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  • kevinkga - Friday, November 23, 2007 - link

    Interesting review but it looks like you've given the system to gamers to test. These systems seem to be built for server-class systems, where performance for stuff like encoding, gaming etc is not relevant. Instead, why not:

    1. Have a gentoo install done and bechmark against that? CFLAGS tweaking and stuff would truely reveal where this processor thrives or fails.

    2. Why not use a process intensive application or thread intensive application such as apache under loads of stress or a highly threaded application server such as websphere? In these cases latency on communication between processes or threads running on different cores is much more important than GHz performance. AMD uses hypertransport between its processor, one of the things that its got an edge comapared to intel. IPC or interthread communication for server-class benchmarks make much more sense that normal multimedia benchmarks that are used for desktops.... c'mon guys.
  • spinportal - Wednesday, September 19, 2007 - link

    So what is the going talk on Phenom vs. Peryn?
    Phenom launch is when? Late 2007? bad news
    Peryn launch is Nov 12th. Wolfdale is dual/Yorkfield is quad (without interconnects).
    Phenom is called PhenomX4 for quad-core? and PhenomX2 for dual-core?
    Will Phenom support multi-cpu motherboards or is that just Opt/Barcelona?
    Will Peryn support multi-cpu mobos or is that just Xeon/Harpertown?
    What we need is a metric for the 2.33 or 2.5 GHz releases for Phenom & Peryn .
    What is the comparison of a Athlon X2 6000+ to a Phenom X2 2 GHz in performance and price?
    Wolfdale vs. Conroe (175$US) @ 2.33 GHz ~ +5%
    PhenomX2 vs. K8 X2 3800+ (65$US) @ 2.0 GHz ~ +15%
    Conroe @ 2.66 Ghz (320$US) vs. K8 X2 6000+ (165$US) @ 3.0 Ghz ~ +18%
    (+24% vs. X2 4400+)
    Now for the pulling numbers out of a hat:
    Wolfdale @ 2.33 GHz vs. PhenomX2 @ 2.33 GHz ~ +14%
    Street Worth: 200$US vs. 100$US
    But you know AMD will need to price higher to protect its AM2 line, and Intel will put its price premium in as to not deflate Conroe.
    Est Retail: 240$US vs. 180$US
  • cocoviper - Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - link

    In light of Barcelona's "close but no cigar" performance I really think AMD should use a strategy from their own playbook from Spring/Summer of 99. K7 was looking to be a pretty good performer, but it wasn't quite there yet so AMD respun the K6-2 and K6-III's as the K6-2+ and K6-III+ (0.18 micron versions). These things were drop in replacements that were ultra cheap (both to produce and to buy), ran cool, overclocked really well and brought needed cash into AMD until they were able to stabilize the K7 and move to the Thunderbird.

    I say continue pushing hard to get Barcelona north of 3GHz, but in the mean time, have some people respin a either a cut down K8 derivitive to 65nm or a standard K8 to 45nm (only if 45nm will be up and running before Feb to March) and push it out as quick as possible. Then they can make some cash in the mainstream market from alot of inexpensive CPUs.
  • coolme - Friday, September 14, 2007 - link

    Good idea, AMD can actually be the first cpu manufacturer to sell new x86 processors in the < $100 range. With new shrinked K8s and cheap cheap single-core Barcelona. (less cache, no power improvements, and possibly off-die memory controller to aviod low yields, but cheap cheap cheap)
  • Visual - Wednesday, September 12, 2007 - link

    even a simple return of the 939 x2s would give them quite a lot of sales, i think.
    i personally would not hesitate to buy even a 6200+ x2 if they made it available and as cheap as the am2 versions now.
    also that will in no way replace my future purchase of a quadcore k10 (or two, in a 4x4 board) so they shouldn't worry about their products competing among themselves.

    i know plenty other people who refused to buy new mobos just for the sake of ddr2, and are still sticking with single-core 939s. give them the $40 3600+ x2s and 99% of them will upgrade. some will likely even go for the higher SKUs, like me.

