AMD and Intel Upgrade Path (And noise)

[Fedaykin311]

I am in the market for a new machine now, and the situation can not wait (dead CPU). I have a fairly loose budget, but am not a bleeding edge kind of fellow. What platform, at this time, has the best upgrade path? I want and easy upgrade path to the new gen/rev of processors that will be coming out soon (Penryn or Phenom).

My current (dead) setup is:
AMD X2 4200+ Manchester
nForce4 Ultra 939
nVidia 7800GT
OCZ 2GB DDR PC3200
Zalman 7500-CU

Things I do:
WoW
Supreme Commander
HL2 and derivatives
TFC (when it comes out)
Software Development (physics engine, very CPU intensive ATM)
PVR

Which, other than Supreme Commander and probably TFC is more than enough for my needs, but I can't justify fixing the current rig (buying obsolete hardware just doesn't jive with me).

Right now I am considering one of the following:

C2D E66xx or E67xx
P35/775 based board
2GB DDR2 800
Same vid
Zalman 9700

or

X2 6000+
nForce 570 or 590 AM2 board
2GB DDR2 800
Same vid
Zalman 9700

Which has the best upgrade path? Optimally, I would want to be able to do a drop in replacement of the CPU in about 6 months with a Phenom or an Intel quad of some sort. Is that possible, or am i stuck with replacing the MB and RAM again too? Do I need an AM2+ to later drop in a Phenom? Am I likely to get a board that a manufacturer will provide support for Phenom? Will Penryn likely be supported on the board above?

Also, which of the above has the best thermal and noise characteristics? I can't find any direct comparisons on the net.

 

[lx_flier]

If you want the best price/performance i would buy this
C2D E2160 or an E6600 if you don't know how to o/c
A-P35-DS3L
Ram: Patriot Extreme Performance 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM
Same vid
Tuniq Tower 120/ or Thermalright ultra 120 extreme

You should spend about $300-$320 on this upgrade and you can easily overclock the e2160 to 3.0-3.2ghz (will smoke the x2 6000+) and you can just drop a quad core Penryn when they come out in January.

 

[zenmaster]

Get the Q6600 now and forget upgrading in 6months.
The Intel Chips coming up in 6months will only be a modest upgrade.
The Chips coming out in late '08 are going to be the next gen ones.

So you are better off waiting about a year for your upgrade.

The AMD's put off alot more heat than the AMD chips.

(Note: Current Mobos will accept both Phenom and Pennryn)

 

[jaguarskx]

From a strictly "long term" point of view. Going with AMD may be the better choice.

AMD will be releasing socket AM3 CPUs in 2008 since they plan on switching over to DDR3 RAM. AM2 and AM3 are pin compatible so AM3 should last at least until 2009. I'm not sure what socket the next generation of AMD CPU will use (after Phenom). While socket AM3 CPUs can be used on socket AM2 motherboards, AM2 CPUs will not work on socket AM3 motherboards because of the lack of DDR2 support.

As for Intel, their next generation of CPUs (Nehalem - 2nd half of 2008) will require a new motherboard since Intel is changing sockets again. I think LGA775 had a 3 or 4 year run. That means Penryn CPUs will be your final upgrade path if you build a system around the Core 2 Duo right now.

As for performance, I think Intel's continuing line of Core 2 Duos will outperform AMD's Phenom CPUs especially since the initial Phenoms are having some manufacturing problems which is why they will be "Tri-Core" CPUs until AMD can improve their manufacturing process.

Hypothetically speaking, if you want to upgrade a PC you build today in late 2009 then you should be able to do so if you go down the AMD path. You should be able to drop in any socket AM3 CPU into a current generation socket AM2 motherboard. you will only lack support for DDR3. At this point in time DDR3 doesn't really offer much improvements over DDR2, the that should change by 2009.

