade. They can't be so overtly so that it's recognized easily by the hoi polloi, so they try to be delicate about it with their choice of words, and mood they create while discussing the products. That's what Johan does.
Normally, I like it, because I think for servers Intel was getting too much credit. Well, until the Nehalem came out, and then, well, the game was over. But, this article he really overstepped his limit and was overtly pro-AMD.
Now, let's say you were writing this article. You wouldn't have brought up the power considerations? You wouldn't have emphasized the difference between two and four processors? Really, you wouldn't? And for Johan, who to his credit always emphasizes how important power considerations are (and he's so correct on that), to somehow kind of pass over this, shows a clear bias.
Don't get me wrong, I do respect his intelligence, and his diligence in tests, but I do perceive a clear bias. For the rest of the people who write, I do not detect a bias one way or another. For what it's worth, I think Tom's Hardware has a clear AMD bias, since they gave a clearly inferior processor, the Phenom II, a Gold Award. Why? It's not even better than the Penryn, and it doesn't even approximate the Nehalem. A Gold Award? It's still a decent processor for the price, and isn't always a bad choice, but since when does a processor get this award for being inferior to the competitions last generation, and way behind their current? It's almost insulting to AMD that they expect so little from them, that a decent processor generates so many accolades.
Actually, I considered my post pretty intelligent and reasonable. Implying otherwise is, frankly, rather insulting. I was responding as much to the initial poster as to you, as that reader is clearly Intel biased. In fact, pretty much any time someone throws out the "you're biased for/against [company X]" we can safely assume that the real problem is the person making the comment is heavily biased in the opposite direction.
There's bias in everything we do and write, obviously, and we try to provide a well-balanced view of the entire market. When we get some users saying we're horribly Intel biased and others saying we're horribly AMD biased, I'm inclined to think we're doing a reasonable job at straddling the fence between the various companies.
As for the title and everything else, Johan is providing an article about Istanbul, based on information AMD is providing, and they will obviously try to portray their solution in the most favorable light. That said, there will absolutely be areas where the changes in the "uncore" of Istanbul have a dramatic impact on performance relative to the older 4-core Barcelona variants. Will it be "enough"? I'm sure there will be areas where AMD can actually come out ahead of Intel - yes, even ahead of Nehalem. They aren't likely to be super common, but they will almost certainly exist - and it probably won't matter in some of those situations whether we're looking at 2-core, 4-core, or 8-core Nehalem. Thus, closing the gap in this case means that we may see boosts in performance of 20% or more in some environments. We are not discussing a 1% boost, I don't think.
Johan of course would be the one to determine how much of a difference we're really looking at. This is a blog, so going into depth about every little thing where AMD wins or loses is out of scope. Normally, the goal for blogs is 500 to 1000 words (often closer to 500), so by that token he's right on target. When he gets around to full reviews, he will have more data on all facets. Everyone (i.e. you and several others clearly) is so quick to dismiss Istanbul before it even launches that I have no problem with a headline that might get people to at least momentarily consider the broader picture. A bit sensational? Sure, but it is, ultimately, a short blog and not the final say. I hope that Istanbul ends up being a lot better than what many have already assumed, and it's nice to see some data that suggests it's not *all* doom and gloom for AMD (though admittedly it's quite grim).
Jarrod, I have to agree with your critic here. Your responses have intentionally ignored the main argument he was trying to articulate which is that Johan completely ignored the implications of the fact that he was comparing a QUAD-SOCKET Opteron with a DUAL-SOCKET Nehalem platform.
How can he say the Istanbul is closing the gap with Nehalem when he has to reference a QUAD socket Operton system to find competitive performance with a DUAL socket Nehalem??? He completely glosses over the fact that a quad-socket 24-core Opteron system will not only cost much more, but in all likelihood use a lot more power than a dual-socket Nehalem.
Am I missing something here? As was mentioned by others, Johan is a very intelligent and knowledgeable person, so I can't believe that it was unintentional.
BTW, I'm not really biased in either way.. perhaps a tad bit towards AMD as I really want them to come back and keep this market competitive.
"How can he say the Istanbul is closing the gap with Nehalem when he has to reference a QUAD socket Operton system to find competitive performance with a DUAL socket Nehalem???"
Because it IS closing the gap, a LOT too. If you were in a race, and you were behind your competitor 100 miles, now you are behind your competitor 50 miles, you are closing the gap.
The gap between Istanbul and Nehalem is a LOT smaller than the gap between Barcelona and Nehalem, so yes it IS closing the gap. The article is comparing QUAD-SOCKET BARCELONA with QUAD-SOCKET ISTANBUL with DUAL-SOCKET Nehalem, which shows that the gap is still there, but it is now much smaller than before now.
"He completely glosses over the fact that a quad-socket 24-core Opteron system will not only cost much more, but in all likelihood use a lot more power than a dual-socket Nehalem."
I only say "will allow the quad Istanbul to stay out of the reach of the dual Nehalem EP Xeons in many HPC applications."
Am I saying that this is wonderful? Of course not, you are absolutely right that performance/watt for a dual Nehalem will be much better than on a quad socket system. But it allows AMD to continue to fight for it's quad socket market. There are other reasons why people chose for 4S. They may need the 32 DIMMs slots for virtualization for example.
This post was mostly technical, trying to explain why Istanbul is shaping up a bit better than we previously thought.
