AMD has been shipping Opteron servers for ages in 24/7 environments. I'm not too worried about them delivering garbage.
Give me 12 core Opteron's with 2 slot boards and their Dual PCI-E 2 boards in SLI mode crunching streams for OpenCL and blocks from GCD any day of the week.
BS. No matter what, AMD is considered to be a second tier supplier.
Sure, if you want a $400 piece of junk, get an AMD machine.
I have no respect for anyone who knows nothing about the technology.
AMD is the innovator in the space with Intel.
There is a reason Intel paid > $1 Billion in penalties to AMD for IP theft.
The new direction for AMD and it's spin-off foundry corporation that's on it's own and the advanced technology lead in the GPGPU space over all contenders, combined with the CPU advances moving forward are great to see.
AMD Opteron servers for XServer would be sweet. Price would drop and also the option to have 4 12 Core Opteron CPU slots on one board for nearly the price of 2 Xeons would be sweet.
AMD is the second-largest global supplier of microprocessors based on the x86 architecture after Intel Corporation, and the third-largest supplier of graphics processing units, behind Intel and Nvidia. It also owns 21% of Spansion, a supplier of non-volatile flash memory. In 2009, AMD ranked ninth among semiconductor manufacturers in terms of revenue.
Not bad, I think it can perform fine inside iMac, MacBooks, Mac Pro...
AMD is the second-largest global supplier of microprocessors based on the x86 architecture after Intel Corporation, and the third-largest supplier of graphics processing units, behind Intel and Nvidia. It also owns 21% of Spansion, a supplier of non-volatile flash memory. In 2009, AMD ranked ninth among semiconductor manufacturers in terms of revenue.
AMD also has copper, SoI, and ZRAM technology.
Maybe Apple is interested in licensing these for their CPUs...
Just keep in mind that as a huge personal computer maker (yes, PC), Apple has access to CPU roadmaps and engineering samples that we do not. Maybe AMD has some kick ass CPU/GPU fusion combo down the line.
Besides that, The new 13" MBP may be a leading indicator that Apple is showing that they are willing to use a slower C2D cpu in order to get a better integrated graphics solution than is possible from Intel. This is obviously a market segment that AMD should be able to address -- combine a mediocre x86 cpu with a very capable ATI integrated gpu.
This is out of character for you as I'd expect you to be more objective.
Quote:
Despite what some people here think, there is no advantage going to crippled AMD, and some big dangers. AMD is nowhere near as reliable as Intel, and as usual, they are behind in every area that matters.
First off little truth is to be found in the above statements. There are several advantage with AMD especially in the context of Intel forcing intel graphics down customers throats. This highlights one important consideration system performance is not defined by just the CPU anymore.
Besides that some of AMDs solutuions compete very well against Intels. It is all about the benchmarks choosen and the compilers used.
Quote:
I hope, assuming that this article is true, that this is just a negotiating ploy on Apple's part.
I suspect this is indeed a real possibility and is likely a reaction to some really poor engineering and management decisions coming out of Intel. Arrandale is a gross mistake if you are a company like Apple.
Quote:
I have no respect for anyone running AMD. None at all.
Then you are largely illiterate when it comes to technology.
This is out of character for you as I'd expect you to be more objective.
First off little truth is to be found in the above statements. There are several advantage with AMD especially in the context of Intel forcing intel graphics down customers throats. This highlights one important consideration system performance is not defined by just the CPU anymore.
Besides that some of AMDs solutuions compete very well against Intels. It is all about the benchmarks choosen and the compilers used.
I suspect this is indeed a real possibility and is likely a reaction to some really poor engineering and management decisions coming out of Intel. Arrandale is a gross mistake if you are a company like Apple.
Then you are largely illiterate when it comes to technology.
I have no respect for anyone who knows nothing about the technology.
AMD is the innovator in the space with Intel.
I'm sorry, but this is simply inaccurate. Both AMD and Intel are responsible for substantial innovation. However any informed objective observer will acknowledge that Intel is without par in terms of manufacturing and design innovation. While one can point to a short list of AMD innovations (hypertransport and 64-bit chief among them), a similar list for Intel would span pages.
Quote:
There is a reason Intel paid > $1 Billion in penalties to AMD for IP theft.
Again, completely inaccurate. The fine had nothing to do with IP theft. It was an antitrust action.