Upgrading an Intel platform in 2009 means you will be stuck with a Penryn CPU. That's not inherently bad, but whatever new generation of CPU AMD releases in 2009 (if they release one) may outperform the Penryn.

I intend on upgrading my PC when Penryn is released next year, but if I see some preliminary benchmarks of Nehalem's performance, then I'll probably wait for Nehalem.

 

[yomamafor1]

I agree with jaguarskx, that going with AMD will be more suitable for you in "long terms". The future AM3 CPU can easily drop into current AM2 Motherboards (if AMD keeps their promise). However, if you want gaming performance, Phenom will likely not live up to the hype. Since it is a server chip, it is designed to handle server applications, but not desktop applications. If you only game, Core 2 will be your best bet.

As a result, I would suggest you going with P35 board, and an E6x50 CPUs. E6x50s are less expensive than their E6x00 counterparts, and run at the same speed. If you're not into OCing, you should seriously consider E6x50 series.

If you want to use this PC for the next 3~4 years, you can easily upgrade your computer to Penryn, which will be relatively cheaper by then. However, because Intel's newer generation CPU codenamed Nehalem will come out in 2H08, and they feature a complete different socket, you will not be able to upgrade to 8 cores.

It all comes back to whether the gaming softwares will greatly take advantage of multi-core by 2009. Chances are games won't be fully optimized for multi-core by then, so having a quad-core system should still be relatively safe. I'm sure having a 3.4~3.6Ghz quad core processor can still hold its place in terms of performance.

I know I'm getting a little wordy here, but I promise this is my last point . Pouring your money into graphic cards will be better off than pouring money into processors. You'll have a better gaming experience.

 

[Fedaykin311]

So, I decided on the following:

Abit IP35 Pro
C2D E6750 (don't care to overclock, would rather not deal with the issues)
2x1GB DDR2 800 4-4-4-12
430W ATX12V 2.0
Zalman 9500 (I like a quiet box, plus might OC the chip once it's past its prime in performance)

I don't care to overclock, so I went with the 6750. It's dirt cheap comparatively though, since I bought the 4200+ for $400 and the E6750 today is only $200, lol.

I'm not much of a 3d gamer, so my 7800GT is doing just fine for me right now. The E6750 should greatly improve my Supreme Commander performance, which is my only real performance issue with my current rig.

Thanks for the thoughts!

 

[dragonsprayer]

get the p35 forget the amd fanatics - if that is not the lamest amd argument - i have heard yet

the new intel chips in 08 will last 5 years with 4 fast cores

skip the abit go for asus p5k- e wifi

overclock is the only way to go - if you can not bare to do it yourself the mobo has auto oc

 

[yomamafor1]

get the p35 forget the amd fanatics - if that is not the lamest amd argument - i have heard yet

the new intel chips in 08 will last 5 years with 4 fast cores

skip the abit go for asus p5k- e wifi

overclock is the only way to go - if you can not bare to do it yourself the mobo has auto oc

Not everyone wants to touch overclocking. Whether its because they have no experience, don't want to risk their processors, or simply don't have the equipment to do it, you have to respect their choice.

Please don't associate Core 2 with overclocking. I know they overclock very, very well, but that doesn't mean everyone who gets a Core 2 should overclock.

 

[lunyone]

So, I decided on the following:

Abit IP35 Pro
C2D E6750 (don't care to overclock, would rather not deal with the issues)
2x1GB DDR2 800 4-4-4-12
430W ATX12V 2.0
Zalman 9500 (I like a quiet box, plus might OC the chip once it's past its prime in performance)

I don't care to overclock, so I went with the 6750. It's dirt cheap comparatively though, since I bought the 4200+ for $400 and the E6750 today is only $200, lol.

I'm not much of a 3d gamer, so my 7800GT is doing just fine for me right now. The E6750 should greatly improve my Supreme Commander performance, which is my only real performance issue with my current rig.

Thanks for the thoughts!