    i know there still are occasional 939 x2s that you can buy here and there, as well as the 939 dualcore opterons. but believe me - supply is really low, making prices unreasonable compared to am2 chips, and also while they may be possible to find in the usa, uk or central europe, there are none at all available in my own country in eastern europe. i really want to find one, been looking for a long time now, and the only option i got is to import, further driving the price up - its just not worth it compared to am2 as it is.
  • 13Gigatons - Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - link

    That is very disappointing....
  • duploxxx - Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - link

    Sry to say anand, but i would advise to remove the review. If people would have a decent view on how this benchmark was done they would understand that this will be nowhere near the performance of the real phenom but it is a good indication. (and that was the whole intention why you made this review) However most only look at the benchmarks and think it will never be any faster than this.

    To my opinion you are killing a product before it is even launched and a bad name for you're site.
  • BaronMatrix - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    Maybe someone should try putting these in a QFX mobo (well THE QFX mobo) and see what happens. They should OC pretty good and that would also raise the RAM clock and take away the ECC penalty.
  • eRacer - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    Were any tests done to compare a single dual-core K8 Opteron versus a single quad-core K10? In previous reviews single- and dual-threaded benchmark performance was actually hurt by running dual A64 FX CPUs instead of a single A64 CPU at the same frequency.

    For example, in this review K10 was 16.2% faster than two dual-core Opterons at the same frequency in Oblivion. However, a previous Anandtech review showed that a single 3GHz A64 X2 6000+ was 17.1% faster than two 3GHz A64 FX-74 CPUs in a QuadFX system.

    http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc...">http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc...

    So is it possible the 2x K8 vs. 1x K10 comparison is telling us as much about the shortcomings of using dual-socket AMD systems in desktop benchmarks as it is about the strength of K10 vs. K8?
  • MadBoris - Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - link

    quote:

    Were any tests done to compare a single dual-core K8 Opteron versus a single quad-core K10? In previous reviews single- and dual-threaded benchmark performance was actually hurt by running dual A64 FX CPUs instead of a single A64 CPU at the same frequency.


    See my post above showing some K10 to K8 comparison with single and dual thread from techreport, the K10 advantage seems pretty insignificant on single threaded or more serial based applications.
    This will not look so good for the consumer desktop sector with so many applications/games that are still serial in their nature(even if they are multi-threaded).
  • lopri - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    Was thinking the exact same thing. Because the ~20% advantage in games just didn't make sense considering that the gaming benchmark is probably the most single-threaded in nature. If taken as its face value, the performance gain would be huge (which only would grow as the number of core increases).
  • PlasmaBomb - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    CPU-z says the voltage required to achieve 2.5GHz on a Barcelona was 1.52V, what was it set to in the BIOS?
  • Spuke - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    ...it looks like AMD will be a great alternative to Intel. The present K8 is already competitive performance-wise with Conroe and the Barcelona core looks to be MUCH quicker than K8. If Penryn is only 5% faster than Conroe, then I foresee Phenom being equal to Penryn. Well, that is unless you believe single digit gains to be LARGE advantages.
  • Hulk - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    "The present K8 is already competitive performance-wise with Conroe..."

    Huh? Every review I've ever read comparing K8 with Conroe shows Conroe being significantly faster in 9 out of 10 tests at the same clockspeed.

  • Sunbird - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    And the reviews with P4s and A64 were showing the A64 winning 9 out of 10 at same clockspeeds, the megahertz myth is busted. The only thing that really matters is price to performance and to some overclocking and maybe platform cost and heat...
  • strikeback03 - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    Except the post being replied to did not mention price, only performance. In the desktop market Intel currently beats AMD clock for clock and their top parts are clearly faster than AMD top parts. Depending on how much you get your processor for, AMD can be competitive on price per dollar, but on pure performance not so much right now.
  • Spuke - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    I said competitive with Intel not "hair on fire" faster than Intel. Two different things. At the framerates these CPU's are getting nowadays, the performance differences are irrelevant at least in gaming and near irrelevant in other benchmarks. Unless you're making money of these systems where every second counts, the differences are truly insignificant. And I won't get into the J6P market.
  • strikeback03 - Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - link