And I would really appreciate if the few people that always think that we are biased would be a little bit more reservered. One day it is Intel biased, the other day AMD biased. This really poisons the discussions that should be technical instead of political. I believe that any neutral reader can see that our posts are mostly about the technical merits of a certain platform. I would include the 4S platform of Intel if I had a launch date and more info. But right now, Beckton is still a bit vague (Q1 2010? Just a double Nehalem EP?).
It seems to me that this is saying that a four cylinder engine car is closing the gap with a two cylinder car in "most areas".
Not too good, really. Twice the fuel, more complexity, higher initial costs, etc.
Who would think this is closing the gap?
The same thing applies here. Might as well go to a four core Nehalem instead and keep the advantages of the speed and power savings that it has over the AMD chip models.
I would agree that if two chips with equal specs, four cores vs four cores are within 15% performance of each other, the slower model could be said to be closing the gap if the previous model was 30% behind. It's within range, if costs are lower all around.
But when performance is almost 40% lower core to core, the gap is too wide to be considering a "closing the gap". It's a chasm, not a gap.
The mere fact that a four core AMD product must be compared to a two core Intel product proves this. And the fact that it's competitive in "most areas" isn't saying much. May as well get a two core Intel product instead.
If that product isn't available yet, then most companies today will happily wait for it, things being what they are. Switching to, and supporting a different architecture, is trouble enough unless there is a significant performance and power savings advantage to doing it.
If you were behind your competitor 100 miles, and now you are behind him 50 miles, you are closing the gap. That doesn't mean you will win the race, that doesn't mean you can close the gap any further, but the FACT remains, that the gap has become a LOT smaller now.
I wish people can talk without bias, but only the FACTS. The FACT is, the gap between Istanbul and Nehalem is a LOT smaller than the gap between Barcelona and Nehalem, so yes it IS closing the gap. Period.
Of course, another FACT is that there's still a big gap between Istanbul and Nehalem, that there's little reason to buy Istanbul over Nehalem.
"I only say "will allow the quad Istanbul to stay out of the reach of the dual Nehalem EP Xeons in many HPC applications." "
I really want to believe that Johan, you are more intelligent than that. This is clearly a word play. 41GB vs 34GB. A 20% difference in absolute performance isn't exactly "out of reach". In fact, a 400% difference in performance per watt per dollar metric will make the 4Socket AMD out of reach in any HPC environment.
"This post was mostly technical, trying to explain why Istanbul is shaping up a bit better than we previously thought. "
Really? Compared to what? If it takes 4 CPUs to fight off Intel's 2 CPUs, either you have really low expectations for AMD or you are clearly not thinking straight.
"And I would really appreciate if the few people that always think that we are biased would be a little bit more reservered. One day it is Intel biased, the other day AMD biased"
I am not biased at all, simply have a liitle more common sense than you do looking at the same data. You don't have to defend your position really, your bias is as clear as your title would indicate. If I was anand, non-sensical posts like yours who have been canned.
"But right now, Beckton is still a bit vague (Q1 2010? Just a double Nehalem EP?). "
How is Beckton vague? Isn't Istanbul as vague as Becton? Both are non-released products. Just from your words, "just a double Nehalem EP" shows that you don't know crap about hardware and clearly biased. Becton has 4 channel DDR3 per socket vs Nehalem-EP's 3 channels and has 4 QPIs. Isn't Istanbul a Shanghai with 2 more cores copy and pasted? The fact that they are doing Snoop Filters on HT 3.0 is because they had to, otherwise scaling would suck.
There is a difference between truth and bias. Your readers are not that dumb as you expect. The reason why people are saying you are biased is because you shouldn't blatantly pump an inferior product. It makes you look stupid. And the fact that you ask your critic to be more "resevered" make you a speech nazi. Your argument here is absolutely political and non-technical, precisely the opposite you say.
I can't say I keep up on all the latest server stuff as much, but my best guess on the dual-core vs. hex-core is that AMD provided tests for hex-core and Johan doesn't yet have anything more than dual-core Nehalem in house. Like I said already, this is a blog, not anything intended to be comprehensive. Obviously, benches comparing dual-core and hex-core are at best seriously skewed, but the benchmark data isn't even all that meaningful on its own (i.e. memory bandwidth).
Until we have actual hardware for both sides, it's premature to declare a winner. Intel will almost certainly win in most cases, but virtualization has been a strong point for AMD for quite some time and hex-core with better memory bandwidth/latency and overall uncore improvements, plus two more cores... well, that can't hurt. Will hex-core Dunnington (or octal-core) surpass what AMD can provide? Almost certainly, but until the fat lady sings let's hold off on clearing the theater. :)
Well, if you consider an intelligent post one that bases the entire article on the opening line, then we'll have to disagree on that. I consider that deliberately argumentative, especially with what's been mentioned after it has nothing to do with the title.
I have no strong bias either way, in reality, I wish AMD were better, and I was really saddened when they spun off their fab plants. If I have any affections, it is towards AMD, and particularly for Jerry Sanders. I have nothing but contempt and disgust for Ruiz though.
I wish I could find a good reason to buy AMD processors, I really do, and I even try to rationalize the Phenom II being good enough. It probably is for some applications, but, let's be honest, it's a horrible design compared to the Nehalem. It's way slower, and it's roughly the same size. It's very frustrating to me that AMD can't get it right, although it's a step forward, it's really not a competitive product if they want to make money. I was sooooo frustrated with AMD when they were talking about how good the K8 was, because I thought it kind of sucked, when it was beating the Prescott. I knew their time was running out, and they were so haughty with their attitude that they could overcome Intel's superior manufacturing with their superior design. It's like watching a blind man being smug as he walks into a chainsaw. Well, we see the results now.
