Intel Xeon, AMD Opteron

Although Xeon doesn't seem to have anything interesting going on these days, AMD has a lot of neat tidbits in the works. For starters, Socket 939 Opterons are already shipping to some OEMs, so expect to see those in high end workstations in the near future. It's probably going to be several months before these chips show up in the retail channel, but do expect to see those soon. To us, it appears as though AMD is just trying to reduce overlapping FX/Opteron 1xx SKUs.

The Opteron 154, 254 and 854 launch is also coming soon and some OEMs have already started promising chips to their customers. The new chips will run at 2.8GHz and utilize 1MB of L2 cache. All chips will be Socket 940 with the exception of the 1xx Opterons which will show up on Socket 939 instead. For those interested in buying a Socket 939 Opteron, you may want to consider a similarly priced Athlon 64 or even an FX chip. The price on the 939 Opterons is very prohibitive right now and will continue to be that way for a few months.

Movement on the new Opteron chips was non-existent over the last several months; although the Opteron 252 Troy [RTPE: OSA252FAA5BL] took a huge drop in price recently - mostly in part to the availability of OEM unboxed processors.

Don't expect any big changes this week for Xeon processors. There were a few small dips in Iriwindale processors here and there, but for the most part there was nothing worth commenting on this week in Xeon-land.

Celeron & Pentium M
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  • Chef Brian - Sunday, July 24, 2005 - link

    The review was a little down on the P-M. The reviews I've seen show that a 2ghz dothan is about the equivalent of an athlon 3700+ -, so yes the price-performance isnt much better than an Athlon. I will seriously consider a Yonah when they're released...

    Pentium M's rule. Best CPU architecture ever!
  • Zebo - Tuesday, July 26, 2005 - link

    quote:

    Hopefully the embargoed X2 will alleviate some of AMD's criticism for not providing a low cost dual core processor.


    Even at the so-called high price thier charging the forum is full of them.. at least 40. Same at xtreme. same at techreport. Guess how many Pentium dually I've seen at anandtech? Zero. I wonder why? Could it be the cheapest 4200 out performs the $1100 840EE?


    quote:

    No one would argue that AMD has the weaker dual core chip.


    WTF?

  • Furen - Tuesday, July 26, 2005 - link

    I think they meant that no one would use the argument "AMD has the weaker dual core".
  • Furen - Sunday, July 24, 2005 - link

    #22 I dont think anyone said anything negative about the pentium M but since I'm just skimming through the post so I might have missed it.

    They are the best gaming cpus clock-for-clock, but perform slower at pretty much everything else. Also, a 2GHz dothan costs about the same as a 2.4Ghz San Diego, which it will, most certainly, not outperform at ANYTHING.

    Yonah sounds great, though.
  • Chef Brian - Sunday, July 24, 2005 - link

    Pentium M weak my ass...clock for clock it's the fastest gaming processor, period.
  • KristopherKubicki - Sunday, July 24, 2005 - link

    KeithDust2000: I agree with Furen. We don't know when the 3800+ will show up and what the actual price might be. If it shows up in the channel in September, the D820 might be $50 cheaper (as will 945P boards no doubt). It's not really worth speculating about until the chips hit the channel in my opinion.

    Kristopher
  • Furen - Sunday, July 24, 2005 - link

    "So compare $605 for AMD versus $375 for Intel; it comes to about 1.6. I would still think the D820 has the advantage although I would be very interested in seeing the new AMD chip in a couple weeks."

    He's comparing the currently available X2 chips to the currently available PDs ($515 for an X2 4200 and 90 bucks for an NForce4 mobo). The X2 3800 is not available right now and who knows what the price and availability will be at launch...
  • KeithDust2000 - Sunday, July 24, 2005 - link

    @ Kristopher:

    P-D 820 + board= 241+130=371
    A64 X2 3800+ = 345+90=435

    I´d say that´s pretty close, and if you already have
    S939... Anyway, you also get a much better product. That´s 2x3200+ instead of 2x2.8Ghz, und the additional power savings, the architectural benefits...

    Your $605 number makes no sense, or what am I missing?

  • KeithDust2000 - Sunday, July 24, 2005 - link

    @ Jarred Walton:

    From another thread, but what exactly makes you think that Conroe and Merom will hold the performance lead in their respective segments for "quite a while"?

    @ Kristofer:

    The Athlon 64 X2 3800+ @ $345 (street prices tend to be lower than list) may not be the cheapest chip on the block, but it should imho be the best
    price/performance chip on the market.

    With it, AMD has basically the Pentium D 830, 840
    and EE covered (in terms of price) - and that despite Anand´s earlier
    insistence that X2 would may not be available at all this year, or very late this year, at retail. It should also have the Pentium
    D 820 covered for those that already own a S939 board. Not bad at all for the little manufacturer.

    BTW, die size of the part amounts to 147mm^2, which is the same size as Newcastle. AMD should be able to make quite a few of those should the need arise.
  • KeithDust2000 - Sunday, July 24, 2005 - link

    Hi!

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