    Well, I don't game, so framerates in that sense are rather meaningless to me. On the other hand if I have a couple hundred photos to convert from RAW to TIFF, then open in CS2 and apply some other corrections, the time savings of running on a 3GHz quad-core C2D over a 3GHz AMD solution (1 or two processor) can be significant. I'd imagine those who do video rendering feel the same way.
  • Regs - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    It's really too early to tell. It's what we all expected. They should of been released at 2.6 and scaled up to 3.0+ Ghz. Not 1.8 to 2.5 Ghz.
  • hirschma - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    I'd love to know what happens when a Barcelona is inserted into an AMD 4x4 platform. Does it work?
  • Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    That's the first thing I tried, it didn't work :)

    Take care,
    Anand
  • hirschma - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    quote:

    That's the first thing I tried, it didn't work :)


    That's sad, truly. Any inside scoop as to whether a Socket F FX will be seeing the light of day anytime soon?

    Thanks for the reply, anand.
  • Visual - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    hey, that's bad news, but good that you let us know
    and i'm sure if you spam asus a bit they'll give you a bios fix before they even make it official :P
  • Visual - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    Same thing i posted two posts up :p
    The only 4x4 (official name is quadFX btw) board out now is ASUS L1N64-SLI WS, k8 opterons work fine in it... lets hope these will too.
    Though it probably will take a bios update to at least show the cpu name properly.

    Would with 4 pci-e slots and SLI support, overclocking features, plenty of room around the sockets (for a dual-socket board anyway) this would make an excellent desktop.

    I also hope more quadFX boards come out soon. I like the asus, sure... but at least an update to support pci-express v2 would be good. If they also managed to fit more memory slots and all 4 gigabit lan ports that are supported by the chipset, it would be even better. And having choice between more brands would be a good thing too.
  • TA152H - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    This is a review that should not have been made. The Barcelona review by itself was enough to let people know what they could expect from a Phenom, instead of introducing bad data onto the web. First of all, the Barcelona is different from the Phenom, they have different cache arrangements, and that does make a difference.

    And then, the chart about the Barcelona competing with two dual-core K8s is so bad I wanted to scream. The pair of dual cores can access memory at the same time, the single quad-core can not. This is not an advantage a K8 will have over a Phenom in equivalent configurations.

    I know you need hits for sites like this, but this is just a bad review. It's like telling everyone they are too stupid to really get an idea from real information, and instead need for you to use misinformation due to bad comparisons, to tell them what you think the performance will be like. It's bad.
  • sdsdv10 - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    Actually, if you read the beginning of the article AMD asked them (Anandtec) to do this.


    quote:

    We got a call earlier in the week asking if we'd be able to turn around a review of AMD's Barcelona processor for Monday if we received hardware on Saturday. Naturally we didn't decline, and as we were secretly working on a Barcelona preview already, AMD's timing was impeccable.


    Furthermore, AMD was responsible for the system the CPU's were tested on.

    quote:

    AMD shipped us a pair of 2U servers a day early,


    Don't go bashing Anandtech for doing something AMD asked them to do, just because you don't like the results.
  • MadBoris - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    It wasn't a review, it was a preview.
    It should be taken with a grain of salt, and yes the dual K8's is not the best comparison, it opens up even more questions to what the real world penalty from two sockets actually is.

    But all of us really want to know what it means for us, not just integer intensive tests but FP like for games, etc.

    Probably the most informative benchmark to me would have been the performance of a single core K8 vs K10, which would have showed me the improvements of the architecture and I can extrapolate alot from there. Running onecpu boot option with Vista could have done that, but they were pressed for time.