You're argument is changing now, and I wish the article had been presented as you indicated - comparing it to the Barcelona instead of the Nehalem. You took the 1% too seriously, it was to illustrate the point that being technically correct and giving a correct impression are not the same, not to indicate a estimate of performance increase. I'll be real surprised, really, really surprised, to see AMD match Intel, core for core, in any meaningful benchmark. I mean, you could create some, I'm sure, like measuring L1 cache speed (why is the Nehalem's so slow anyway?????), but the processor is dramatically better, and the old days where AMD could make up for it with a better platform around it are gone, unless you find some nice FB-DIMMs to kill the Intel Platform with. It's different from before where Intel had a much better processor, but a much worse server platform. Now they have an even better processor, and the platform is at least as good. Why does AMD STILL waste so many transistors on x87 anyway???? It's obsolete and deprecated, and by them with x86-64.
I also hope that Istanbul is better than what I expect, I really do. But, looking at both designs, my heart and my brain aren't on the same page, and I don't see how it can match the Nehalem, unless it's done simply to make the Nehalem look bad. I can probably make a 386 look fast with the right benchmark, but, we'll see if your prediction on the Istanbul is true. Especially with any application where HT works, and there are so many now, particularly with servers, AMD is going to have such a hard time with performance per watt. FB-DIMMs might save the day :-P .
[quote]I have no strong bias either way, in reality, I wish AMD were better, and I was really saddened when they spun off their fab plants. If I have any affections, it is towards AMD, and particularly for Jerry Sanders. I have nothing but contempt and disgust for Ruiz though.
I wish I could find a good reason to buy AMD processors, I really do, and I even try to rationalize the Phenom II being good enough.[/quote]
I'm so glad to hear that there's another person holding onto this same view!
Heck, I got permanently banned from AMDZone for expressing the same opinion, after having been their member for more than 8 years now. We don't hate AMD, we just feel strongly disgusted that a fine piece of iron couldn't turn into a solid piece of steel, but instead rusts into something worthless. All because of one reckless CEO.
" I was sooooo frustrated with AMD when they were talking about how good the K8 was, because I thought it kind of sucked, when it was beating the Prescott."
they should be bragging about it because they managed to beat their competitors product specially considering that the other side is bigger than them and throw a lot more money on R&D than they could ever could.
as for the performance of istanbul, jarred might be wrong but the same is can be said on you. the truth is we just don't have enough information right now to say which one of you is right. outrightly saying that istanbul will have no chance of competing without any hard evidence is just plain wrong
This blog post is clearly targeted at my comment yesterday on how the 6 core Istanbul is not going to be competitive against Nehalem-EP. Yet, you fail at explaining how Istanbul can catch up. You showed that a DUAL SOCKET Nehalem-EP gets 34GB/sec on the benchmark while the Quad Shanghai gets 25GB/sec. Even assuming that the 2 extra cores will scale linearly, that means Quad Istanbul will be at around 37GB/sec, which is finally performance competitive. BUT....
Now let me get this straight. How is buying a quad socket system at 4* 1200+ dollar CPUs a better solution than a 2* 1000 dollar Nehalem-EP dual socket system while burning more than twice as much power? (Assuming that Istanbul will be 95W ACP and around 120W TDP x4 = 480W TDP vs 2x 95W TDP Nehalem-EPs).
On this metric: performance per watt per dollar, the quad socket Istanbul will be twice as expensive, and draw more than twice as much power, Nehalem-EP will be four times as good performance/watt/dollar.
Enough of your blathering, fanboy! It is obvious to everybody here that Intel has a killer server CPU on their hands with Nehalem. The AT/DT writers have repeatedly (and more or less openly) stated that Nehalem-based Xeons are poised to blow AMD out of the water (or out of much of the server market as it were). BUT that doesn't mean it is suddenly uninteresting to see what AMD is up to. You apparently just like reading your own posts, but I think you are alone in that regard, so shut up already!
I think the calculation should be total power usage over time, during a certain task. If a cpu consumes more power, but finishes the task first, then it consumes less power at the outlet, not on paper. And that's what matter.
Dont know if that applies to Istambul, though.
Crap, never mind the 37GB/sec thing, I miss read the charts. So Anandtech apparently got Istanbul system benchmarked at 41GB/sec. Wow. The performance/watt/dollar equation is still missing.
How did Anandtech get the system or the benchmark numbers? From AMD? hehe....all sorts of questionable practices here.
AMD still does have the DCM 2x6-core Magny-Cours to come out with. Hopefully that is going as smoothly as Istanbul seems to be and will be released around the time that the 8-core Boxboro parts are coming out. Could be an interesting matchup if they can keep the TDP of the 12 core part at or under 125W. That part will require a new socket, however, which could throw a wrench into AMD's easy upgrade marketing.
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FanofunderdogAMD24 - Thursday, May 21, 2009 - link
I agree that 90% of blogs, comment sections, etc are 'Political', instead of 'Technical'.While I am a fan of AMD it doesn't mean I'm going to go into any discussion and right bias reviews and comments to reviews. Anyone smart enough looks at the technology from both sides, and than drill down from there. When speaking of both companies I'm glad they compete with one another because at the end me the consumer wins with a wide variety of products to choose from.