I'm hoping that your 430w PSU is of decent quality? If you buying this with your other parts, we can help suggest some decent PSU's, if you don't already own it. Did you have a budget for all of your parts?

 

[reddozen]

yomamafor1:
I think you're a little mixed up. Phenom is not a server chip, Barcy is.

 

[yomamafor1]

I was comparing the architecture of Phenom and Core 2. I apologize if my wording caused confusion.

Phenom is a derivation of the server chip Barcelona, so its architecture is more suitable for server applications, like heavy floating point math, and scalability.

In desktop environment, you rarely need scalability (unless you want to be FASN8ed), floating point math, and fast interconnect.

On the other hand, Core 2 is designed from Mobile, so its a lot more relevant to everyday computing, including gaming.

This is why you see Core 2 trouncing Phenom in game FPS, and load speed.

 

[onestar]

Hmmmm, I did not know that AM3 CPUs would be compatible with AM2 boards. Where have I been? Still messing around with socket 939 I guess. Shame on me!

 

[Joe_The_Dragon]

You can still get GOOD 939 opterons cpus.

 

[bwdsmart]

errr no phenom gaming specs have been released, if you can post links i would like to see them. only benchies that have been released have been barcelona bench's in games, and barcelona is the server chip, on a server motherboard with ECC ram at 667.....phenom will be better for gaming then barcelona consider it will have htt3.0 and ddr800/ddr 1066 (standard memory not server memory) that and from what ive read, k10 will be very similar if not better to penryn clock for clock. do your research dont compair apples and oranges(server to consumer) chips. as soon at we get some phenom benchs we'll see how it stacks up with penryn(imo i think it will be as good clock for clock as penryn maybe a little less) also k10 has samples running at 3.7ghz so later revisions of the silicone will render much higher clocks, and hopefully great oc's :-D. im not a fanboy just want to get the facts straight. if i am wrong in any of this info send me a link to where it says im wrong and i will admit im wrong(we all make mistakes) id say if you want upgradeability, go with an AMD setup, if you want the best system now, go with intel. its the end of the line in mid 08 though because of the socket change and intels IMC with quickpath, then things should get interesting :-D. i just realised how much i just typed and im going to shut up now.

 

[lghtmup98]

k10 has samples running at 3.7ghz

I am interested on where you got this info? I havn't heard of them going anywhere near this.

 

[bwdsmart]

if i had any idea what site i read that on i would post it but i do rember reading that(im fairly sure i didnt dream it up....) ill look around i visit so many sites its hard to keep track of what i read where, but im preatty sure phenom will be launching on B3 or B2 revision. ill be sure to look around tonight for where i read all this.

 

[onestar]

Yes, now, if you had to choose between an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Toledo 2.2GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache or an AMD Opteron 165 Denmark 1.8GHz 2 x 1MB L2 Cache for video encoding purposes, logic would seem to dictate the Opteron, right?

 

[bwdsmart]

im runnin a opteron 170@ 2.8 right now. the new steppings of all the 939 opterons oc like mad. some 170's have been seen at 3.0+ on air.

 

[yomamafor1]

errr no phenom gaming specs have been released, if you can post links i would like to see them. only benchies that have been released have been barcelona bench's in games, and barcelona is the server chip, on a server motherboard with ECC ram at 667.....

Correct. The other "demo" we saw was at AMD's Analysis Day, which was a 3.0Ghz Phenom running Stranglehold w/ Tri-fire. There's no clear way to judge the performance of the rig.

phenom will be better for gaming then barcelona consider it will have htt3.0 and ddr800/ddr 1066 (standard memory not server memory) that and from what ive read, k10 will be very similar if not better to penryn clock for clock.

Ok, wrong, and wrong.
Phenom will indeed have HT3.0, but it will not benefit in gaming. If bandwidth is so important to gaming, why is Intel's Core 2 trouncing K8, when FSB is clearly inferior than HT?

