THG collection of k10 data so far....

Ok i was looking at the above data and see that what i believe is that k10/Barcelona is 128 bit. So AM2 = 64 bit. k10 = 128 bit. I'm thinking it's at least got to have twice the processing power (even if not raised ghz levels) than current K8's. Add on the extra hyper transport and more cache than current k8's, and those extra virtualisation technology and instruction blah blah blah and it's going to be a real powerful beast expecally considering that its native quad (so what?) and could be used to make 8 core system quad fx style (yeah xeons can do that too). Make predicted GHz so far on AMD roadmap is like 2.9Ghz... But when i here comments in forums of like an 80% increase in floating point math it makes me bubble inside.

Ok so then we have intel with their upcoming penryn which is to my belief a core 2 duo, little bit higher FSB to 1600mhz, a few more instuction sets, and for a quad core cpu with like 12MB of cache which im sure would help greatly. Penryn will have High k-metal gates which switch 20% faster than current ones, and they're predicting like 3.6 - 3.86Ghz. But itsn't it all still based on Core2Duo (which is 64 bit CPU yeah?)?

Pretty much main question, is Penryn 64 bit CPU or 128 bit?

Is AMD k10/barcelona CPU 64 bit or 128 bit?.

And would making the cpu from 64 bit to 128 bit pretty much double the processing power? as you can move twice the amount of bits at same speed, this processing twice amount of bits at same speed, thus getting the job done in half the time?

And while it's all relative at this stage and speculation, i know there are AMD fanbois and intel Fanbois here so while penryn is gunna be released early and k10/barcelona will be released a bit later, despite thier relse dates, which CPU do you THINK will be the more powerful in games?

I'm betting on Barcelona ;-P

You need to learn a lot about how CPU works and what does the xx-bit CPU means.
K8, Penitum D, Core2 and K10 are all 64bit CPUs.
According to the last rumors, 2.9GHz will not happen in near future. Most likely the highest clocked K10, this year will be the 2.5GHz.

IMO, the highest clocked Penryn will outperform highest clocked K10 for at least 20% in average. For games(still IMO), Penryn will be 30% faster when not bottlenecked by the GPU(s).

BTW, bet accepted. I put $1000 on Penryn.

Given that 64bit processing has been adopted with all the enthusiasm of a third George Bush term, I doubt that 128bit processing is around the corner.

Double? 64bit is not double 32bit as far as I can tell. So I dought the 64 to 128 will be.

erm what do you mean 64 bit isn't double 32 bit?

32 * 2 = 64

What do you mean? If a processor is 64 bit, then thats beter than 32 bit right?

I really thought k10 was 128 bit. isn't that what 128 bit sse means?

I thought 64 bit processing would be faster than 32 bit. thats why they'd introduce it right? And what's to be accepted about it? k7 was 32, k8 is 64. I thought k8 was that fast due to making a processor 64 bit.

Why hasn't it received great enthusiasm? Greater power to play with. Who wouldn't acccept it? k8's did great. core 2 duo's are doing great. 64 bit looks accepted to me.

If i got it wrong please enlighten me?

8O This should be interesting to watch lol

Sure, doing great and 99% of them on a 32-bit operating system. The vast majority of software is still 32-bit.

i dont think barcelona is 128 bit


as far as gaming performance goes nobody but AMD has any clue as to how well barcelona will perform, we will know april 23 though


hopefully its better clock for clock than penryn or else amd is screwed on that front since the scalability of clockspeeds is pretty slim ATM

C2D already has 128-bit SSE, but that doesn't make it a 128-bit CPU. SSE is a small, specialized unit within the core.

Unless you are running a 64-bit version of Windows (XP64 or Vista), then whether your CPU is K8 or C2D, you're not utilizing the 64-bit capability at all. Whatever speed you get is based on a 32-bit architecture.

Widening the base instruction set of a CPU does not directly make it faster, but more capable. It takes programming to translate that into greater performance.