AMD is the second-largest global supplier of microprocessors based on the x86 architecture after Intel Corporation, and the third-largest supplier of graphics processing units, behind Intel and Nvidia. It also owns 21% of Spansion, a supplier of non-volatile flash memory. In 2009, AMD ranked ninth among semiconductor manufacturers in terms of revenue.
Not bad, I think it can perform fine inside iMac, MacBooks, Mac Pro...
Unfortunately none of the statistics you mentioned provide any reason to think that they produce a processor that is appropriate for Macs.
At this time, Intel owns performance in nearly all x86 market segments. Apple charges a premium for its products because it claims they are the best. Putting a lower performing chip in its products does not endear me to their pricing philosophy.
Intel has fought against Nvidia to close the market for alternative chipsets for use with its CPUs, which resulted this week in Apple being forced to use Intel's own limited integrated graphics chips inside its new MacBook Pros instead of using more capable parts from Nvidia.
I know the relationship between Intel and Nvidia has been sour for some time, but it's just wrong for Intel to tie system makers into using its own GPU solutions. I don't want Apple to go with AMD because I really DO like Intel CPUs, but I think Intel needs to hear the message: I would not buy a product with any current Intel GPU.
At this time, Intel owns performance in nearly all x86 market segments. Apple charges a premium for its products because it claims they are the best. Putting a lower performing chip in its products does not endear me to their pricing philosophy.
Apple does not use the best-performing Intel chips, so that argument has no merit.
Raw number-crunching speed has never been a priority for Apple. And now that they are a mobile device company, even less so.
Well, what do you mean by "developers coding for Intel", they are both use the same ISA, and compilers would generate the binary machine code for run time. Do you mean that these "developers" actually code in x86 assembly?
As a computer engineer, you must surely know that compilers can *and do* optimize for a particular target, even within the same ISA. Also note that while both AMD and Intel support x86-64, they each also support their own extensions. Their implementations of virtualization and vector extensions have diverged.
You must also know that the highest performing x86 compiler is generally acknowledged to be 'icc', and is provided by Intel. It is reasonable to assume that it is well tuned for Intel's products, and less well tuned for AMD's products.
Quote:
I assume you mean process technology, as that would be the standard terminology in ECE. Well, AMD has always been 9-12 months behind in transitionning to smaller nodes at their fabs (when they still owned them). So I'm not sure what do you mean by "anymore".
As a computer engineer, I'm sure you understand that 'technology' is a generic term. It can include micro-architecture, process, or even packaging technologies. Yes Intel has, for a long time, led in *process technology*. However for several years AMD had an indisputable lead in processor performance. I assume the OP was referring to this time period.
Quote:
Just look at their problems in the past two years Now, without their own fab, they will have even more problems with optimization.
So what are you suggesting, that design houses such as ARM and Nvidia all output sub-standard products? What are your justifications for such?
As a computer engineer, if you keep up with the trade you surely are aware of the process issues that Nvidia has had. You are probably also aware of the process problems that AMD has experienced when outsourcing production to foundries. Linking design and litho provides tremendous advantages that AMD will start to lose as GF becomes more independent.
Apple does not use the best-performing Intel chips, so that argument has no merit.
Raw number-crunching speed has never been a priority for Apple. And now that they are a mobile device company, even less so.
While it saddens me that you feel my argument has no merit, I would like to point out that usually upgrades are available to very high performing chips that, at this time, AMD cannot compete with.
We can hope that AMD has shown Intel a roadmap that indicates it will be able to compete in the future. But any move by Apple to ignore performance would be at its own peril.
I posted some speculations here about AMD and Apple. The GPU (of Llano) appears to be AMD's strongest advantage over Intel, while the high-end desktop area is where Intel may retain the largest lead over AMD (which incidentally isn't a CPU type used in any Macs, although the iMac may come close).
A Sandy Bridge core will be significantly better than a Llano core, but the Sandy Bridge GPU looks to be far behind the Llano GPU (if the rumors are true). CPU-wise, Sandy Bridge will easily beat Llano with equivalent core counts. But what about a TDP and price area where 2-core Sandy Bridge competes with 4-core Llano? There will be a similar one in the 25/35 W space where 25/35 W 4-core Champlain goes against 35 W 2-core Arrandale. Coincidentally, that space is right where the MacBook Pro is.