Secondly, according to Anandtech, K10 only has about 15% IPC improvement over K8, which is still another 15~20% short of Core 2. Penryn is about 5~10% superior than Core 2 in IPC. You do the math.

In other words, how much faster can we expect Phenom to be vs. the Athlon 64 X2? To put it succinctly, it looks like around 15% clock for clock

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3092&p=5

do your research dont compair apples and oranges(server to consumer) chips. as soon at we get some phenom benchs we'll see how it stacks up with penryn(imo i think it will be as good clock for clock as penryn maybe a little less)

I would say, with all due respect, I did a lot more research than you do. True, I shouldn't compare apples to oranges, but it is pretty clear that K10 will not dethrone Core 2 architecture in terms of performance. Penryn will extend that. On the other hand, with Phenom completely NDAed, we can only derive Phenom's performance from Barcelona, since they share the exact same core, just different package. HT3 will not save Phenom. DDR2 800 will likely slightly improve Phenom's performance, but not to a substantiate degree. AMD's memory divider has been known for its inability to completely accommodate RAMs at different speed. Hence, using DDR2-800 will benefit in some cases, but not all cases.

Image courtesy of George Ou from blogs.zdnets.com/Ou

As a result, you won't see a fixed improvement with DDR2-800. Phenom's only chance is clockspeed, which with AMD's 65nm yield at 30%, I really don't see it happening.

also k10 has samples running at 3.7ghz so later revisions of the silicone will render much higher clocks, and hopefully great oc's :-D.

This sentence basically tells me that you've done NO research at all. Where is the demo that showed K10 running at 3.7ghz? What is the system specification? What is the methodology?

The highest clocked K10 was allegedly presented at AMD's Analysis Day, which is 3.0Ghz. However, no one was allowed to run any benchmarks, or view the device manager, or leave the game demo. The "3.0Ghz" was from a screenshot taken by AMD, BEFORE the Analysis Day, that was distributed to the media.

In other words, no one can verify the validity of 3.0Ghz. If we exclude that one, the highest clocked Barcelona is at 2.5Ghz, which was done by Anand.

im not a fanboy just want to get the facts straight. if i am wrong in any of this info send me a link to where it says im wrong and i will admit im wrong(we all make mistakes).

How about, put a link up whenever you make a claim to back it up? You just made a bunch of claims that no one can back up, including you. e.g. 3.7Ghz Phenom.

id say if you want upgradeability, go with an AMD setup, if you want the best system now, go with intel. its the end of the line in mid 08 though because of the socket change and intels IMC with quickpath, then things should get interesting :-D. i just realised how much i just typed and im going to shut up now.

I agree with you, only if you want strictly upgradeability. If you want performance AND upgradeability, Intel is much more suitable for you. True, you will be able to drop AM3 processor into AM2 sockets, but that's will disable some features. In terms of performance, Phenom will likely not be able to compete with Core 2 clock-for-clock. As a result, if you purchase a P35 board, you can drop in Penryn later, which will likely to last you through 2010. As Penryn's speed increase, you'll get much better performance than Phenom.

 

[onestar]

Good grief!

I must take that Evelyn Woods speed reading clourse if the posts are going to be this long!

 

[weskurtz81]

Much disinformation is going on in this thread.

yomamafor1,

I agree with you that the chip is designed differently than the Conroe chips, but I don't agree that the Conroe chip is designed for mobile and the AMD chip for servers. I know Core did stem from mobile processing but they designed the chip to be a good general purpose CPU, as AMD intends to do with it's chips. They don't intend to design a chip that is good for servers and nothing else. It just happens that Core is a better balanced CPU. At least this is my perception of the designs.

 

[weskurtz81]

yomamofor,

AMD historically increases performance of CPU's with each revision. It's safe to say that with new CPU revisions and new board revisions we will see a much faster cpu in the wild. I am not saying it will be Penryn, but I think in the end it will be a worthy competitor. Right now, with the first releases, AMD isn't performing up to where would have hoped, but they will get there. History shows that this is how AMD works (speaking of incremental revisions increasing performance).

