The king is dead....

[Embattle]

.....long live the new king, however like all kings they come with expensive price tags.

 

[Dommers]

thats a money sinker if i ever saw one

 

[Brynn]

Computers are evil money sinks

 

[Jonty]

Certainly the fastest thing out there for single-threaded performance, but like they say, I think it's probably the last of a dying breed. It was uncertain how flexible AMD's architecture would be when they launched the Athlon 64 and I'm guessing it's now starting to reach its limits (not something unique to AMD). Given that Intel can knock out dual-core chips, in whatever fashion, at a surprisingly cheap price, it's probably fair to say that's where we're heading, particularly as drivers, games/programs and operating systems take advantage of multi-threading.

Kind Regards

 

[xane]

Surely Athlon 64 is dual-core too, there seems to be a great future in the current 939 pin unit.

 

[Draylor]

The current Athlon 64s (and that FX) arent dual core. The X2s which are slowly starting to become available now are AMDs dual core models.

Give it a few months we'll see a FX version of the X2: a little more cache, a few % faster in the benchmarks and many $$$s more expensive than the next fastest model.

And Jonty: Intel's architecture for dual-core is, to be polite, an ugly hack. AMDs is a beautiful thing. The result of that should become very obvious in the next few months from the pricing/availability/speeds of the multi core parts. Not to mention Intel's solution requires a new motherboard, with AMDs being 939 pin processors compatible with current Athlon64 motherboards.

 

[Embattle]

The whole dual core situation is a hack, its a way around the current issues of heat etc.....personally I won't rush out and get a new processor just because of dual cores.

 

[xane]

I meant that the current Athlon 64 architecture can already contain dual-core, the X2 fits in the 939 pin mobos.

 

[Chilly]

end of summer will probably buy a new cpu+mobo combo with a hefty dual core

 

[Jonty]

Sorry, I guess I should have been a bit clearer, Draylor. I'm well aware of the limitations of Intel's dual core approach (hence 'in whatever fashion) but I just think that given the price point, it'll be Intel making the most gains by getting companies like Dell and others to adopt the new standard. But yes, of the two, AMD's approach is the more sound and most existing Socket 939 motherboards can be updated, although sadly not all, it seems.

As for Socket 939, no, it's not going anywhere in the foreseeable future. AMD are moving their Semperons over to the new design and phasing Socket 754 out (if they haven't already). Two new sockets will then become the norm next year, so it seems, the Socket M2 (940-pin) for desktops and the Socket F (1207-pin) for servers and such.

Kind Regards