It will most certainly NOT be a 128-bit CPU in the general sense of that term. There may be portions of it that work with 128-bit chunks of information at one time but that does not make it a "128-bit CPU".

Consider that a 32-bit processor can address 4 GB of physical memory. Some 32-bit CPU's allow for 36-bit virtual addressing which would be 64 GB of addressable memory. Now consider that 64-bit processors could, in theory, support 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 bytes of memory (or 18 billion GB!). A 128-bit processor could support 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 bytes! That's enough memory space to store every piece of information ever created by man with lots and lots of room to spare.

Yes, there is more to the bit count than just memory addressing. But that is probably the biggest motivation for the move from 32-bit to 64-bit, even though the vast majority of computer users do not even have more than 1 GB of physical RAM in their computers. The move from 64-bit to 128-bit computing on the desktop is DECADES away. Other segments like servers and workstations may see it before then, but I still doubt that there will be a NEED for more before then.

A 128-bit processor and operating system with a 128-bit file system could, in theory, contain and manage the entire content of the Internet and all other computer systems on the planet combined. I hope that puts a little perspective on the 64-bit versus 128-bit debate.

Not sure about 128 - need to catch up on the latest tech

Um, what? Barcelona is NOT a 128-bit CPU. And 64-bit is not "twice" of 32-bit. 64-bit means it can process 2^64 bits instead of 2^32 bits AFAIK.

64bit can efectively have an adress space of 17.179.869.184 GB. (32 bit's adress space is 4GB max wihout any phisycal adress extensions)

Let's say that the usual configuration today is 1 GB and that memory doubles every 24 months. That means to reach the 64bit limit we will need about 68 years. So you can expect 128bit cpu's around 2075

When they mention 32-bit, 64-bit, 128-bit, etc. when talking about computers that is usually the size of the address registers. 64-bit is twice the SIZE of 32-bit but that translates into a MUCH bigger multiplier when you consider addressable memory (in fact, a 64-bit CPU can address the square of the addressable memory of a 32-bit processor - see my previous post for the big numbers).

This article at Anandtech looks at Barcelona in detail including its SSE implementation:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipse [...] i=2939&p=3

WEll throw me around and call me Honkey Dorey

Please tell me this is right?

a 64 bit cpu wont really go any faster due to it being 64 bit even with a 64 bit operating system, it'll pretty much just let you manage more ram.

No real performance gain?

Correct?

even if Barcelona was a 128bit cpu which its not, it wouldnt perform twice as good as a 64bit cpu. Just look at the current situation, an Athlon 64 does not perform twice as good when running Windows XP x64 compared to plain old 32bit XP. Not even close. Theres hardly any software out that take advantage of 64bit cpus so even if Barcelona was a 128bit cpu theres no software that can take advantage of that it would be useless.

There's no x128 OS much less a x128 drivers for a common HP/Lexmark/Canon printer.

Correct.

The best performance increase that I have seen between 32-bit and 64-bit is the Farcry 64-bit patch that gave about 20% increase. You have to remember that to even be able to use the 128-bit instructions you need a 128-bit OS (which doesn't exist) with 128-bit software (which also doesn't exist). It basically means that the processor can execute 128-bit instructions, that does not always equate to better performance, unless the 128-bit instruction are more efficient. It makes no sense to have a 128-bit processor when the software is trying to catch up to 64-bit. It'll be years before we see a 128-bit OS (linux will probably be the first) and even longer before we see 128-bit software. It's more a marketing strategy than anything else, AMD did it with 64-bit and it looks like they are doing it with 128-bit. When AMD first launched the Athlon 64 they advertised the 64-bit like it was what made the processor great and it wasn't, it was a great architecture that was very efficient. It being 64-bit capable had nothing to do with it stomping Netburst. The one thing it really did for 64-bit computing is create a push for 64-bit OSs and software. Intel had the technology to go 64-bit long before AMD and they came to the conclusion that the market was not ready and it really wasn't.

Don't fall victim to the whole more bits are better thinking. If it ends up being a powerful processor it won't be because it's 128-bit capable, it will be because it is very well designed.