Re: [LUG] wowsa four cores for £76

[Rob Beard <rob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

tom wrote:
> Gordon Henderson wrote:
> > On Fri, 18 Sep 2009, Rob Beard wrote:
> >
> > > tom wrote:
> > > > Seen these AMD Athlon II X4 620's - 4 cores 2.Ghz 512K cache per core!
> > > >
> > > > here comes another new pc to write e-mails on....
> > > > Tom te tom te tom
> > > Yep, not a bad price, shame it's something like 95W though.  Saying 
> > > that, AMD have released lower power Phenom II and Opteron 
> > > processors, so they may well be able to bring out a low power Athlon 
> > > II X4 too (albeit probably at a lower clock speed).
> > >
> > > I'm mulling over getting one of these myself.  I can't afford an 
> > > Intel Core i7 or i5 even now they're cheaper and I already have an 
> > > AM2+ board sitting around waiting for a new chip anyway.
> >
> > According to the reviews these are Phenoms with the L3 cache disabled 
> > (production faulures?)
> >
> > I'm not convinced myself - especially for the desktop as there are so 
> > few applications that make use of more than one core so-far. 
> > Esepcially with it's rather small L2 cache too.
> remember you are talking Linux here so configure, make ...:
> And remember if you do happen to run more than one app at a time 
> they'll be distributed around the cores without having to rebuild
>
> I only buy Intel if there is NO other choice.
> Tom te tom te tom

There is an argument for AMD over Intel.  These chips are AM3 chips 
which means they will work in either an AM2+ or AM3 motherboard.  So it 
gives an easy and cheap upgrade path.  For instance, if you have an 
older AM2 Athlon X2 with DDR2 memory on an AM2+ motherboard (pretty much 
anything made in about the last 18 months, possibly last 2 years) then 
chances are with a BIOS upgrade you can drop one of these chips in for 
an instant speed boost.

Then when the DDR3 prices come down a bit (they're getting there, but 
still not cheap enough for my liking compared to DDR2) then you can swap 
out the motherboard and memory (maybe keeping the old motherboard, 
memory and Athlon X2 chip to put into another machine maybe) and get a 
speed increase from more memory bandwidth and then maybe drop in a 6 
core Phenom II or Athlon II when they eventually come out.

Now okay, yes it is possible to upgrade from a Celeron M or Dual 
Core/Pentium Dual Core/Core 2 etc (or depending on the board, even a 
Pentium 4 or Celeron D) to a higher speed Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Quad (my 
other half's PC for instance will take a Core 2 Quad without any change 
of board or memory).  However if I was to upgrade to a Core i5 or Core 
i7 then I'd be looking at a new motherboard, new memory, and new CPU.  
Not to mention these Core i5 and Core i7 chips and boards still aren't 
cheap compared to AMD kit.  Even if I'd gone for one of the first Core 
i7 chips (920/940?) then I'd still be looking at a completely different 
board due to the change in socket.

So really it's swings and roundabouts.  The Athlon II chips at 3Ghz have 
a TDP of around 65W which is the same as the Core 2 Duo, but the AMD 
solution gives a drop in replacement for any upcoming AM3 chip.

Rob

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