X-bit labs

March 2004 Hardware News Overview (page 4)

Category: Editorial

by Andy Yaschenko

[ 03/15/2004 | 02:11 AM ]

In February, the company announced the CG stepping of the Athlon 64 processor in all its variations. The stepping, just like Intel’s, is intended to reduce the processor power consumption. Well, I won’t call the current Athlon 64 a power-hungry chip, actually. Some matter for an argument may arise if the latest rumors about the Newcastle core come true: AMD is rumored to reduce the L2 cache size from 512 to 256KB. That’s a very questionable solution, but maybe the speed of the integrated memory controller is enough to make the influence of the cache memory on the processor performance nearly invisible.

They may make up for that by reducing prices at the same rate further. Well, computer manufacturers have already got a strong liking towards Athlon 64. In February, FIC introduced one model like that, only Dell keeps loyal to Intel. As announced, Dell is not satisfied with the current generation of AMD processors.

It seems like this situation won’t change with the transition to the Socket 939. This socket is rumored to be somewhat delayed, with some “help” from Prescott and Prescott-supporting chipsets. Thanks to Intel’s problems, AMD has a small timeout and can relax for a couple of months, polishing off its new form-factor. First Socket 939 processors are moved from March to the end of April in the schedule. This may be just a coincidence, though, as AMD may have its own problems: even after the announcement, in the entire Q2, the company will produce only about 10 thousand chips. Anyway, that’s sad, as Socket 939 is likely to reduce the average cost of powerful Athlon 64-based systems.

So far, Athlon 64 FX had to be used in Socket 940: by the end of March, the new processor of this family, the 2.4GHz Athlon 64 FX-53, will appear and probably it will be the last representative of the Socket 940 form-factor. Again, AMD is rumored to cut FX-51 shipments severely in the second half of February to prepare for the launch of the FX-53.

The Opteron is getting ready for the hot summer, reducing its power consumption and heat dissipation: judging from the latest moves of both AMD and Intel, this is the most urgent topic in the server market. In February, AMD announced six new Opteron CPUs of this class, with HE (Highly Efficient) and EE (Energy Efficient) suffixes. The first three have a power consumption of 55W, while the second three – of only 30W. They are designed for the standard form-factor (Socket 940) and at standard frequencies (2GHz for the first group and 1.4GHz for the second one). The only non-standard parameter is the price: for example, the Opteron 840HE costs as much as $1514, while its ordinary 840 mate costs only $698.

Well, you have always had to pay for compactness and economy of server systems. In February, Sun Microsystems introduced its long-anticipated Sun Fire V20z, the first company’s server on the Opteron CPUs. The dual-processor system has a starting price of about $3,000 and is going to be followed by four- and eight-processor servers.

I hope they will also be so inexpensive, considering that AMD lowered the prices for all Opteron and Athlon XP processor models in February. Opteron suffered most (up to 53%), while Athlon XP 3000+ stepped down from $203 to $163. Athlon 64 remained untouched, but its pricing is modest enough as it is.