AMD: The Lies About Power Consumption Start Here

With Intel doing the same thing for ages this story shouldn't even have been printed and your LIE shouldn't have been told. Talk about irresponsible reporting. As long as we know BOTH TDP and ACP numbers who cares? Intel has been lying about theirs with avg numbers for years (I'm reminded of the stink of Dell Optiplex SFF machines with P4's above 2.4ghz...LOL. Presshots anyone?). Why is it a story when AMD does the same?

As you can see they sound like they're saying it's about time AMD did this. They even say they like it but don't care because they'd test the chips themselves any way. Which is exactly what all review sites should do. They call it "justifiable". "This move may be controversial, but personally, I think it's probably justifiable given the power draw profiles we've seen from Opterons." Is there a problem with them wanting to be compared accurately to their rival? Most websites totally leave out the differences between Intel's TDP version and AMD's. What you get is AMD's are higher and must suck. I'm not saying they're better than Intel (I just bought a core2 myself a few months back thanks to 1.8's running at 3ghz on air so easily - and mine runs cool even without my koolance...LOL) but review sites have been doing this for ages. I don't blame them for wanting to fix this problem especially with their profits tanked. They should have done this 4 years ago. Instead their stupid marketing dept decided it was best to tell people the max TDP of any cpu that they might not ever produce in a particular product family. When they said 89w for A64's a few revs back it was for the whole family. Don't tell me you think a X2 3800+ is the same as a X2 5400+. Yet all of these were quoted at 89w. Look at Anand's chart here:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...

All AM2 chips show 89w. I've always thought they were stupid for allowing this. Review sites didn't help by making people believe they put off 89w. Usually forgetting to say it's so far off its ridiculous. AMD shot themselves in the foot by starting this MAX crap NOT by fixing it now. Why is it a LIE to tell the truth about their cpus? It's quite clear they LIED before by saying they were all 89w when they were really more like 40-89w. My old 3800x2 was cold with retail heatsink at 2.4ghz (400mhz oc per core, no heat). Their marketing dept should be fired. YES (and Ruiz too...Bring back Jerry!). But AMD correcting their marketing mistakes should not be attacked. Your previous story was the equivalent of me saying I saw you murder someone and I get you convicted with no proof. The following day (after the damage is done for anyone who doesn't come back to read a correction story) DNA proves you innocent and you get off. Don't I owe someone an apology here? You called them outright liars in the title. You even stated in the article that it may be a mistake in their docs. Isn't liar a bit conclusive knowing you might be completely off base? Is tomorrows article going to be called "The LIES START WITH DAILYTECH!"??? BTW core2 rocks and AMD is getting KILLED. Fanboys from both sides can just jump off a cliff :) That doesn't change the fact that AMD is having their chops busted for nothing here.

K10 Family ACP and TDP
Processor	TDP Whitepaper 1	TDP Whitepaper 2	ACP Whitepaper 1	ACP Whitepaper 2*
Quad-core AMD Opteron SE	120 W	137 W	105 W	105 W*
Quad-core AMD Opteron	95 W	115 W	75 W	75 W*
Quad-core AMD Opteron HE	68 W	79 W	55 W	55 W*

Look at those numbers closely. The first thing to notice is that TDP measurements are significantly higher than ACP. When AMD compared its power consumption figures to Intel's TDP, ACP measurements significantly underestimate power consumption. TDP differed between the two versions of the white paper by as much as 20 W, which is a 21% increase in the case of the quad-core Opteron. AMD did not increased its ACP estimates, emphasized in bold, despite the TDP increase.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/13176
Read "The nuts and bolts of the quad-core Opterons" section.

Intel With Core 2 Duo At 3.3Ghz - Great Overclocker

Great Overclocker
Intel has won this round of the processor wars, but does not want to sit down and watch AMD. Instead, Intel has made up its mind that its going to continue to hammer (... pun intended) at AMD with better processors. Intel will be releasing a 45nm based Core 2 Duo working at 3.33Ghz on the codename-Wolfdale architecture in the next few weeks. Intel already has these in production and you can expect these sometime in Q2 2008.

The model number for these processors is E8600 and will have a total cache of 6MB. These processors will be manufactured on 45nm and are likely to have a TDP of 65W, which is something of an achievement considering these are 3.3Ghz processors. A 65W TDP ensures that there is enough potential for this processor to overclock and the processor won't mind a little more heat that overclocking causes.