If the major advantage of going AMD is better options for IGPs for OpenCL which is especially beneficial in accelerating multimedia applications, it'll be interesting to see how much that is offset by AVX which has a similar purpose. Bulldozer's is getting AVX but presumably won't have as good an implementation as good as Sandy Bridge since Bulldozer was originally intended to have the abandoned SSE5 and I believe Bulldozer's AVX implementation does not fully conform to the final AVX spec due to the late addition. Sabine, AMD's future mobile quad core with Llano IGP, won't have AVX at all. AVX will presumably be more broadly applicable across different applications and easier to implement by using existing SSE code as a basis, but a powerful IGP and OpenCL will still be much faster
The other wild-card may be that Sandy Bridge sees a return of the CPU microarchitectural stewardship to the Haifa team in Isreal who was responsible for the Pentium M and it's descendants the Core and Core 2 product lines and for regaining the performance and power lead for Intel. Nehalem and Westmere was designed by the Hillsboro team who was responsible for Netburst and Pentium 4 and we can see their influence on getting Nehalem to regain the server performance lead for Intel with lots of memory bandwidth, large slow L3 cache, and Hyperthreading. I'm expecting the Haifa team to implement major in tweaking the microarchitecture to maximize performance/watt using things like decreasing cache latency, hopefully substantially in the case of the L3 cache, increasing interconnect bandwidth, expansion of micro and macro-op fusion, expansion of the loop stream detector, increasing the number of instructions kept in flight and associated buffers to maximize Hyperthreading in anticipation of Bulldozer's SMT, optimizing clock gating, power plane distribution, and the PCU for higher Turbo Boost modes, and hopefully other new tricks. Most of the rumours seem to indicate quad core mobile Sandy Bridge to maintain the 45W TDP due to the integration of the IGP, but you would think some 35W TDP quad cores would be possible considering the CPU moves from 45nm to 32nm over Clarksfield and the IGP also moves from 45nm to 32nm over Arrandale combined with the Sandy Bridge microarchitecture being tuned for power efficiency should open up some thermal room.
EDIT: I believe Sandy Bridge was pushed back from Q4 2010 into Q1 2011 and due to the lack of reports of sandal, the reasoning is probably lack of competition rather than something being wrong with the design. I wonder if this rumour will encourage Intel to step up their plans? AMD is definitely closing on Intel and it seems a lot of this depends on scheduling and execution.
I believe if Apple is looking at AMD they're looking at the lowend range (Macbook, Mac mini) and the high end (Mac Pro)
Intel is probably going to own the iMac configs. Who knows though but my guess is that AMD is discussing 2011 products because it appears that this is their "make it or break it" year with Bulldozer.
While it saddens me that you feel my argument has no merit, I would like to point out that usually upgrades are available to very high performing chips that, at this time, AMD cannot compete with.
We can hope that AMD has shown Intel a roadmap that indicates it will be able to compete in the future. But any move by Apple to ignore performance would be at its own peril.
AMD Thuban (Phenom II X6) is scheduled for late April launch(in about 10 days). Some of these chips are already in hands of many enthusiast in Asia. The performance expectations and early leaked benchmarks of Thuban is clock per clock comparable or even better than i7 9xx platform, exception of i7 980X with HT on. This can be attained by almost 1/2 to 1/3 of the price point of intel chips, not to mention intel mobo costing 2x as well.
AMD Thuban incorporates turbo mode which allows increasing the multiplier by 2 to 2.5 (400 to 500 MHz) boost when only 3 cores or less are running just like intel's offering but it does with all three cores at same speed boost. This is the current line up of AMD's offer. Why would you want to use intel i5 or i7 for much higher price for less performance? Not to mention these chips come with 95W/125W flavor.
It looks like AMD is back on track, like the old days of AMD64 X2 vs. Intel P4 days. You may also want to look up Bulldozer for the future line up.
AMD Thuban (Phenom II X6) is scheduled for late April launch(in about 10 days). Some of these chips are already in hands of many enthusiast in Asia. The performance expectations and early leaked benchmarks of Thuban is clock per clock comparable or even better than i7 9xx platform, exception of i7 980X with HT on. This can be attained by almost 1/2 to 1/3 of the price point of intel chips, not to mention intel mobo costing 2x as well.
AMD Thuban incorporates turbo mode which allows increasing the multiplier by 2 to 2.5 (400 to 500 MHz) boost when only 3 cores or less are running just like intel's offering but it does with all three cores at same speed boost. This is the current line up of AMD's offer. Why would you want to use intel i5 or i7 for much higher price for less performance? Not to mention these chips come with 95W/125W flavor.
It looks like AMD is back on track, like the old days of AMD64 X2 vs. Intel P4 days. You may also want to look up Bulldozer for the future line up.