    Also Supreme Commander is one of the most CPU dependant games around, with rendering and sim threads, so it will clearly show CPU granularity probably better than any other game currently.
  • leexgx - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    we need to see Single Thread tests as well to see what an k8 cpu running in 1 cpu mode that an k10 can do in 1 cpu mode (both running at the same 2ghz speed)

    it has to be faster then my 3.1ghz cpu if i am going to get it (Quad be nice tho)

    and the tests should be done under XP if ony 1 cpu is going to be used Vista has to many services that can interfere with results (booting up into vista now is now resulting in Constant hard disk use whare as my XP setup just the start thats an little slow when desktop is first loading after that programs are faster)
  • MadBoris - Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - link

    quote:

    we need to see Single Thread tests as well to see what an k8 cpu running in 1 cpu mode that an k10 can do in 1 cpu mode (both running at the same 2ghz speed)


    That is what I said earlier as well, single threaded comparison between K8 and K10 would tell me alot...
    So http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/13176/5">techreport to the rescue.

    Cinebench single thread: (higher better)
    Opteron 2218 HE (K8 2.6GHZ) - 2449
    Opteron 2360 SE (K10 2.5Ghz) - 2385
    No architectural improvement witnessed here on a single core with k10.

    Myrimatch: (lower better)
    1 thread Opteron 2218 HE (K8 2.6GHZ) - 506
    1 thread Opteron 2360 SE (K10 2.5Ghz) - 656
    2 thread Opteron 2218 HE (K8 2.6GHZ) - 353
    2 thread Opteron 2360 SE (K10 2.5Ghz) - 373
    Decent improvement witnessed here on a single thread, but then 2 threads on K10(373) falls much closer to the level of K8(353). This protein benchmark likely reacts to some memory benefits, because other tests don't show raw computational advantages.

    STARS Euler3d: (higher better)
    1 thread Opteron 2218 HE (K8 2.6GHZ) - .53
    1 thread Opteron 2360 SE (K10 2.5Ghz) - .54
    2 thread Opteron 2218 HE (K8 2.6GHZ) - .96
    2 thread Opteron 2360 SE (K10 2.5Ghz) - .96
    No tangible architectural improvement witnessed here on a single core with k10 OVER k8.

    So it looks like the actual core architecture is not all that much better on K10 over K8. Surely nothing like the advance we saw with a Core 2 architecture (Although Intel had alot of room for improvement over prescott).

    The K10 begins to really advance and scale with 4 threads (probably a product of 2 socket penalty with K8). Scaling beyond 4 threads is obviously where the K10 will show it's legs, and 2 - 4 sockets on K10 is where it will scale better than Intel.
  • IntelUser2000 - Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - link

    Madboris, your analyzation on Myrimatch tests are wrong. Let's take a look at your post about Myrimatch:

    quote:

    Myrimatch: (lower better)
    1 thread Opteron 2218 HE (K8 2.6GHZ) - 506
    1 thread Opteron 2360 SE (K10 2.5Ghz) - 656
    2 thread Opteron 2218 HE (K8 2.6GHZ) - 353
    2 thread Opteron 2360 SE (K10 2.5Ghz) - 373
    Decent improvement witnessed here on a single thread, but then 2 threads on K10(373) falls much closer to the level of K8(353). This protein benchmark likely reacts to some memory benefits, because other tests don't show raw computational advantages


    It's time in seconds, meaning at one thread, Opteron 2218 HE is approximately 30% faster than the 2360 HE. In 2 threads, Barcelona does better as it closes up to the K8, but still doesn't have an advantage.
  • MadBoris - Wednesday, September 12, 2007 - link

    Good catch, thx. Even though I said 'lower is better', I swapped it in my mind.
    So K10 looks much worse than K8 single core in that test.
    I wonder where that penalty comes from and if it will pronounced in other apps.
  • Visual - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    I have a question about RAM types. Are the slots different for normal unregistered DDR2, registered DDR2, and FBDIMM DDR2?

    If any of those are the same slots, what happens if you mess up and put the wrong type?

