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<p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19px;">AMD unveiled their Opteron 6300 series server processors, code name </span><em style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">Abu Dhabi</em><span style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19px;">, back in November 2012. At that time, no review samples were available. The numbers that AMD presented were somewhat confusing, as the best numbers were produced running the hard to assess SPECJbb2005 benchmark; the SPEC CPU2006 benchmarks were rather underwhelming.</span></span></p>
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<p style="line-height: 19px; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><span style="font-size: small;">Both benchmarks have only a distant link to real server workloads, and we could conclude only two things. Firstly, performance per GHz has improved and power consumption has gone down. Secondly, we are only sure that this is the case with well optimized, even completely recompiled code. The compiler settings of SPEC CPU 2006 and the JVM settings of Specjbb are all code that does not exist on servers running real applications.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 19px; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><span style="font-size: small;">So is the new Opteron "<em>Abu Dhabi</em>" a few percent faster or is it tangibly faster when running real world code? And are the power consumption gains marginal at best or measurable? Well, most of our benchmarks are real world, so we will find out over the next several pages as we offer our full review of the Opteron 6300.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 19px; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/6508/the-new-opteron-6300-finally-tested" target="_blank">Read more...</a></span></p>
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Today we will talk about the functionality of the mainboard and try to find out why not very fast AMD Trinity processors consume so much power after all. Which of the system components have the most serious effect on the performance and power consumption? Computing cores, Graphics or memory – what must be overclocked and why should be left alone in the nominal mode ?
Intel Core i7-3960X has been the fastest processors for high-performance desktop systems for an entire year. But time has come for it to step down: today Intel offers Core i7-3970X Extreme Edition. Although the newcomer is hardly any different from its predecessor, we decided to subject it to detailed features and performance testing in our lab.
The launch of Socket AM3+ processors with Piledriver microarchitecture inspired many AMD fans. However, until recently we only based our opinion on the results obtained from the top model in the new AMD FX family. Today we are going to make up for this omission and carry out a detailed performance analysis of all Vishera processors with eight, six and four cores.
Piledriver microarchitecture, a refreshed Bulldozer, has finally reached the flagship AMD FX processors. Will it make the Socket AM3+ platform more appealing than LGA 1155? Quite possible, because the new AMD microarchitecture wasn’t the only trick they had up their sleeve.
<p style="line-height: 19px; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><span style="font-size: small; ">Last year's launch of AMD's FX processors was honestly disappointing. The Bulldozer CPU cores that were bundled into each Zambezi chip were hardly power efficient and in many areas couldn't significantly outperform AMD's previous generation platform. Look beyond the direct AMD comparison and the situation looked even worse. In our conclusion to last year's FX-8150 review I wrote the following:</span></p>
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<p><span style="font-size: small; ">"Single threaded performance is my biggest concern, and compared to Sandy Bridge there's a good 40-50% advantage the i5 2500K enjoys over the FX-8150. My hope is that future derivatives of the FX processor (perhaps based on Piledriver) will boast much more aggressive Turbo Core frequencies, which would do wonders at eating into that advantage."</span></p>
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<p style="line-height: 19px; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><span style="font-size: small; ">The performance advantage that Intel enjoyed at the time was beyond what could be erased by a single generation. To make matters worse, before AMD could rev Bulldozer, Intel already began shipping Ivy Bridge - a part that not only increased performance but decreased power consumption as well. It's been a rough road for AMD over these past few years, but you have to give credit where it's due: we haven't seen AMD executing this consistently in quite a while. As promised we've now had multiple generations of each platform ship from AMD. Brazos had a mild update, Llano paved the way for Trinity which is now shipping, and around a year after Zambezi's launch we have Vishera: the Piledriver based AMD FX successor.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 19px; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><span style="font-size: small; "><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/6396/the-vishera-review-amd-fx8350-fx8320-fx6300-and-fx4300-tested" target="_blank">Read more...</a></span></p>
Atom was originally developed not to deal with ARM but to usher in a new type of ultra mobile device. That obviously didn't happen. UMPCs failed, netbooks were a temporary distraction (albeit profitable for Intel) and a new generation of smartphones and tablets became the new face of mobile computing. While Atom will continue to play in the ultra mobile space, Haswell marks the beginning of something new. Rather than send its second string player into battle, Intel is starting to prep its star for ultra mobile work.
Haswell is so much more than just another new microprocessor architecture from Intel. For years Intel has enjoyed a wonderful position in the market. With its long term viability threatened, Haswell is the first step of a long term solution to the ARM problem. While Atom was the first "fast-enough" x86 micro-architecture from Intel, Haswell takes a different approach to the problem. Rather than working from the bottom up, Haswell is Intel's attempt to take its best micro-architecture and drive power as low as possible.
<p><span style="font-size: small; "><span style="color: rgb(38, 48, 52); font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 20px; ">AMD's Trinity chip is making a debut, but it's not exactly a fresh face. We </span></span><span style="font-size: small; ">reviewed the mobile version of Trinity</span><span style="font-size: small; "><span style="color: rgb(38, 48, 52); font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 20px; "> back in May and had mostly positive things to say about it. The second generation of AMD's do-everything, converged APU offered solid progress over the first-generation "Llano" chip on many fronts. Not too long after Trinity's mobile release, desktop versions of it started shipping exclusively in systems from large PC makers. Those wishing to build their own systems based on the chip, or to buy them from smaller PC vendors, had to wait. AMD took its time ushering this chip into broader sales channels, but the time is finally upon us. Trinity is now available as a retail product, as are motherboards based on the new Socket FM2 platform.</span></span></p>
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<div><span style="font-size: small; "><span style="color: rgb(38, 48, 52); font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 20px; "><a href="http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/10/amds-a10-5800k-and-a8-5600k-trinity-apus-reviewed/" target="_blank">Read more...</a></span></span></div>
Trinity demonstrated some very inspiring performance in graphics tests last week. However, AMD’s traditional weakness is its x86 cores. Let’s see if the company engineers managed to resolve this problem in the new Piledriver microarchitecture that found its way into promising hybrid processors.
Last week we took a look at the GPU side of the desktop Trinity APUs. We looked at the top end 384-core Radeon HD 7660D configuration as well as the slightly slower 256-core Radeon HD 7560D GPU, both of which easily outperformed Intel's HD 4000 and HD 2500. As far as processor graphics go, Trinity on the desktop maintains a healthy lead over Intel. There's still a place for discrete GPUs but that's pretty much at the $100 and above price points.
Today we're able to talk about pricing and x86 CPU performance. Read on to see how AMD's latest APU fares against Intel's newly released Ivy Bridge based Core i3 3220.