Opteron 246

[Jeff7181]

MMMMMMM... yummy (http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_8825,00.html)
64 bit, 2 Ghz, SOI processors... mmmmmm (http://www.tpc.org/tpch/results/tpch_result_detail.asp?id=103072902)

[pointreyes]

A 16-way server. Now that is what I would love to have for home use, not a gamer but I'm an Oracle developer. It's even using my favorite OS-SLES8. :)

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by pointreyes
A 16-way server. Now that is what I would love to have for home use, not a gamer but I'm an Oracle developer. It's even using my favorite OS-SLES8. :) Your way out of my depth there :o All I know about Oracle is I made some money off the stock a couple years ago :D

[pointreyes]

Originally posted by DAPUNISHER
Your way out of my depth there :o All I know about Oracle is I made some money off the stock a couple years ago :D

Oracle is loads of fun to use. :) However, I'm of the strange breed (must explain why I'm here at BE :rolleyes: ). I have very good 2D/3D gamer cards and yet I do most of my programming and database development in NotePad or Vi. :p Even my co-workers use GUI tools but come to me for the complex stuff because I think and solve without the GUI. Makes me wonder if GUI is a necessarily good thing sometimes. :)

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by pointreyes
Oracle is loads of fun to use. :) However, I'm of the strange breed (must explain why I'm here at BE :rolleyes: ). I have very good 2D/3D gamer cards and yet I do most of my programming and database development in NotePad or Vi. :p Even my co-workers use GUI tools but come to me for the complex stuff because I think and solve without the GUI. Makes me wonder if GUI is a necessarily good thing sometimes. :) It's a nice convenience... I'm speaking in terms of web page design... it's a pain to type out pages and pages of html. Where the problems with a GUI come in is when you get people using it who CAN'T type out pages of html in notepad... so when something doesn't work right, they can't even edit the text to make it how they want it.
I don't do a whole lot of web page design, but in the stuff I have done, I've preferred to use notepad because I've found that sometimes Front Page and Dreamweaver ad stuff that doesn't need to be there. And in my opinion... the smaller a web page is, while still looking good, the better it is.

[Mikki]

I can speak from experience here...;)...I started using Dreamweaver but once I learned html and discovered all the crap that it put in the code, I did all the coding by hand. I do use GUI's for placement sometimes, but that's it. I trimmed my html docs by quite a bit...:) BE's code is by no means perfect but it's a heck of a lot better than Dreamweaver's code.

[Jeff7181]

In case you don't visit AnandTech's forums... here's a link to benchmarks for the 246 (http://www.amdzone.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1328)

[Duvie]

Originally posted by Jeff7181
In case you don't visit AnandTech's forums... here's a link to benchmarks for the 246 (http://www.amdzone.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1328)

What a lame review...makes some of the tomshardware ones look good...

Maybe someone here who is not so blatantly biased as amdzone and picked some test that covered a well rounded area and didn't try so hard to handpick ones that amd has had leads with in the 3000+ to 3200+ range it wouldn't have been so skewed IMO.....

NO flame war but I say wait until reputable sites review it....Amdzone doing reviews is like trusting apple's reviews....Amdzone has several times in the past had major differences versus all the reputable review sites and thus I know the game they play....

I stick with Anandtech, Xbitlabs, and Tomshardware (with a grain of salt)...

To not have any mpeg2 or mpeg 4 encoders as well as mpeg3 encoders was shameful since everyone including you Jeff knows this is a weak spot for AMD.

also the conclusions are quite a stretch....Xbitlabs test even if you figure in the size percentage increase we see form 1.8ghz to 2.0ghz still wouln'd have bested the 3.2ghz p4 and it was far more well rounded....I only biatch cause it seems so blatant to me and contrary to others which is for the course with amdzone...

[Jeff7181]

To not have any mpeg2 or mpeg 4 encoders as well as mpeg3 encoders was shameful since everyone including you Jeff knows this is a weak spot for AMD. So do we exclude the tests that each processor does well in? So the General Usage benchmark AnandTech does, and the mpeg 4 encoding tests are void now, because each processor accels in an area?
I think all of us here are intelligent enough to take a benchmark for what it's worth and not look at the final page and say "oh, they say the 246 is better than a P4 @ 3.2 Ghz... it's gotta be true... all hail AMD"

[DAPUNISHER]

I'm certainly not speaking for Duvie, but if I interpreted his post correctly he would just like to have seen a better blend of benchies, with which I agree. They shouldn't just try to paint it's performance in the most positive light but help demonstrate where both it's strengths and weaknesses are. The benchies he suggested including are known to favor P4s and it would be interesting to see what the Opteron@2ghz is capable of compared to that P4 3.2ghz they used running those.

I think the article had a couple purposes, people are clamoring for Opteron benchmarks so they were capitalizing on that while furthering their own agenda of promoting AMD as a performance leader.

I have a question about their conclusion quoted below as well
Also of obvious question is what clock speed will Athlon 64 be released in September, and whether or not this will be a Socket 940 rebadged Opteron, or a Socket 754 Athlon 64 with a single channel memory controller. Clock speed guesses range from 2GHz to 2.4GHz, and evidence seems to point to a Socket 940 Athlon 64 perhaps simultaneously launched with the Socket 754 model. Will there be MHz ratings or a model number system? No one knows for sure, but with no 3.4GHz P4 expected in time for the Athlon 64 launch it may be that AMD for the first time in many months will regain a clear performance advantage Is the 64 really so similar to the opteron in a single processor setup using that registered 400DDR that I can believe the results of those benchmarks, particularly the memory bandwidth, accurately reflect what the A64 will provide :confused:

[Jeff7181]

With AMD processors never really having been limited by memory bandwidth... and now with the memory controller on-die, I'm not sure dual channel memory is all that beneficial for AMD processors. I think what AMD is looking at is, is the 2-5% performance boost worth the cost increase required to impliment dual channel memory for every processor?

*EDIT* Another thought... AMD moved the memory controller to the die... what else might they move to the die? Or how else might they expand the die to eliminate bottlenecks? Dual memory controllers? Dual cores? A massive full speed L3 cache, say... 8 MB? One can only guess...

[Duvie]

Originally posted by DAPUNISHER
I'm certainly not speaking for Duvie, but if I interpreted his post correctly he would just like to have seen a better blend of benchies, with which I agree. They shouldn't just try to paint it's performance in the most positive light but help demonstrate where both it's strengths and weaknesses are. The benchies he suggested including are known to favor P4s and it would be interesting to see what the Opteron@2ghz is capable of compared to that P4 3.2ghz they used running those.

I think the article had a couple purposes, people are clamoring for Opteron benchmarks so they were capitalizing on that while furthering their own agenda of promoting AMD as a performance leader.

I have a question about their conclusion quoted below as well Is the 64 really so similar to the opteron in a single processor setup using that registered 400DDR that I can believe the results of those benchmarks, particularly the memory bandwidth, accurately reflect what the A64 will provide :confused:

You pretty much nailed it!!!! Felt like an Apple demo!!!

[DAPUNISHER]

Here's a review that shows the P4's strengths much better LINK (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1217318,00.asp)

[Duvie]

Just like what I thought...amdzone painted the picture they wanted to show and it was all rosy...

Finally a review that tested multitasking so we can really see the kick-ass advantage of HT...It works ppl and it is formidable...