Not bad. If Thuban is close to I7 then things would indeed be looking very good because AMD can make up performance delta in some areas via superior GPU.
Comments
AMD has been shipping Opteron servers for ages in 24/7 environments. I'm not too worried about them delivering garbage.
Give me 12 core Opteron's with 2 slot boards and their Dual PCI-E 2 boards in SLI mode crunching streams for OpenCL and blocks from GCD any day of the week.
Bulldozer will be even more sweet.
BS. No matter what, AMD is considered to be a second tier supplier.
Sure, if you want a $400 piece of junk, get an AMD machine.
I have no respect for anyone who knows nothing about the technology.
AMD is the innovator in the space with Intel.
There is a reason Intel paid > $1 Billion in penalties to AMD for IP theft.
The new direction for AMD and it's spin-off foundry corporation that's on it's own and the advanced technology lead in the GPGPU space over all contenders, combined with the CPU advances moving forward are great to see.
AMD Opteron servers for XServer would be sweet. Price would drop and also the option to have 4 12 Core Opteron CPU slots on one board for nearly the price of 2 Xeons would be sweet.
Not bad, I think it can perform fine inside iMac, MacBooks, Mac Pro...
AMD is the second-largest global supplier of microprocessors based on the x86 architecture after Intel Corporation, and the third-largest supplier of graphics processing units, behind Intel and Nvidia. It also owns 21% of Spansion, a supplier of non-volatile flash memory. In 2009, AMD ranked ninth among semiconductor manufacturers in terms of revenue.
AMD also has copper, SoI, and ZRAM technology.
Maybe Apple is interested in licensing these for their CPUs...
Besides that, The new 13" MBP may be a leading indicator that Apple is showing that they are willing to use a slower C2D cpu in order to get a better integrated graphics solution than is possible from Intel. This is obviously a market segment that AMD should be able to address -- combine a mediocre x86 cpu with a very capable ATI integrated gpu.
Oh, and Mac Mini. Nuff said.
I don't want this to happen?EVER!!!
This is out of character for you as I'd expect you to be more objective.
Despite what some people here think, there is no advantage going to crippled AMD, and some big dangers. AMD is nowhere near as reliable as Intel, and as usual, they are behind in every area that matters.
First off little truth is to be found in the above statements. There are several advantage with AMD especially in the context of Intel forcing intel graphics down customers throats. This highlights one important consideration system performance is not defined by just the CPU anymore.
Besides that some of AMDs solutuions compete very well against Intels. It is all about the benchmarks choosen and the compilers used.
I hope, assuming that this article is true, that this is just a negotiating ploy on Apple's part.
I suspect this is indeed a real possibility and is likely a reaction to some really poor engineering and management decisions coming out of Intel. Arrandale is a gross mistake if you are a company like Apple.
I have no respect for anyone running AMD. None at all.
Then you are largely illiterate when it comes to technology.
Dave
This is out of character for you as I'd expect you to be more objective.
First off little truth is to be found in the above statements. There are several advantage with AMD especially in the context of Intel forcing intel graphics down customers throats. This highlights one important consideration system performance is not defined by just the CPU anymore.
Besides that some of AMDs solutuions compete very well against Intels. It is all about the benchmarks choosen and the compilers used.
I suspect this is indeed a real possibility and is likely a reaction to some really poor engineering and management decisions coming out of Intel. Arrandale is a gross mistake if you are a company like Apple.
Then you are largely illiterate when it comes to technology.
Dave
Thank you Dave, you have a wonderful weekend.
I have no respect for anyone who knows nothing about the technology.
AMD is the innovator in the space with Intel.
I'm sorry, but this is simply inaccurate. Both AMD and Intel are responsible for substantial innovation. However any informed objective observer will acknowledge that Intel is without par in terms of manufacturing and design innovation. While one can point to a short list of AMD innovations (hypertransport and 64-bit chief among them), a similar list for Intel would span pages.
There is a reason Intel paid > $1 Billion in penalties to AMD for IP theft.
Again, completely inaccurate. The fine had nothing to do with IP theft. It was an antitrust action.
AMD is the second-largest global supplier of microprocessors based on the x86 architecture after Intel Corporation, and the third-largest supplier of graphics processing units, behind Intel and Nvidia. It also owns 21% of Spansion, a supplier of non-volatile flash memory. In 2009, AMD ranked ninth among semiconductor manufacturers in terms of revenue.
Not bad, I think it can perform fine inside iMac, MacBooks, Mac Pro...