By the looks of it, the E8600 is expected to be a good buy since Intel is pricing it lower than the quad-cores. Intel will also be releasing a few mainstream quad cores in March and hence the E8600 will have great price-performance ratio. AMD is going to struggle again to sell its Phenom Tri-Core and Quad-Core chips in Q2 with the E8600 around!!

AMD gives unreleased Opteron 2352 to Isohunt

AMD is about to release its bug-free quad-core processors in a few days and has been providing these unreleased processors to a few people for testing. Among the people who received these is http://isohunt.com. Isohunt.com is thanking AMD for providing it with pre-released processors for testing and has "2 pre-production engineering samples" of the Opteron 2352.

Isohunt is supposed to have installed these processors on their primary database servers and have been running them without any problems. The TLB bug which affected the previous Opteron 2350 has been a major headache for AMD and thus has caused delays in production of these chips. The Opteron 2352 runs at 2.1Ghz and has an L2 cache of 2MB.

Isohunt has been on the target of a lot of piracy talk and MPAA and RIAA have already tried their FUD stunts with these guys. Isohunt is a very busy P2P site with a lot of traffic on its torrent trackers. Thus, it seems like a nice place to test your processors in the real-world applications. AMD has given its processors to a nice place and hopefully AMD will work faster in the future.

A yahoo store is selling it at $650 at the moment (but I'm wondering how??)

The CPU Specs as listed by isohunt.com is as below:

Processor:	0
Vendor_id:	AuthenticAMD
CPU family:	16
Model:	2
Model name:	Quad-Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 2352
Stepping:	2
CPU Mhz:	2100.089
Cache size:	512 KB
Physical id:	0
Siblings:	4
Core id:	0
CPU Cores:	4
FPU:	yes
FPU_execution:	yes
CPUid level:	5
wp:	yes
Flags:	fpu, vme, de, pse, tsc, msr, pae, mce, cx8, apic, sep, mtrr, pge, mca, cmov, pat, pse36, clflush, mmx, fxsr, sse, sse2, ht, syscall, nx, mmxext, fxsr_opt, rdtscp, lm, 3dnowext, 3dnow, constant_tsc, pni, monitor, cx16, lahf_lm, cmp_legacy, svm, cr8_legacy
Bogomips:	4209.90
TLB size	1024 4K pages
Clflush size:	64
Cache_alignment:	64
Address sizes:	48 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
Power management:	ts ttp tm stc [6] [7] [8]

AMD Releases Browser & Media Player

What is AMD LIVE!

The AMD LIVE!™ brand represents a suite of products, software, and services that offer a simple and secure way to access, manage and share entertainment experiences virtually anytime, anywhere.

At the heart of any AMD LIVE! entertainment system is an AMD LIVE! PC. These powerful computers are built with multi-core processors and state-of-the-art graphics capabilities for rich entertainment experiences. All the power you need to fill your home with HD movies and all the music you love. Plus unique features that help you store, stream, protect, and safely access your content when you hit the road.

AMD which is known for making processors has released a set of software tools for its Live platform. The AMD Live is the product package from AMD to sell multimedia computers with software that can enable you to bring the computer to the living room. Intel also has a similar product and is called the ViiV. Don't they rhyme well!!

Today, AMD released a new piece of software known as AMD Live Explorer which is a software package built over Vista components. AMD will be shipping it free of cost along with its CPUs and Live machines. AMD recommends Phenom processors, but I'm sure you just need an AMD Live PC.

ALE Photo and Vid Window

The AMD Live Explorer is a software suite with Image gallery, Web browsing (using IE7 engine), Audio player (using WMP 11) and TV viewing. AMD Live Explorer is actually a UI over the Vista software components. I liked the look of the interface overall, especially the 3D video (just like the NorthFace demo which Microsoft had shown before Vista launch) and the video rendering was pretty good. It is in the beta testing and hence AMD asks users to give feedback for the software.

Download the beta of AMD Live Explorer from here.

Download the demo video which AMD created.

Intel To Release Hex-Core Processors

According to Maureen O'Gara from sys-con.com, it seems that Intel is all set to release a processor with Six cores. Yes, you heard me right...six. I think Intel understands that if AMD can start making tri-cores then may be six cores isn't a very bad idea.

