anybody getting conroe?

[Mats]

I don't think the components need much time to get mature.

- Motherboards: LGA775 have been here for 2 years. We're not talking about completely new designs. As an example, here are instructions how you make an Intel mobo compatible with C2. You solder 4 SMD's to the mobo (not saying it's easy, they're very small...).

- Chipsets: 975X have already been around for a while, and the new 965 won't bring anything new, pretty much the same thing AFAIK, just like 875 and 865. 975X can do over 400 MHz FSB, more than enough for me. As mentioned before, it seems like older chipsets can be used as well.

- CPU's: This is the only part I'm not sure about. However, the early samples that are being tested now can do 3.4 GHz on air, and 4.4 GHz on LN2. I'd say they already good enough for me at least. Remember that a $314 C2 E6600 (2.4 GHz) is faster than a $1000 FX-62 (2.8 GHz), and uses about half as much power, or even less. 65 nm manufacturing process have been used and sold for 7 months when C2 becomes available, nothing new.

[smilingcrow]

Thanks Mats. I’m with you with regard to pricing & over-clocking, but still, have you ever known this current scenario to happen before? I haven’t. To reiterate:

Company A launches a new platform.
Company B is due to launch a new platform in two months, whereby, it’s cheapest mainstream part (i.e. dual-core) will cost 40% less than the current price of Company B’s cheapest dual-core part and have better performance. But, more unusually, this entry level part simply by over-clocking it 25% will allow it to match the performance of Company B’s fastest chip. That’s pretty damned unheard of in my experience. That’s why I’m (almost) embarrassed. Add in the performance per watt advantages and I’m (almost) blushing

As for the stability factor, if you find a manufacturer that releases a Version 2 board which basically just adds Conroe support via an updated VRM and BIOS, they should be more stable than average off the block.

[Mats]

smilingcrow: I agree.
- The reasons for it all seems to be that AMD have been the preferable CPU manufacturer for a long time, and that have given them the possibility to set the prices high for dual cores.

- Intel, on the other hand, have been selling the not so fantastic (but still pretty good) Pentium D for pretty low prices.

- What's happening is that Intel have decided not to raise the prices just because they change architecture, which seems like a good idea if they want to sell more. But the thing is that it looks like thay almost forgotten that they have a superior CPU this time. Or, they simply didn't know what the new A64F was capable of, they didn't know that C2 was that superior. The latter may be a reason for Intel to raise the prices.

- On the other hand, it's about time to bring the prices down for dual cores. That's also a reason why the prices are less predicable than usual.



But then again, who said that Intel can't raise the prices anyway? The latest price change for the X2 3800+ this spring made it a bit more expensive than earlier, who could have expected that? I couldn't. You never know what they will do with the prices in the future.

Price and avilability are two factors we don't know much about when it comes to C2 CPU's and motherboards. Maybe I have to wait until October to get what I want.

[smilingcrow]

What’s surprised me the most in some ways is that they’ve priced the E6300 at $183 and not the $210 which is more typical for entry level mainstream Intel CPUs. Either they are taking no prisoners and going for AMD’s jugular, or they are lowering the entry point for the mainstream chips longer term. I was also thinking that these prices may increase at some point, especially at the low end. A $27 difference may not sound a lot, but when you look at how that can impact margins it does seem more significant.

I think this is just a leaked pricelist and Intel may be using FUD and could delay releasing official pricing until late in the day. Why not, AMD’s prices are temporary anyway. Either way, Intel have given the public the appetite for low cost dual-cores, so maybe it’s best not to pull the rug under that for a while.
BTW, are they actually planning on releasing Core 2 Solo as a desktop chip? Or do they intend to let all the Netburst chips soaks up that segment until sometime next year?

[vitaminc]

Intel can afford to set lower prices with its manufacturing power. 4x 12" 65nm fabs at matured yields is helluva better than AMD.

[smilingcrow]

Intel can afford to set lower prices with its manufacturing power. 4x 12" 65nm fabs at matured yields is helluva better than AMD.

I’m with you, but if they lose more in cutting their margins than they gain by increasing their market share, their profits will decline. But AMD currently has a lot more to lose than Intel in a price war, so maybe that’s what Intel is heading towards!