Only thing I find a little insulting is when Intel users calls anyone who buys an AMD product a fool, or stupid, or anything similar. Sometimes we are informed professionals who understand the pro's and con's from both sides but decided to go with an AMD product. Does this mean where bias? no. Does this mean we only like AMD no. It just simply means the product AMD had to offer fit the project we're working on.
On personal opinion is I think Intel moves to fast. Thus the reason in the past they allowed AMD to gain the crown for a short while. They are still moving fast how ever I like the different direction they took to analyze what was missing in there CPU's and make that modification. Thus creating a truly amazing architecture.
There is a post out there that explains AMD has learned some secrets behind the Core i7 line of processor and has identified several bottlenecks on there currently platform and processor. This post also states they are currently in the works to correct those bottlenecks that have been identified. Meaning in the near future we might actually see something that might scale well against the Core i7.
Notice I said 'scale' well against Intel. This means they are working on improving power leakage in the CPU that causes extra heat. And also increasing speed on the their platform to see if they can come out with something thats worth competition against Intel products.
That being said I place AMD second place. They are a great buy for those not extremely worried about power consumption. And also for those who don't particularly look alot into performance but rather the features it has to offer.
I place Intel first because with its on-die memory control they improved performance way more than I expected. They are for those who are concerned over power consumption and heat. They compete well in terms of feature offerings (Not talking about the performance here but just the fact that they offer features). And they have the performance and head room to take on just about any application and data center out there. A complete package overall.
Hopefully this can be a neutral post as I am neutral between both companies. I am a fan of AMD as I stated before however I'm in no position to talk bad Intel because they have truly amazed me.
Adun - Saturday, April 11, 2009 - link
Let me get this straight - the difference between AMD's HT Assist and Intel's inclusive L3 cache is that HT Assist is able to determine if a cache line exist in other CPU's (different socket) and Intel's inclusive L3 core X cache of CPU Y is aware of the cache lines of all the other cores in CPU Y ?Thank you,
Adun.
winterspan - Friday, February 27, 2009 - link
Johan,Although I have been critical of some of your posts, I am above all interested in maintaining a civil, engaged debate about all of this fascinating technology. Despite all of the hostility that can be thrown your way from the legions of crazed Anandtech commenters, I think the vast majority of readers appreciate all of the painstaking work that you do.
-All the best-
JohanAnandtech - Saturday, February 28, 2009 - link
Thanks man, it was good to read your post. It is really a pity that some people focus on the "political" side of things, while 95% of the post is technical. Let us debate the technical part, and feel free to continue to be very critical about that part.I am an engineer and academic like many of you, not a specialist in "safe but totally woolly" communications also known as "Politician".
JohanAnandtech - Friday, February 27, 2009 - link
You can deduct the numbers from the current available Core i7, but Nehalem numbers have been removed to avoid any problems with NDAs.AMD HT3 numbers are based on AMD's own testing as described in the previous post. AMD HT1 numbers are based on our own testing.
tshen83 - Friday, February 27, 2009 - link
You are worried about NDAs from Intel's side on a retail Nehalem-EPs, and apparently have no trouble revealing benchmarks on Istanbul.Without Nehalem-EP performance data, how is your post relevant? The correct response is to remove the entire post and say something along the lines of "full review to come when NDA expires."
BTW, your newest blog:
HP still in denial: "SSD not ready for the enterprise" is linked improperly since yesterday. And it is not March 1, 2009 yet.
I don't know how a person with your aptitude can be legally qualified to write articles for Anandtech.
JohanAnandtech - Friday, February 27, 2009 - link
"and apparently have no trouble revealing benchmarks on Istanbul."Those benchmarks have been disclosed by AMD. I clearly indicated this in this post, and I linked to them in the previous post. You should take the time to read the article.
"HP still in denial: "SSD not ready for the enterprise" is linked improperly since yesterday. And it is not March 1, 2009 yet. "
Where do you see this? this is an error of our blog engine.
wingless - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
Tshen83, your ego has made a fool out of you. You really should not accuse Anandtech of unreliable journalism. This only makes you sound more ignorant than you probably would like to come across as. You've made yourself come across as a troll.melgross - Friday, February 27, 2009 - link
Nevertheless, most of what he said is correct.dastruch - Friday, February 27, 2009 - link
indeedtshen83 - Friday, February 27, 2009 - link
I am relieved that there are still sensible people in this world.Now we know how Johan wants to argue with this:
"How AMD's Istanbul might close the gap with Nehalem EP?" By complete removal of reference to Nehalem-EP's performance in the charts and only show AMD's turds.
Stupid^2. Sometimes I wonder how such incompetency can exist.
hellopeach - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - link
"turds"LOL, that has revealed that you are BIASED and you ARE the turds here.
By showing yourself is BIASED, you have completely invalidated everything in your posts yourself.
tshen83 - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
I know a lot of the AMD employees read Anandtech, and possibly pay anandtech for outrageously favorable reviews. I am taking off. If I was AMD right now, I would do the following:1. Dual Socket market is dead. All of it will be canibalized by Westmere by 2010.
2. AMD would have no choice but to pitch the quad socket solutions against Intel's dual socket Westmere, which means that for the only metric that matters to datacenters: performance per watt per dollar, AMD would have no choice but to cut quad socket CPUs to less than $500 dollars per CPU. So consumers would have to make a choice
between a dual socket (2x$1000) solution from Intel or a quad socket (4*$500) solution from AMD. Even this doesn't solve the fact that quad Socket will draw at least twice as much power vs dual socket Intel. Only markets left for AMD are virtualization and database. Sad but true.