    And I also have a suggestion for you Anand. Try testing with ASUS L1N64-SLI WS motherboard. It is originally for the QuadFX line of processors from AMD, but apparently the old K8 socket-f opterons work just fine in it, with unregistered DDR2. I assume the newer Barcelona opterons will too.
  • MadBoris - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    Good preview Anand...
    Nice closing summary that put's it in a nutshell.

    Too bad you couldn't drop a q6600 into that socket instead of just a k10 for a comparison that we all are looking forward to. ;)
    Considering it isn't coming to desktop for a while, no biggie, it will be compared when it matters.

    What is the huge deal in AMD not being able to get to high frequencies, I don't understand?
    3ghz was in range many years ago for Intel, AMD still has difficulty getting parts out at 3Ghz. I lack the understanding if it's just manufacturing limits/costs or is it more due to their architecture limitations (interconnects and such).

    quote:

    The trouble for AMD this time around is that Phenom is a much larger chip than the outgoing Athlon 64 X2, whereas Intel's Penryn family will actually be smaller than Conroe. AMD is already losing a considerable amount of money each quarter, so fabbing a larger chip at the same price as current CPUs will only make the situation worse. However, Intel can afford to continue to keep its processors as aggressively priced, especially moving to 45nm.

    To put it plainly: Phenom/Barcelona make this price war more difficult on AMD, while Penryn makes it easier on Intel. What's the end game? Is there a solution?


    This is the part that is really scarry. Intel who had profits in the 5bil range last quarter, can literally drive AMD into the ground by outpricing and outperforming them. Even if Intel decides to start losing money with a hugely aggressive price/performance ratio that is hard to pass up, AMD would not be able to withstand that onslaught for long...Question is does Intel have the blood lust to ring the death knoll once and for all and try to drive them into the ground. The saving grace here really is the high end server market with 2 and 4 socket configurations(8,16 cores) where Barcelona will stretch it's legs over Intel.
    I hope for the best!
  • Cybercat - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    Intel could do that, but they're not going to. AMD has to stay in business, because Intel can't afford to become a monopoly. However, Intel doesn't have a problem putting AMD on life support.

    It's a scary time for AMD.
  • MadBoris - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    Hehe, good point. War of attrition. Break down their supply lines and lower their profits in such a way that they can't afford to do extensive R&D to innovate technology. Keeps them hobbling near by, but not as dangerously competitive.
    Intel can even make themselves "appear" more superior as a company by comparison to their runner up, and yet all the while they are innovating at the same pace they always were and not all that better, just have the appearance of greater superiority.
    Sun TechTzu, the art of silicon business. ;)
  • Regs - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    You might just shoot yourself in the foot if and when AMD brings out the Sledgehammer.
  • leexgx - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    thay did it was an K8 for 3 years but then Core2 came with its Sledgehammer

    taken AMD to long to bring there new cpu out
  • jones377 - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    I compared the performance scaling between Barcelona and Core 2 Quad where Anandtech has run the same benchmarks. The C2Q results are taken from http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc...">this review:

    The CPUs used are Barcelona @2GHz, @2.5GHz and Q6600@2.4Ghz, QX6850@3GHz. Both increasing the frequency by 25%. Only a few benchmarks were common between both. The gaming benchmarks for example were run at 1024*768 for Barcelona and 1600*1200 for C2Q so those can't be compared.

    Barcelona 2GHz to 2.5GHz:

    14.7% - Sysmark 2007
    23.4% - WME
    14.5% - iTunes
    21.2% - 3dsmax R9 SPECapc
    19.4% - Lightwave 3D


    Q6600@2.4GHz to QX6850@3GHz:

    15.2% - Sysmark 2007
    23.7% - WME
    21.5% - iTunes
    23.5% - 3dsmax R9 SPECapc
    21.3%/24.1% - Lightwave 3D - 2 different runs