The six core or hexacore processor goes by the codename "Dunnington" and has been designed at the Intel Design Center at Bangalore. It is a successor to the Harpertown processors of the Xeon-line of server processors from Intel. It is again supposed to be a sandwich of 3-dies, but this time its 3 dual-core processors that have been stitched together. The cores are sharing a 16MB L3 cache. Like other Penryns, Dunnington still uses a front-side bus. Dunnington is supposed to come at different clock speeds, with a total power consumption of less than 120W.

Intel will be releasing these just before the Nehalem are out and should be an interesting development. AMD on the other hand is just struggling with speed of the processors as well as the manufacturing and releasing of its products. Intel seems to be double of whatever AMD wants to do. AMD Tricore Vs Intel HexaCore.

AMD Working With Intel

As odd it may seem, the story holds ground and is one of the useful steps for the Centrino 2 platform of notebooks. Fuad Abazovic of Fudzilla claims that AMD is working hard with Intel to develop switchable graphics in future Centrino laptops. AMD is doing this in the notebooks with Puma and wants to have similar technology in notebooks with Intel chips and ATI/AMD graphic cards.

The thing about switchable graphics is that when your laptop is connected to the power unit or had good battery, it will use the graphics card. When the battery is low, it will switch to the onboard graphics. This will save power and make your battery life increase a little. Its generally close to 5-10% improvement, we heard the last time. But for the dying moments of laptop battery, I have experienced that you always remember the important work.

If you look at the image above, you'll see that the plus sign is red, just like red-cross... That's because it's one of the good things being done on the battlefield between Intel and AMD. This news makes you think how bitter rivals AMD and Intel are working together?? But actually its ATI which is working with Intel and I'm sure AMD has told its engineers not to look, talk, have lunch or discuss anything with Intel engineers. They just make faces when they meet and exchange some white documents with each other... Infact, news is that some even show the "middle-finger" to each other :))

List of Programs That Don't Work With Vista SP1

Microsoft has done a lot of work with Vista SP1, so much so that a lot of security programs don't work properly with SP1 although they used to work with Vista RTM. Kernel changes and some networking tweaks are basically the reasons why these programs aren't working. The list may not be completely exhaustive, but Microsoft's Support Center lists these programs.
Programs that are blocked from starting after you install Windows Vista SP1

* BitDefender AV or Internet Security 10
* Fujitsu Shock Sensor 2.1.0.0
* Jiangmin KV Antivirus 2008 or v10
* Zone Alarm Security Suite 7.1.078

Programs that do not run after you install Windows Vista SP1

* Iron Speed Designer 5.0.1
* Xheo Licensing 3.1
* Free Allegiance 2.1

Programs that have a loss of functionality after you install Windows Vista SP1

* NYT Reader v1
* Rising Personal Firewall 2007
* Novell ZCM Agent 10.01

There may be other programs that Microsoft has not identified and still have problems with Vista SP1. A few programs may also not display the incompatibility dialogs, but may contain potential issues with Vista SP1. If you are using any of the above products and have problems then, Microsoft's list with explanation and solutions can be found here.

AMD comes out swinging with 2 quad chips and a triple core

Pushing out new desktop processors, AMD looks to take on rival Intel again

Advanced Micro Devices Inc., which took a lot of heat for falling off its game last year, looks to be back in the fray with today's unveiling of three desktop processors.

AMD announced that it's releasing Phenom X49000 processors for high-end desktop systems, along with the 65-watt quad-core Phenom X4 9100e and the Phenom X3 8000 triple-core processors.

Today's announcements came just a few weeks after AMD released a new graphics chip set that's designed to pair up with the company's new high-end quad-core chips to boost performance for gamers, serious multi-taskers and multimedia users, according to Patrick Moorhead, a spokesman for AMD.

"The CPUs by themselves are good to see, but the most important part is that AMD just came out with their 700-series graphics," said Jim McGregor, an analyst at In-Stat in Scottsdale, Ariz. "Now you're talking about the ability to have integrated graphics and hybrid graphics. Suddenly, it's attractive again. AMD has got a more competitive and compelling solution now than they've had."

The low-watt chips are coming out at a time when companies and consumers are increasingly looking for ways to reduce energy consumption and heat production. According to Moorhead, all of the quad-core processors on the market today operate at between 90 and 125 watts. The new scalable Phenom X4 9100e comes in well below that, topping off at 65 watts.