Unfortunately none of the statistics you mentioned provide any reason to think that they produce a processor that is appropriate for Macs.
At this time, Intel owns performance in nearly all x86 market segments. Apple charges a premium for its products because it claims they are the best. Putting a lower performing chip in its products does not endear me to their pricing philosophy.
Intel has fought against Nvidia to close the market for alternative chipsets for use with its CPUs, which resulted this week in Apple being forced to use Intel's own limited integrated graphics chips inside its new MacBook Pros instead of using more capable parts from Nvidia.
I know the relationship between Intel and Nvidia has been sour for some time, but it's just wrong for Intel to tie system makers into using its own GPU solutions. I don't want Apple to go with AMD because I really DO like Intel CPUs, but I think Intel needs to hear the message: I would not buy a product with any current Intel GPU.
At this time, Intel owns performance in nearly all x86 market segments. Apple charges a premium for its products because it claims they are the best. Putting a lower performing chip in its products does not endear me to their pricing philosophy.
Apple does not use the best-performing Intel chips, so that argument has no merit.
Raw number-crunching speed has never been a priority for Apple. And now that they are a mobile device company, even less so.
Well, what do you mean by "developers coding for Intel", they are both use the same ISA, and compilers would generate the binary machine code for run time. Do you mean that these "developers" actually code in x86 assembly?
As a computer engineer, you must surely know that compilers can *and do* optimize for a particular target, even within the same ISA. Also note that while both AMD and Intel support x86-64, they each also support their own extensions. Their implementations of virtualization and vector extensions have diverged.
You must also know that the highest performing x86 compiler is generally acknowledged to be 'icc', and is provided by Intel. It is reasonable to assume that it is well tuned for Intel's products, and less well tuned for AMD's products.
I assume you mean process technology, as that would be the standard terminology in ECE. Well, AMD has always been 9-12 months behind in transitionning to smaller nodes at their fabs (when they still owned them). So I'm not sure what do you mean by "anymore".
As a computer engineer, I'm sure you understand that 'technology' is a generic term. It can include micro-architecture, process, or even packaging technologies. Yes Intel has, for a long time, led in *process technology*. However for several years AMD had an indisputable lead in processor performance. I assume the OP was referring to this time period.
Just look at their problems in the past two years Now, without their own fab, they will have even more problems with optimization.
So what are you suggesting, that design houses such as ARM and Nvidia all output sub-standard products? What are your justifications for such?
As a computer engineer, if you keep up with the trade you surely are aware of the process issues that Nvidia has had. You are probably also aware of the process problems that AMD has experienced when outsourcing production to foundries. Linking design and litho provides tremendous advantages that AMD will start to lose as GF becomes more independent.
Apple does not use the best-performing Intel chips, so that argument has no merit.
Raw number-crunching speed has never been a priority for Apple. And now that they are a mobile device company, even less so.
While it saddens me that you feel my argument has no merit, I would like to point out that usually upgrades are available to very high performing chips that, at this time, AMD cannot compete with.
We can hope that AMD has shown Intel a roadmap that indicates it will be able to compete in the future. But any move by Apple to ignore performance would be at its own peril.
But any move by Apple to ignore performance would be at its own peril.
C'mon. The MBP upgrades ignored performance, especially in the 13 inch version, and they are selling like hotcakes.
Apple has never been the fastest. They do not sell based upon specs.
That would be like Mercedes putting horsepower figures in their headlines. Not gonna happen.
I posted some speculations here about AMD and Apple. The GPU (of Llano) appears to be AMD's strongest advantage over Intel, while the high-end desktop area is where Intel may retain the largest lead over AMD (which incidentally isn't a CPU type used in any Macs, although the iMac may come close).
A Sandy Bridge core will be significantly better than a Llano core, but the Sandy Bridge GPU looks to be far behind the Llano GPU (if the rumors are true). CPU-wise, Sandy Bridge will easily beat Llano with equivalent core counts. But what about a TDP and price area where 2-core Sandy Bridge competes with 4-core Llano? There will be a similar one in the 25/35 W space where 25/35 W 4-core Champlain goes against 35 W 2-core Arrandale. Coincidentally, that space is right where the MacBook Pro is.