I am glad that Hector Ruiz the moron is out. But watch him ruin the manufacturing spinoff.
I am off.
Zak - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
Jesus Christ... we really need to make up our minds and decide once and for good whether AnandTech is pro-Intel or pro-AMD... This is getting confusing, ya know?Z.
TA152H - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
You know, I get tired of reading about how this site is biased one way or another, and particularly when people say it is so for Intel, and now you for AMD. The fact is, Intel is much better right now than AMD, and if the site didn't point that out, they would be remiss.In your case, I'm fully in agreement, but I don't think it's everyone on the site. I've noticed that Johan is very AMD biased, and even when he ostensibly is talking about how good an Intel product is, he always puts a mitigating remark to offset it. Now he's comparing a dual with a quad, and doesn't really draw too much attention to the facts you mention. Clearly he's smart enough to know them, and know how important they are, but, he kind of let's it slip and doesn't mention that a quad core might actually take more power than a dual core, and forgets how often he mentions how important power consumption is. He's right to mention it, of course, but in this article, strangely, it's not brought up.
Europeans broadly seem to favor AMD, because, somehow, they consider it more European than Intel. I guess the Dresden plants may have something to do with that, or maybe they like the underdog, or maybe AMD does a lot more advertising there, or something like that. I don't know, but Europeans tend to favor AMD, and he just hasn't gotten past his bias, and thinks he's hiding it well.
Face it, the Nehalem is best x86 processor out there. PERIOD. If you have to compare a quad to a dual, then you're proving that point while ostensibly trying to prove the opposite. The performance/power of the Nehalem is untouchable. AMD is fine for the mainstream surfer, and I'd definitely consider a Phenom II for home, but show me someone that buys it over a Nehalem, and I'll show you an idiot in most cases. Nehalem is just a better processor, as the P8 was, but now it has proper technology around it to eliminate the problems that its predecessor had.
FireSnake - Thursday, February 26, 2009 - link
Taking off. by TA152H: "Europeans broadly seem to favor AMD"This is one of the stupidest things i have heard lately.
Go back to the cave you came from and live in!
I am from Europe and what you are saying is a bunch of BS!
mikeepu - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
You mean Dual 4-Core for the Nehalem and Quad 6-Core Istanbul and Quad 4-Core for Shanghai?Mikey - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
I agree that the Nehalem is the better processor out there. There's no comparison between a quad core vs a dual-core setup. Its like comparing 4 apples to 2 oranges. Regardless of its gap-closing performance, I would have to agree that its much less practical to go forth with AMD's quad core computer setup. Nehalem is hands down the better x86 processor. This doesn't make AMD's processors bad...it's still one of the best...just NOT the best.Mike
JarredWalton - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
Okay, let me get this straight: an article is titled "How AMD's Istanbul might close the gap with Nehalem EP" and Johan is now totally AMD biased. Amazing! We could call it, "AMD isn't totally dead in the water" and also be AMD biased, I suppose?http://it.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=555">This wasn't very pro-AMD as one example. Staying in the slipstream of Intel means you can be close, but you'll still be behind. There are http://it.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=480">more articles from Johan discussing how Nehalem is shaping up to be the IT wunderkind CPU. All this particular article shows is that there are some improvements to Istanbul that ought to help it remain in the ballpark of Intel for some situations.
TA152H - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
Jarrod, I know you're smarter than that post.You took one line, and even then we can talk about that, and from that extrapolate the entire article? OK, so why write the article?
The latter response would not have been AMD biased, but even the title gives AMD more credit than it deserves, but, again if you read my post, you probably saw the writing after the title is what I objected to.
Mind you, I am often defending AMD products to people that only consider Intel. I do consider them fine for mainstream users, at least the Phenom II (I see absolutely no use for any previous processors at this time, but, that's probably a bit extreme), and often times tell people that Intel only is too simplistic, since in some cases the AMD solutions, particularly the 790GX and and Phenom II make more sense than an Intel with G45. So, I'm not against AMD at all.
But, Istanbul isn't even close to the Nehalem. When one says closes the gap, there's a purely literal interpretation, which could mean even a 1% improvement, and the interpretation one perceives when reading it. If you are writing, you have to know the difference, and the choice of words does reflect a gross exaggeration of the capabilities of the Istanbul when you consider how even the title is interpreted.
Let's put it a different way. If someone with 15 career home runs hits a homer, do you think a correct headline for it should be that the player has closed the gap to Hank Aaron (let's forget Bonds for the sake of discussion)? It's technically correct, but the implication is inaccurate, and that's how people who are biased properly approach their trade. They can't be so overtly so that it's recognized easily by the hoi polloi, so they try to be delicate about it with their choice of words, and mood they create while discussing the products. That's what Johan does.
Normally, I like it, because I think for servers Intel was getting too much credit. Well, until the Nehalem came out, and then, well, the game was over. But, this article he really overstepped his limit and was overtly pro-AMD.
Now, let's say you were writing this article. You wouldn't have brought up the power considerations? You wouldn't have emphasized the difference between two and four processors? Really, you wouldn't? And for Johan, who to his credit always emphasizes how important power considerations are (and he's so correct on that), to somehow kind of pass over this, shows a clear bias.
