Rumors and speculation that Intel would release a clone of the AMD
Opteron/Athlon 64 have surfaced off and on over the couple of years since AMD announced the x86-64 instruction set. I didn't think it would really happen.

After all, Intel has invested heavily in the Itanium (which some people
have dubbed the "Itanic"). And Intel has tried to maintain the image
that AMD is just a cheap, knock-off vendor. So, I couldn't imagine Intel
going for cloning AMD instead of the other way around. But now it looks
like its really going to happen, according to Infoworld.

What that means for HP/Compaq UNIX division is unclear. HP, and Compaq
before the merger with HP, both said their UNIX platforms would be moving
to the Itanium. And Compaq even gave Intel some of their Alpha
technology (from the DEC merger) in order to have some Alpha technology
to be integrated into the Itanium. I'm curious as to how all that will
fall out now.
8,697 views 11 replies
Reply #1 Top
I've got $10 that says Intel side-steps AMD's architecture....and still wins.
Reply #3 Top
intels Itanium2 is reported to blow the Opteron's outa the water but its just a rumor and with the intel prescotts comming out this month im sure they will make 64bit socket 775 versions of the chip to compette with AMD
Reply #4 Top
How good are those Itanics at 32bit operations again?
So far prescotts have looked very underwhelming. But, then so did the original P4's.

I don't think AMD will gain traction until they start getting better marketing. One area where Intel excels.
Reply #5 Top
Hm... Remeber - it's the same intel that said Rambus will be the next generation memory.
Where is Rambus now?
Reply #6 Top
yeha but that was because of mobo makers, and the lack of ram techonolgy at the time and bandwith reasons rambus was suposted to have higher memory bandwith than what it came out with but the cpu' would not support it at the time

if you buy pc4000(DDR) mem you have to down clock it then OC it to obtain the correct speed but that oc's your CPU as well

also BillGates said "we will never need more than 640k of ram" and look where hes at now .....none cares what they said in the past its what they do with the NOW
Reply #8 Top
I beleva that Intell will make crap... It was the same when P4 form Intell befor it come out.. people sad... "oh it's goin to be the ultimate processor of all time!" and stuff like this. But it end up has a total flope... but still many peipole bothe it thinking: "Oh it's Intell", or "I don't know anything on my comp.. it just came with my computer at the store (wich I got rip-off for over 500$ (cause I had to pay "Windows", "Microssoft Office", "The person to istall my comp, cause I can't read a 3 page instruction bookllet", "All the extra crap wich I'm berlly going to use, or nevr").. so it end up that my Athlon XP 2500+ is faster then the fastesst P4 arround... and also WAAAAYYYYY more stable... and many other thing... Also let's not forget that most of the people that got the Athlon XP, or 64/Opteron... could have an Nvidia chip set mother board, so that allows it to be even more stable, save money (like my mother board (form ASUS), it cames wiuth 6 USB, 2 firewire (1 Mac, 1 PC), also the Sound Storm Sound card: wich is onje of the best...) for less then 300$ CND. (I paid mine 225$ CND).

So basiclly AMD got up and currentlly there wining a lot of reputation (cause of there Athlon XP, and 64/Opteron)... Intell lost a lot of it...

I heard, that Microsoft tends to turn with AMD and not Intell... (wait a bit and next windows an you will see, there will be a Windows for 64Bit processors.
"http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/default.asp" | Ok mabe not... has you see if you click on "Top five reason" they talk about the next intell processor)

But! LINUX has we all know is smarter, saferm faster, etc... (I can continue like this for about an hour... to show you that LINUX is the BEST) Makes the right choice, They made a new version of LINUX for the AMD 64 bit processor "http://store.suse.com/dr/v2/ec_MAIN.Entry17c?CID=0&SID=40017&SP=10007&PN=5&PID=614097&DSP=&CUR=840&PGRP=0&CACHE_ID=0"


Reply #9 Top
It was NOT because of Mainboard makers, it was solely because of Price of rambus and it's lacks (the necessity to buy in pairs, the heat, the latency times AND THE PRICE AGAIN!). Some old applications tent to be slower on Rambus. Intel said it will change once apps will be optimized for other way of using memory. It has never became.