"It's like a three-stage light bulb," said Moorhead. "You turn it on, and it's 30 watts and then 60 watts and then 100 watts. With this processor, the highest level is 65 watts, but normally it runs at 25 watts."

McGregor noted that the X4 9100e is the first quad-core processor in the 65-watt range, which should make for an interesting choice for hardware vendors going after the so-called green market. "We've seen HP, Acer and Dell all going after these small form-factor desktops over the past two years," he added. "In business and consumer segments, they make sense. If you can scale down the noise by running it cooler and if you can put it in a smaller package, it makes a nice low-cost, small form-factor desktop."

And coming out with a triple-core processor makes sense for both the company and for consumers looking for multiple cores but holding off on making an investment in four cores -- especially when most software still isn't designed to take advantage of all those cores.

Nathan Brookwood, an analyst at research firm Insight 64 in Saratoga, Calif., explained that a triple-core offering is a smart move for AMD because it allows the company to use any quad-core chips coming off the line with one core not working up to par. Instead of tossing it out and wasting the silicon, they can sell it as a triple-core.

"And this could work for customers," he added. "I think customers don't know how to count cores, so they'll buy based on the responsiveness of the system. If the triple-core pricing falls between dual-core and quad-core, I think customers will say, 'I could spend another $100 and get a quad, or I could get a triple [core] for the price of last year's dual-core.'"

With rival Intel Corp. shipping new processors and adding to its line of 45-nanometer manufactured chips, it's good for AMD to get back into the fray by shipping new chips and even pushing the 65-watt chip out ahead of its scheduled second-quarter ship date, according to Charles King, an analyst at Pund-IT Inc. in Hayward, Calif.

"It's very interesting," said King. "The fact that they're delivering these products to market, some even earlier than expected, is a good sign. They're meeting their deadlines, which they weren't doing in 2007. These processors make it seem that AMD has a strong set of options for new products and new solutions."

By Sharon Gaudin, source: http://www.computerworld.com

AMD: First Barcelona systems set to ship in April

Exec says systems running quad-core chips will be rolled out by various vendors by mid-year

March 18, 2008 (Computerworld) The first systems running Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s new quad-core Barcelona chip are expected to hit the market in April, AMD executives said today.

Pushing the delayed processor out into the market will give the company a boost in what has been a lagging competition with rival Intel. Kevin Knox, vice president of AMD's commercial business, told Computerworld today that a series of hardware vendors, including Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM, Sun Microsystems Inc. and Dell Inc., will be launching Barcelona-based servers between now and the end of the second quarter.

On Monday, HP announced that its largest x86 server yet -- the eight-socket ProLiant DL785 equipped with quad-core Barcelona chips will ship in May. With eight sockets and quad-core chips, that means the server will be running 32 cores.

"We're pretty excited about that because it opens us up to a market we hadn't played heavily in before," said Knox, acknowledging that Barcelona is four to six months late because of an errata - or bug - that was discovered in the chip's Transition Lookaside Buffer (TLB). "If you take a step back… this was a problem we discovered in a high-stress environment inside our labs. [Delaying it] was the right thing to do, the responsible thing to do."

Knox said the problems with Barcelona ended up as a big learning experience for AMD - one that will benefit its work on upcoming processors.

"We've had a lot of learnings from what we went through with Barcelona," he added. "We learned things about stress testing and working to figure out problems earlier in the processes… It pointed us to potential areas where there could be issues. The errata was around TLBs and that has a big impact on virtualization. The B2 has given us pretty strong learnings. We're actually feeling pretty good with the learnings from B2 and we're on track with B3."

AMD was talking about Barcelona systems hitting the market the day after Intel announced in a St. Patrick's Day press briefing that its six-core Dunnington will ship in the second half of this year. Knox said since there isn't a lot of software geared to take full advantage of four-cores yet, he's not too worried about their rival coming out with six at this point.

"Six cores is interesting," he noted. "Again, I'm not convinced there's a gigantic market of applications that want to exploit that number… We still believe we're going to be extremely competitive. When you look at the architecture things we've done, like hyper transport, that will make us extremely competitive, added to the fact that we'll have quad-core to compete against quad-core."

Knox also said that Shanghai, the next version of Opteron, is on track for release in the second half of this year. Shanghai will mark AMD's first move from a 65 nanometer (nm) manufacturing process to 45nm process. Intel moved to the 45nm process last November with the Penryn family of processors.