Don't get me wrong, I do respect his intelligence, and his diligence in tests, but I do perceive a clear bias. For the rest of the people who write, I do not detect a bias one way or another. For what it's worth, I think Tom's Hardware has a clear AMD bias, since they gave a clearly inferior processor, the Phenom II, a Gold Award. Why? It's not even better than the Penryn, and it doesn't even approximate the Nehalem. A Gold Award? It's still a decent processor for the price, and isn't always a bad choice, but since when does a processor get this award for being inferior to the competitions last generation, and way behind their current? It's almost insulting to AMD that they expect so little from them, that a decent processor generates so many accolades.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
Actually, I considered my post pretty intelligent and reasonable. Implying otherwise is, frankly, rather insulting. I was responding as much to the initial poster as to you, as that reader is clearly Intel biased. In fact, pretty much any time someone throws out the "you're biased for/against [company X]" we can safely assume that the real problem is the person making the comment is heavily biased in the opposite direction.There's bias in everything we do and write, obviously, and we try to provide a well-balanced view of the entire market. When we get some users saying we're horribly Intel biased and others saying we're horribly AMD biased, I'm inclined to think we're doing a reasonable job at straddling the fence between the various companies.
As for the title and everything else, Johan is providing an article about Istanbul, based on information AMD is providing, and they will obviously try to portray their solution in the most favorable light. That said, there will absolutely be areas where the changes in the "uncore" of Istanbul have a dramatic impact on performance relative to the older 4-core Barcelona variants. Will it be "enough"? I'm sure there will be areas where AMD can actually come out ahead of Intel - yes, even ahead of Nehalem. They aren't likely to be super common, but they will almost certainly exist - and it probably won't matter in some of those situations whether we're looking at 2-core, 4-core, or 8-core Nehalem. Thus, closing the gap in this case means that we may see boosts in performance of 20% or more in some environments. We are not discussing a 1% boost, I don't think.
Johan of course would be the one to determine how much of a difference we're really looking at. This is a blog, so going into depth about every little thing where AMD wins or loses is out of scope. Normally, the goal for blogs is 500 to 1000 words (often closer to 500), so by that token he's right on target. When he gets around to full reviews, he will have more data on all facets. Everyone (i.e. you and several others clearly) is so quick to dismiss Istanbul before it even launches that I have no problem with a headline that might get people to at least momentarily consider the broader picture. A bit sensational? Sure, but it is, ultimately, a short blog and not the final say. I hope that Istanbul ends up being a lot better than what many have already assumed, and it's nice to see some data that suggests it's not *all* doom and gloom for AMD (though admittedly it's quite grim).
Cheers,
Jarred
winterspan - Thursday, February 26, 2009 - link
Jarrod, I have to agree with your critic here. Your responses have intentionally ignored the main argument he was trying to articulate which is that Johan completely ignored the implications of the fact that he was comparing a QUAD-SOCKET Opteron with a DUAL-SOCKET Nehalem platform.
How can he say the Istanbul is closing the gap with Nehalem when he has to reference a QUAD socket Operton system to find competitive performance with a DUAL socket Nehalem??? He completely glosses over the fact that a quad-socket 24-core Opteron system will not only cost much more, but in all likelihood use a lot more power than a dual-socket Nehalem.
Am I missing something here? As was mentioned by others, Johan is a very intelligent and knowledgeable person, so I can't believe that it was unintentional.
BTW, I'm not really biased in either way.. perhaps a tad bit towards AMD as I really want them to come back and keep this market competitive.
hellopeach - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - link
"How can he say the Istanbul is closing the gap with Nehalem when he has to reference a QUAD socket Operton system to find competitive performance with a DUAL socket Nehalem???"Because it IS closing the gap, a LOT too. If you were in a race, and you were behind your competitor 100 miles, now you are behind your competitor 50 miles, you are closing the gap.
The gap between Istanbul and Nehalem is a LOT smaller than the gap between Barcelona and Nehalem, so yes it IS closing the gap. The article is comparing QUAD-SOCKET BARCELONA with QUAD-SOCKET ISTANBUL with DUAL-SOCKET Nehalem, which shows that the gap is still there, but it is now much smaller than before now.
JohanAnandtech - Thursday, February 26, 2009 - link
"He completely glosses over the fact that a quad-socket 24-core Opteron system will not only cost much more, but in all likelihood use a lot more power than a dual-socket Nehalem."I only say "will allow the quad Istanbul to stay out of the reach of the dual Nehalem EP Xeons in many HPC applications."
Am I saying that this is wonderful? Of course not, you are absolutely right that performance/watt for a dual Nehalem will be much better than on a quad socket system. But it allows AMD to continue to fight for it's quad socket market. There are other reasons why people chose for 4S. They may need the 32 DIMMs slots for virtualization for example.
This post was mostly technical, trying to explain why Istanbul is shaping up a bit better than we previously thought.
And I would really appreciate if the few people that always think that we are biased would be a little bit more reservered. One day it is Intel biased, the other day AMD biased. This really poisons the discussions that should be technical instead of political. I believe that any neutral reader can see that our posts are mostly about the technical merits of a certain platform. I would include the 4S platform of Intel if I had a launch date and more info. But right now, Beckton is still a bit vague (Q1 2010? Just a double Nehalem EP?).
melgross - Friday, February 27, 2009 - link
It seems to me that this is saying that a four cylinder engine car is closing the gap with a two cylinder car in "most areas".Not too good, really. Twice the fuel, more complexity, higher initial costs, etc.
Who would think this is closing the gap?
The same thing applies here. Might as well go to a four core Nehalem instead and keep the advantages of the speed and power savings that it has over the AMD chip models.