 

[yomamafor1]

Much disinformation is going on in this thread.

yomamafor1,

I agree with you that the chip is designed differently than the Conroe chips, but I don't agree that the Conroe chip is designed for mobile and the AMD chip for servers. I know Core did stem from mobile processing but they designed the chip to be a good general purpose CPU, as AMD intends to do with it's chips. They don't intend to design a chip that is good for servers and nothing else. It just happens that Core is a better balanced CPU. At least this is my perception of the designs.

Conroe is a derivative of the Banias core, a.k.a Pentium M. After Intel abandoned Prescott, they basically took the Banias and beefed it up. As a result, it has a combined advantage of performance as well as efficiency. Thus, I usually refer Conroe as a mobile derived chip.

You can tell by Clovertown's performance in the server field. With 1S or below, Clovertown holds the lead, because there is no scalability. At 2S, you see that K8 will perform similar with Clovertown. At 4S or above, K8 basically reign the area, because its originally designed for server applications, and it has excellent interconnect.

As for K10, the architecture is more suitable for server applications. There are several distinctive features for Barcelona. I'll list two of them: Hypertransport, and native quad core. Let's break it down.

Hypertransport ensures superior scalability, as well as excellent communication with other components in the computer. This is why you see Barcelona will trounce Core 2 in any applications that require constant reading and writing to the RAM.
Native quad core also ensures superior scalability, as well as better efficiency.

The ones I listed generally help in multi-socket, or aka, server applications. However, for desktop and mobile, having all these features don't necessarily translate into performance.

Hypertransport is good for server, and for applications that require constant reading and writing to RAM, but it doesn't help in mobile and desktop applications. Most mobile and desktop applications use very little of the bandwidth provided by HT. As I said above, if HT is essential to computing, why is Core 2 trouncing K8 in mobile and desktop segment?

The impact of having a native multi-core will be significantly reduced due to the above reason. Clovertown is a MCM, yet it still outperforms K8 in these sectors.

So, in conclusion, K10 was designed to ensure AMD have the primary bread and butter they need, (server segment). If they can conquer the other segments, great! But the design is less optimized for desktop and mobile segment than Intel.

 

[yomamafor1]

yomamofor,

AMD historically increases performance of CPU's with each revision. It's safe to say that with new CPU revisions and new board revisions we will see a much faster cpu in the wild. I am not saying it will be Penryn, but I think in the end it will be a worthy competitor. Right now, with the first releases, AMD isn't performing up to where would have hoped, but they will get there. History shows that this is how AMD works (speaking of incremental revisions increasing performance).

True. We may see a 10% improvement just from B1 revision to BA revision. However, with Penryn in the horizon, it is unlikely that AMD will improve their process enough in time to become competitive in performance.

Another thing I want to bring up is yield. It has been rumored (and slowly confirmed), that AMD's 65nm can only yield Barcelona at 30%. As a result, AMD will likely to improve the yield first, then to the performance.

For performance / price, Barcelona will be a good competitor. But strictly performance speaking, Core 2 still have the reign, and it will likely to extend to 2009 and beyond.

 

[weskurtz81]

yyomamafor1,

As far as yield, I would imagine they have revisions in work while also working on the yield problems. I don't know enough about the process to make an educated guess though. Just trying to use logic.

As far as performance vs Penryn, I think it will depend on one thing, how fast AMD can pump out the revisions. I think they might be able to do some good if they were already closing in on the BA revision or whatever revision is next and only released on B1 out of necessity.

Because of the fact that AMD normally increases performance with each revision I think they will be competitive. They might not be faster than Penryn is when it comes out but I think it is possible that Barcy will be able to compete. It all depends on AMD and how fast they refine the Uarch.