AMD's 45nm production is being done in its Fab 36 plant in Dresden, Germany. The new chips, code-named Shanghai for the server version and Deneb for the desktop, have already shipped to a "select list" of customers, Garry Silcott, a spokesman for AMD, said in an interview earlier this month.

Since Intel has been adding to its Penryn family of 45nm chips over the past several months, one analyst noted that it will be important for AMD to release its 45nm as soon as possible, analysts say.

"It's late, but it's not too late for AMD to come out with 45nm chips," said Dan Olds, an analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group Inc., said in a previous interview. "The degree to which these chips can compete with Intel depends on whether 'second half '08' means July or late December. If we're talking July, then this might allow them to pull back to parity with current Intel products. If we're talking December, or essentially the thirteenth month of '08 -- namely January -- then they're still firmly behind Intel."

Knox, though, said he's less concerned.

"Obviously, we want to get it out as quickly as possible," he added. "We want to get it right, though, more than we want to get it out quickly."

By Sharon Gaudin, source: http://www.computerworld.com/

Is the Intel vs. AMD chip war back on?

AMD, pushing out new products this month, is once again showing signs of life, analysts say

With Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. pushing out a slew of new products this month, its long chilled chip war with Intel Corp. may just be heating up again, analysts say.

After struggling with delayed products and bad market and mindshare woes through 2007, a lot of industry pundits started writing off AMD. And while AMD struggled, Intel held strong over the last year and a half, coming out with quad-core chips and a 45-nanometer (nm) processor family and staying well ahead of AMD's roadmap.

Recently, though, AMD has begun showing some signs of life, pushing out a graphics chip set early this month, and a slew of new desktop processors this week. With the first AMD Barcelona-based systems expected to hit in April, and a 65-watt quad-core desktop chip and a triple-core desktop chip now in the mix, AMD may be starting to kick back into gear.

And that kind of renewed competition between the two processor giants can only be good for the industry, said Jim McGregor , an analyst at In-Stat in Scottsdale, Ariz.

"It's good to see AMD back in the game," he said. "They've still got a lot of issues to handle, especially financially. I don't know if I'd say they're in fighting shape. Once you dig a hole, it's hard to dig out of it. But they're definitely back in the game."

But as AMD picks up the pace, Intel isn't giving them a steady target.

Intel execs announced less than two weeks ago that they plan to start shipping a six-core processor to resellers in the second half of this year. With 1.9 billion transistors and 16MB of Level 3 cache, the six-core chip, code-named Dunnington, will be built with Intel's new 45 nanometer technology. At the same time, Intel announced that it will start production of its upcoming 45nm, four-core Nehalem chips in the fourth quarter of this year. And Intel's quad-core, 65nm Tukwila chip, an upgrade from the Itanium family, is due out by the end of the year.

Intel is expected to flush out more of its chip roadmap next week at its Intel Developer's Forum in Shanghai.

The competition and innovation would be even greater if both companies were in a position to light a fire under the other, says Nathan Brookwood , an analyst at research firm Insight 64 in Saratoga, Calif.

"I used to think that when both these companies were firing on all cylinders, it was like watching a tennis match between two world-class players," he said. "When you have those kind of matches, then the volleys go back and forth and back and forth until somebody gets a lucky break or makes a stupid mistake. I'm hoping there's enough karma in the universe for these companies to do really well in product design and hitting releases. Lately, it's seemed that there was only enough karma for one of them. But I'm not so sure that karma is a fixed quantity. It might be possible to create karma."

Dan Olds, an analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group Inc. in Beaverton, Ore., said for AMD to truly be firing on all cylinders again, it needs to do more than get some new processors out the door. To get over its financial woes and regain its footing in the market, the company can't just play catch up with its main rival. AMD needs to start excelling past Intel, coming out with better, faster products.

"They need better price and performance at both the high- and low-end of the market to regain their mojo," added Olds. "The problem is that AMD's ATI purchase added a lot of debt and overhead to the company. They aren't as lean and mean as they were before. That means they need higher volume and profits just to stay even. In order to get those profits, they need to have products that are superior to Intel. Not the same as Intel's, but better? It could happen. They surprised everyone, including Intel, with Opteron."

By Sharon Gaudin, Computerworld
March 28, 2008

Amd vs Intel