I would agree that if two chips with equal specs, four cores vs four cores are within 15% performance of each other, the slower model could be said to be closing the gap if the previous model was 30% behind. It's within range, if costs are lower all around.
But when performance is almost 40% lower core to core, the gap is too wide to be considering a "closing the gap". It's a chasm, not a gap.
The mere fact that a four core AMD product must be compared to a two core Intel product proves this. And the fact that it's competitive in "most areas" isn't saying much. May as well get a two core Intel product instead.
If that product isn't available yet, then most companies today will happily wait for it, things being what they are. Switching to, and supporting a different architecture, is trouble enough unless there is a significant performance and power savings advantage to doing it.
That isn't true here.
hellopeach - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - link
If you were behind your competitor 100 miles, and now you are behind him 50 miles, you are closing the gap. That doesn't mean you will win the race, that doesn't mean you can close the gap any further, but the FACT remains, that the gap has become a LOT smaller now.I wish people can talk without bias, but only the FACTS. The FACT is, the gap between Istanbul and Nehalem is a LOT smaller than the gap between Barcelona and Nehalem, so yes it IS closing the gap. Period.
Of course, another FACT is that there's still a big gap between Istanbul and Nehalem, that there's little reason to buy Istanbul over Nehalem.
tshen83 - Thursday, February 26, 2009 - link
"I only say "will allow the quad Istanbul to stay out of the reach of the dual Nehalem EP Xeons in many HPC applications." "I really want to believe that Johan, you are more intelligent than that. This is clearly a word play. 41GB vs 34GB. A 20% difference in absolute performance isn't exactly "out of reach". In fact, a 400% difference in performance per watt per dollar metric will make the 4Socket AMD out of reach in any HPC environment.
"This post was mostly technical, trying to explain why Istanbul is shaping up a bit better than we previously thought. "
Really? Compared to what? If it takes 4 CPUs to fight off Intel's 2 CPUs, either you have really low expectations for AMD or you are clearly not thinking straight.
"And I would really appreciate if the few people that always think that we are biased would be a little bit more reservered. One day it is Intel biased, the other day AMD biased"
I am not biased at all, simply have a liitle more common sense than you do looking at the same data. You don't have to defend your position really, your bias is as clear as your title would indicate. If I was anand, non-sensical posts like yours who have been canned.
"But right now, Beckton is still a bit vague (Q1 2010? Just a double Nehalem EP?). "
How is Beckton vague? Isn't Istanbul as vague as Becton? Both are non-released products. Just from your words, "just a double Nehalem EP" shows that you don't know crap about hardware and clearly biased. Becton has 4 channel DDR3 per socket vs Nehalem-EP's 3 channels and has 4 QPIs. Isn't Istanbul a Shanghai with 2 more cores copy and pasted? The fact that they are doing Snoop Filters on HT 3.0 is because they had to, otherwise scaling would suck.
There is a difference between truth and bias. Your readers are not that dumb as you expect. The reason why people are saying you are biased is because you shouldn't blatantly pump an inferior product. It makes you look stupid. And the fact that you ask your critic to be more "resevered" make you a speech nazi. Your argument here is absolutely political and non-technical, precisely the opposite you say.
JarredWalton - Thursday, February 26, 2009 - link
I can't say I keep up on all the latest server stuff as much, but my best guess on the dual-core vs. hex-core is that AMD provided tests for hex-core and Johan doesn't yet have anything more than dual-core Nehalem in house. Like I said already, this is a blog, not anything intended to be comprehensive. Obviously, benches comparing dual-core and hex-core are at best seriously skewed, but the benchmark data isn't even all that meaningful on its own (i.e. memory bandwidth).Until we have actual hardware for both sides, it's premature to declare a winner. Intel will almost certainly win in most cases, but virtualization has been a strong point for AMD for quite some time and hex-core with better memory bandwidth/latency and overall uncore improvements, plus two more cores... well, that can't hurt. Will hex-core Dunnington (or octal-core) surpass what AMD can provide? Almost certainly, but until the fat lady sings let's hold off on clearing the theater. :)
TA152H - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
Well, if you consider an intelligent post one that bases the entire article on the opening line, then we'll have to disagree on that. I consider that deliberately argumentative, especially with what's been mentioned after it has nothing to do with the title.I have no strong bias either way, in reality, I wish AMD were better, and I was really saddened when they spun off their fab plants. If I have any affections, it is towards AMD, and particularly for Jerry Sanders. I have nothing but contempt and disgust for Ruiz though.
I wish I could find a good reason to buy AMD processors, I really do, and I even try to rationalize the Phenom II being good enough. It probably is for some applications, but, let's be honest, it's a horrible design compared to the Nehalem. It's way slower, and it's roughly the same size. It's very frustrating to me that AMD can't get it right, although it's a step forward, it's really not a competitive product if they want to make money. I was sooooo frustrated with AMD when they were talking about how good the K8 was, because I thought it kind of sucked, when it was beating the Prescott. I knew their time was running out, and they were so haughty with their attitude that they could overcome Intel's superior manufacturing with their superior design. It's like watching a blind man being smug as he walks into a chainsaw. Well, we see the results now.