    It should be noted that QX6850 runs at a higher FSB than Q6600 but this can't be helped. It's the best numbers I could find.
  • MadBoris - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    Interesting strictly from a CPU scaling perspective. It's good to consider them all as an average lump, as some of that code is likely "Intellified", like Itunes.
    I was hoping to see a bigger advantage in scaling due to the AMD architecture, scaling doesn't appear like it is going to be "too much" better over Intel though.
  • flyck - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    you might want to consider that opteron had limited bandwith DDR2 667 for 4 cores which limits scaling and performance. For phenom we speak about DDR2 1024 without the registered latency.
  • MadBoris - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    hmm, especially if it is only @cas5, as mentioned above.
    It will be interesting to see if it yields anything more than just a few percent, as to scaling, and if benefits compound per socket.
    As to one socket and 4 cores I don't really envision it being that much more than a few percent, but then again, I'm not investing any thought or speculation to try and figure out what will be answered when it actually matters and HW is available.

    Major point for me is, being able to OC a q6600($280) to 3.2GHz - 3.4GHz on air is going to be real stiff competition for AMD's Phenom, as to my purchasing decisions, which is all I am concerned about mainly.

    Also I believe all peoples talk about "true" quad is going to fall a bit flat for the majority of applications/games in real world comparisons with Kentsfield. Because already anyone that is interested to research it can see that the cache/bus penalties in scaling from 2 to 4 cores is basically nonexistent on applications that actually 'fully leverage' all 4 cores. Some apps will benefit, but I expect this to come to light before long and people will see that the penalty of 2 cores in one (Intel Quad), was more speculation, than actual reality, for 'most' consumer applications and games.

    I do like AMD's advances but we seriously need more frequency, CPI cannot be overlooked.
  • duploxxx - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    if AMD is already able to show multiple phenom systems on 3.0GHZ without dditional cooling (just boxed heatpipe cooler) then i wouldn't be too worried about oc performance of k10
  • ilkhan - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    15% over K8 is not going to be enough if it launches at (or at least doesn't overclock easily to) 3.2Ghz. At the 2.5 indicated here, yorkfield@3.2+ is going to eat agena for lunch, while being more profitable for intel than agena can hope to be for AMD.
    Pity.
  • JackPack - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    Based on these numbers, consumers are likely going to stick with Intel quads.

    Clock for clock, Kentsfield was often >30% faster than Quad FX. Barcelona being 15% faster than K8 is reasonable but it's clearly not going to touch Penryn/Yorkfield.
  • duploxxx - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    Alltough it is nice to see what anand tried to put here on electronic paper. I can't be compared to the real phenom in a few months.

    If you want to know why, check Anand's memory review of a year a go and check how well k8 and also k10 is scaling with better/faster memory.

    in a barcelona rig you have reg 667@cas5.

    so people who are already making conclusions on these benches, one reply: too early.
  • JackPack - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    This isn't K8 though. The L3 in Barcelona is going to make it less sensitive to memory bandwidth and latency.
  • Regs - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    Memory hits and misses (latency) have nothing to do with the L3. The L3 is there as a buffer for the information being proportion to the 4 cores.
  • JackPack - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    Look up the term "memory hierarchy."
  • Regs - Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - link

    what do you think pulls the data into the L3? God?
  • JackPack - Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - link

    It's called prefetching. The data is in the L3 before the CPU needs it, reducing memory traffic and latency.

    Not only that, but Barcelona has a L3 latency of 20ns. To get data from the main memory, it has to go through all levels of cache. When you look at the cumulative latency of the memory hierarchy, the one or two cycle penalty of RDDR2 is trivial.
  • Regs - Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - link

    Sorry, I did not mean to sound like a Dick Jack.

    The L3 cache is specifically designed with data sharing in mind. Which means all data unshared is evicted from the cache back into main memory. The L3 is also shared between four different cores and the access to the L3 must be arbitrated between them. This means the latency of the L3 actually depends on the core frequencies.