If the major advantage of going AMD is better options for IGPs for OpenCL which is especially beneficial in accelerating multimedia applications, it'll be interesting to see how much that is offset by AVX which has a similar purpose. Bulldozer's is getting AVX but presumably won't have as good an implementation as good as Sandy Bridge since Bulldozer was originally intended to have the abandoned SSE5 and I believe Bulldozer's AVX implementation does not fully conform to the final AVX spec due to the late addition. Sabine, AMD's future mobile quad core with Llano IGP, won't have AVX at all. AVX will presumably be more broadly applicable across different applications and easier to implement by using existing SSE code as a basis, but a powerful IGP and OpenCL will still be much faster
The other wild-card may be that Sandy Bridge sees a return of the CPU microarchitectural stewardship to the Haifa team in Isreal who was responsible for the Pentium M and it's descendants the Core and Core 2 product lines and for regaining the performance and power lead for Intel. Nehalem and Westmere was designed by the Hillsboro team who was responsible for Netburst and Pentium 4 and we can see their influence on getting Nehalem to regain the server performance lead for Intel with lots of memory bandwidth, large slow L3 cache, and Hyperthreading. I'm expecting the Haifa team to implement major in tweaking the microarchitecture to maximize performance/watt using things like decreasing cache latency, hopefully substantially in the case of the L3 cache, increasing interconnect bandwidth, expansion of micro and macro-op fusion, expansion of the loop stream detector, increasing the number of instructions kept in flight and associated buffers to maximize Hyperthreading in anticipation of Bulldozer's SMT, optimizing clock gating, power plane distribution, and the PCU for higher Turbo Boost modes, and hopefully other new tricks. Most of the rumours seem to indicate quad core mobile Sandy Bridge to maintain the 45W TDP due to the integration of the IGP, but you would think some 35W TDP quad cores would be possible considering the CPU moves from 45nm to 32nm over Clarksfield and the IGP also moves from 45nm to 32nm over Arrandale combined with the Sandy Bridge microarchitecture being tuned for power efficiency should open up some thermal room.
EDIT: I believe Sandy Bridge was pushed back from Q4 2010 into Q1 2011 and due to the lack of reports of sandal, the reasoning is probably lack of competition rather than something being wrong with the design. I wonder if this rumour will encourage Intel to step up their plans? AMD is definitely closing on Intel and it seems a lot of this depends on scheduling and execution.
Intel is probably going to own the iMac configs. Who knows though but my guess is that AMD is discussing 2011 products because it appears that this is their "make it or break it" year with Bulldozer.
While it saddens me that you feel my argument has no merit, I would like to point out that usually upgrades are available to very high performing chips that, at this time, AMD cannot compete with.
We can hope that AMD has shown Intel a roadmap that indicates it will be able to compete in the future. But any move by Apple to ignore performance would be at its own peril.
AMD Thuban (Phenom II X6) is scheduled for late April launch(in about 10 days). Some of these chips are already in hands of many enthusiast in Asia. The performance expectations and early leaked benchmarks of Thuban is clock per clock comparable or even better than i7 9xx platform, exception of i7 980X with HT on. This can be attained by almost 1/2 to 1/3 of the price point of intel chips, not to mention intel mobo costing 2x as well.
AMD Thuban incorporates turbo mode which allows increasing the multiplier by 2 to 2.5 (400 to 500 MHz) boost when only 3 cores or less are running just like intel's offering but it does with all three cores at same speed boost. This is the current line up of AMD's offer. Why would you want to use intel i5 or i7 for much higher price for less performance? Not to mention these chips come with 95W/125W flavor.
It looks like AMD is back on track, like the old days of AMD64 X2 vs. Intel P4 days. You may also want to look up Bulldozer for the future line up.
AMD Thuban (Phenom II X6) is scheduled for late April launch(in about 10 days). Some of these chips are already in hands of many enthusiast in Asia. The performance expectations and early leaked benchmarks of Thuban is clock per clock comparable or even better than i7 9xx platform, exception of i7 980X with HT on. This can be attained by almost 1/2 to 1/3 of the price point of intel chips, not to mention intel mobo costing 2x as well.
AMD Thuban incorporates turbo mode which allows increasing the multiplier by 2 to 2.5 (400 to 500 MHz) boost when only 3 cores or less are running just like intel's offering but it does with all three cores at same speed boost. This is the current line up of AMD's offer. Why would you want to use intel i5 or i7 for much higher price for less performance? Not to mention these chips come with 95W/125W flavor.
It looks like AMD is back on track, like the old days of AMD64 X2 vs. Intel P4 days. You may also want to look up Bulldozer for the future line up.
http://forums.extremeoverclocking.co...34&postcount=2
Not bad. If Thuban is close to I7 then things would indeed be looking very good because AMD can make up performance delta in some areas via superior GPU.