You're argument is changing now, and I wish the article had been presented as you indicated - comparing it to the Barcelona instead of the Nehalem. You took the 1% too seriously, it was to illustrate the point that being technically correct and giving a correct impression are not the same, not to indicate a estimate of performance increase. I'll be real surprised, really, really surprised, to see AMD match Intel, core for core, in any meaningful benchmark. I mean, you could create some, I'm sure, like measuring L1 cache speed (why is the Nehalem's so slow anyway?????), but the processor is dramatically better, and the old days where AMD could make up for it with a better platform around it are gone, unless you find some nice FB-DIMMs to kill the Intel Platform with. It's different from before where Intel had a much better processor, but a much worse server platform. Now they have an even better processor, and the platform is at least as good. Why does AMD STILL waste so many transistors on x87 anyway???? It's obsolete and deprecated, and by them with x86-64.
I also hope that Istanbul is better than what I expect, I really do. But, looking at both designs, my heart and my brain aren't on the same page, and I don't see how it can match the Nehalem, unless it's done simply to make the Nehalem look bad. I can probably make a 386 look fast with the right benchmark, but, we'll see if your prediction on the Istanbul is true. Especially with any application where HT works, and there are so many now, particularly with servers, AMD is going to have such a hard time with performance per watt. FB-DIMMs might save the day :-P .
carniver - Thursday, February 26, 2009 - link
[quote]I have no strong bias either way, in reality, I wish AMD were better, and I was really saddened when they spun off their fab plants. If I have any affections, it is towards AMD, and particularly for Jerry Sanders. I have nothing but contempt and disgust for Ruiz though.I wish I could find a good reason to buy AMD processors, I really do, and I even try to rationalize the Phenom II being good enough.[/quote]
I'm so glad to hear that there's another person holding onto this same view!
Heck, I got permanently banned from AMDZone for expressing the same opinion, after having been their member for more than 8 years now. We don't hate AMD, we just feel strongly disgusted that a fine piece of iron couldn't turn into a solid piece of steel, but instead rusts into something worthless. All because of one reckless CEO.
zebrax2 - Thursday, February 26, 2009 - link
" I was sooooo frustrated with AMD when they were talking about how good the K8 was, because I thought it kind of sucked, when it was beating the Prescott."they should be bragging about it because they managed to beat their competitors product specially considering that the other side is bigger than them and throw a lot more money on R&D than they could ever could.
as for the performance of istanbul, jarred might be wrong but the same is can be said on you. the truth is we just don't have enough information right now to say which one of you is right. outrightly saying that istanbul will have no chance of competing without any hard evidence is just plain wrong
zebrax2 - Thursday, February 26, 2009 - link
sorry for my really crappy English :(icrf - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
You're no longer allowed to compare CPUs. If you do, you're not allowed to talk specifics and the end result must always be ambiguous.tshen83 - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
This blog post is clearly targeted at my comment yesterday on how the 6 core Istanbul is not going to be competitive against Nehalem-EP. Yet, you fail at explaining how Istanbul can catch up. You showed that a DUAL SOCKET Nehalem-EP gets 34GB/sec on the benchmark while the Quad Shanghai gets 25GB/sec. Even assuming that the 2 extra cores will scale linearly, that means Quad Istanbul will be at around 37GB/sec, which is finally performance competitive. BUT....Now let me get this straight. How is buying a quad socket system at 4* 1200+ dollar CPUs a better solution than a 2* 1000 dollar Nehalem-EP dual socket system while burning more than twice as much power? (Assuming that Istanbul will be 95W ACP and around 120W TDP x4 = 480W TDP vs 2x 95W TDP Nehalem-EPs).
On this metric: performance per watt per dollar, the quad socket Istanbul will be twice as expensive, and draw more than twice as much power, Nehalem-EP will be four times as good performance/watt/dollar.
rmlarsen - Friday, February 27, 2009 - link
Enough of your blathering, fanboy! It is obvious to everybody here that Intel has a killer server CPU on their hands with Nehalem. The AT/DT writers have repeatedly (and more or less openly) stated that Nehalem-based Xeons are poised to blow AMD out of the water (or out of much of the server market as it were). BUT that doesn't mean it is suddenly uninteresting to see what AMD is up to. You apparently just like reading your own posts, but I think you are alone in that regard, so shut up already!Natfly - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
"This blog post is clearly targeted at my comment yesterday on how the 6 core Istanbul is not going to be competitive against Nehalem-EP."Dude, get over yourself. The post isn't targeted at you, it was stated in the other blog post they would write a post about this.
jap0nes - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
I think the calculation should be total power usage over time, during a certain task. If a cpu consumes more power, but finishes the task first, then it consumes less power at the outlet, not on paper. And that's what matter.Dont know if that applies to Istambul, though.
tshen83 - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
Crap, never mind the 37GB/sec thing, I miss read the charts. So Anandtech apparently got Istanbul system benchmarked at 41GB/sec. Wow. The performance/watt/dollar equation is still missing.How did Anandtech get the system or the benchmark numbers? From AMD? hehe....all sorts of questionable practices here.
SilentSin - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
Probably from the AMD demo, kind of hard to fudge with straight bandwidth numbers and the Shanghai numbers AT is showing here match with the benchmark that AMD showed as well: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/107/10511...">http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/107/10511... .AMD still does have the DCM 2x6-core Magny-Cours to come out with. Hopefully that is going as smoothly as Istanbul seems to be and will be released around the time that the 8-core Boxboro parts are coming out. Could be an interesting matchup if they can keep the TDP of the 12 core part at or under 125W. That part will require a new socket, however, which could throw a wrench into AMD's easy upgrade marketing.
tshen83 - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link
BTW, wait for the Boxboro benchmarks. I am extrapolating a cool 100GB/sec from 16 channels of FB-DIMM2 DDR3-1333. :)