Itanium partially dubes Rambus'es flaws. Poor IA-32 support, very high cost of applince (but of course it's a server chip). Apart from HP and Compaq i've not seen much of praises towards the architecture, perhaps it's just too different... but what was driving computer sales all the time form many years was backward compatibitlty, and in this matter Itanium lacks pretty badly.
Reply #10 Top
an athlon way more stable???? where did you get that from????? for one thing a atalon has 12 pipe architetcture while intel has a 20 pipeline. athlon's error rate is way higher then intel's ever is also athlon's are far less stable when you have oc'ed them as well

let me ask you this, what does it do when you have a longer barrel on a gun??? the bullet goes straighter,and farther

you will need a higher clock speed to get data though the longer pipe thats why intel's clock speed its way faster than AMD's but if you want to see some bench's:

http://www20.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040201/prescott-13.html
these are the pure performance tests now look at the P4,B 2.66 beating the xp 3000+ thats odd ....and AMD's are better how??? get your facts right man. oh and each test for the cpu was run 5 times then adveraged into a score

(Athlon's error rate 3-4% intels: less than 2 or 0.8-1.6%
now which is more stable?????

now take into account that the new prescott chips can be oc'ed easly to a hefty 4.2Ghz all you need is a good copper heatsink and fan now if you really want to oc it get a wattercooling system and you can easily push 4.6 or higher right now im running my 2.4C P4 to a nice 3.08ghz with watercooling

oh and microsoft 64 bit os?.....xp is a 32bit shell built on a 16bit interface made for a 4bit microprocessor by a 2bit company that cant take 1 bit of compteion microsoft has server's that use intel processors ........ oh and its the chip makers that conform to the os makers not the other way around when micorsoft goes 64bit it will do it when its d*mn ready

also on the rambus: yeha if the chip had sold and drivven prices down then it would havent cost too much to get a chip but its too late now. see the problem was that most FSB's were not desgined at the time to really get the most outta rambus and now if you have DDR266(pc2100) it "can" outperform the 1066mhz rambus mem

another problem was the way mem was adressed on rambus chips that made it slower on older apps there was no way of getting round that because of the desgin. that made mem chip makers un willing to make the stuff because they would need new facictys and a new process thats different from DDR mem or SDR. so all in all cost had the most to do with it
Reply #11 Top
This is a reply to tysen and all others that don't believe in AMD's porcessors...
I guess we have conflicting info on the processors because the AMD AthlonXP Processors and the new FX and standard 64 Bit porcessors are going to blow Intel out of the water for effieciency and performance...The problem with the P4 is that even though it may have more pipelines it still can't shoot straight as even with the HyperThreading enabled it looses about 5-10% in it's performance! Explain to me why Intel is such a hot buy??? Not too mention a friend of mine who has an Intel P4 3.06Ghz and I who own a AMD Athlon XP 2800+ I out run him in several benchmarks not too mention in our own everyday trials such as framerates in games, encoding video/audio, 3D Rendering etc.... With the AMD architecture for the 64 and the FX line of processors the memory bottleneck has pretty much been erased...Intel has better marketing as they brainwash everyone into Intel...Intel...Intel
But when you look at the approach that AMD takes and let's there product speak for itself and it says nothing but good things. AMD has a lot of partners such as Alienware, Falcon Northwest, NVidia, and others not just for using their chips but in making the mainboards etc to supoort them.
AMD processors are solid in alot of areas, whereas Intel has faultered over the past several years and answer me this, why can an 800Mhz pentium 3 outrun a P4 going at 1800Mhz......and that is all without any overclocking....???
Intel is scared because AMD a much smaller company has put out a far better porduct and is continuing to do that and is gaining more and more support from product manufacturers etc...Poor Old Intel.... AMD's Prices are more competitive as they don't want to rip you off and steal your wallet and yet they perform better is that a coincidence??
I think not, it just goes to show that if you can't beat em join em is alive and well as Intel finally wised up and continued to lower it's prices.
GO AMD!