    Pre-fetches are made by the core and stored in the L1D cache of the Barc. They used to be stored in the L2 on the K8. So if the pre-fetch misses, it will look for information in the L2 and not the L3.
  • xenon74 - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    So if I understand this correctly:

    1.) You were trying to overclock registered DDR2 memory to give us a bit more even comparison between Athlon X2 and Phenom X4 using Opteron Barcelona QC and old Opteron DC.
    2.) OCing reg.DDR2 memory was unsuccessful which resulted that AMD sever stopped POSTing.

    3.) In two hours you come up with this "Phenom preview".

  • Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    Not exactly :) The server not POSTing had nothing to do with trying to run faster DDR2 memory in the system, all of the benchmarking for the Phenom preview was done before the board stopped POSTing, I was simply trying to add more benchmarks to Johan's article when it ceased operation. Apparently others have been having issues with these motherboards and it appears that a new rev of the board may correct the problems.

    Take care,
    Anand
  • Reynod - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    Great first article Anand.

    As usual exceptionally well written and you avoided all of the fanboi nonsense.

    I'd like more detailed stuff when you get the chance please?


    Cheers :)
  • Regs - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    I guess only more clock speed, a better revision of the processor, and maybe a AM2-AM3 mobo will be a bit better for the Phenom?

    I wasn't expecting a whole lot out of AMD's barc. Though I do wonder what they have planned to help it for the retail desktop version. Like you said it just makes it more difficult to price it unless it can compete better.
  • Locutus465 - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    I've been waiting to see what AMD would do as a frist step on the comeback trail... This is a good opening salvo... True it's not going to be a Core 2 killer, but coupled with future technologies this is a great start! I hope they can afford to continue keeping pricing low while producing newer/better chips...
  • Etern205 - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    Hope this preview about Barcelona is as honest article where it tells
    the consumer the truth as to how well this cpu performs.
    Anandtech is all about honesty right?
    If that is true (which it always is), then this article better not be one
    of those that got approved by AMD before it was pubished!


    http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=441">http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=441
  • Locutus465 - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    Not sure why you're questioning anand's honesty, they've always been fair and accurate as far as I can see. And frankly, this artical fits with everything that's been said thus far about the new chip, it'll be much more competitive, but not to the point of winning the battle for AMD.
  • retrospooty - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    Agreed AT has always been fair and unbiased with reviews, that is why it is so popular.

    Even if there was an error in the test methodology, and someone points it out, they will update the article with the correction.
  • Etern205 - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    Anandtech is a great site and their article is always gives the
    best info, which is why when I'm about to get a new part like a cpu, or video card, I'll
    come to this site for reviews. And 100% of the time the results are always correct.

    But as for this "Barcelona"... mmm I don't know
    not just this site but to all the other sites as a whole.

  • AbRASiON - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    Anand's final page sums it up really.

  • Pythias - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    I sure as hell hope not. If either side prevails, say goodbye to affordable processors.
  • hifisoftware - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    I guess it means we just have to say good buy to affordable processors then. Maybe AMD can ramp-up speeds very fast, but until they get there, they will be hurting/losing money. How much can they bleed red ink until it's too much?
  • Howard - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    We'll have more Barcelona server content coming as we spend more time with the system, but be sure to check out Johan's coverage to get a good idea of how Barcelona will compete in its //indended// market.
  • MDme - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    I have a feeling that Barcelona will be much more competitive in the server market compared with the desktop market. i.e. Barcey will hold off intel in the server space while it may not be enough to dethrone intel in the desktop arena, it will at least narrow the gap with intel.
  • DeepThought86 - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    Barcelona, the chip that launched a thousand flames!

    Fanbois on both sides: on your mark, get set, go!
  • KeypoX - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    Didnt know why i couldnt view it till now but been waiting all day :)
  • Frags - Saturday, September 15, 2007 - link

    AMD needs a Forrest Gump moment with the leg braces flying off to run away from the Bully.
    The road to Barcelona was a Flop. They need to cut their path to 45nm in half or recieve a blood transfusion soon.
  • KeypoX - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    but it was called "AMD's Quadcore: defending new found territory" on my google Anandtech article channel.
  • Thatguy97 - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link

    lol i sadly remember this embarrising launch

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