[cmthomson]

You also have to keep in mind the Wall Street Wise. Intel's stock price is in the toilet almost entirely because of market share loss. This is more important to analysts than margins or price wars. If Intel can grab back market share with prices that are lower than technical comparisons would suggest, then it wins anyway.

[smilingcrow]

You also have to keep in mind the Wall Street Wise. Intel's stock price is in the toilet almost entirely because of market share loss. This is more important to analysts than margins or price wars. If Intel can grab back market share with prices that are lower than technical comparisons would suggest, then it wins anyway.

If Intel gains market share and reduce the average selling cost of CPUs for the market as a whole, that’s a double whammy against AMD, as they’ll be losing sales and also have lower margins.

[Poodle]

Will the Intel 45nm be socket 775?

[Mats]

Will the Intel 45nm be socket 775?

Who knows, and frankly, who cares? It's at least 15 months away from now, nothing to worry about now.

The reason for not caring is that we've just seen how much keeping the old socket matters to end users, in this case with the 775. It showed up 2 years ago and yes! Intel decided to use it for the upcoming C2. But it doesn't mean anything for those who already have a motherboard with that socket, since it requires new motherboards anyway. This will happen over and over again, but still people are praying for the next gen having the same socket as of now.
_____________________________________________
I guess you've heard that the new mobile Merom that will come this winter will have a 800 MHz FSB? And you probably thought it would use the same socket as the current Yonah and the upcoming Merom, both 667 MHz? The latest rumour says socket P. Yes, the half a year (latest) socket 478/479 will be replaced soon.

[smilingcrow]

Will the Intel 45nm be socket 775?

It seems that after Conroe @65nm will be another LGA775 chip @45nm. Then a new platform with almost definitely a new socket @45nm followed by a variant of that probably on the same socket @32nm!
But there’s no way of telling if both chips for each socket will be supported by the first generation motherboard for each socket, as Mats highlighted. People forget that Conroe is a new platform that just happens to use an old socket, so compatibility was in no way guaranteed as a platform is a lot more than just a socket.
Hat’s off to AMD for S939 though and the dual-core support.

[thegoldenstrand]

no need to change platforms just yet.

But, if and when you do for conroe.. I really like the new Ati chipset that will be out and the next generation ati cards..

If you were to update to am2... the new nVidia chipset is better and surprisingly.. to me anyway.. Gigabyte might have a better high end board than Asus this time around.. some design flaws and less powerful board by Asus this time around.. the Gigabyte S5 rocks.

but.. since you have X2 3800 DDR memory platform right now.. my advice would be to sit tight until October.. by they conroe boards will have matured.. bios will be running good with no need for major revisions and... the next generation of video cards will be out..

and.. more information on what AMD will have.. the Terrenza for Opterons, when it makes its way to the desktop is really a superior platform to anything Intel has to offer, but Conroe looks to be a superior processor for the next quarter or two to anything AMD has to offer.

[vitaminc]

and.. more information on what AMD will have.. the Terrenza for Opterons, when it makes its way to the desktop is really a superior platform to anything Intel has to offer, but Conroe looks to be a superior processor for the next quarter or two to anything AMD has to offer.

I doubt any Co-processors that companies developed for AMD's Torrenza platform will be applicable in consumer side. Torrenza is server technology. AMD knew the mistake they made with Socket 939, where you can slap server CPU onto consumer boards. They won't let that happen again.

Plus, what are you going to do with, say, a network-search-engine co-processor on Torrenza from NetLogic?

[thegoldenstrand]

Not talking about all the tech, just some of it that will move over to the desktop, slowly but surely.. in the usualy AMD two step..

[highlandsun]

I wouldn't jump over to Conroe just yet; multi-tasking is actually pretty important in day to day work, and this Bit-Tech review shows that Conroe falls down here.

[tay]

I wouldn't jump over to Conroe just yet; multi-tasking is actually pretty important in day to day work, and this Bit-Tech review shows that Conroe falls down here.

Firstly, bit-tech is best at repackaging manufacturer content and press releases. The presler they compare it to has HT (2 real cores + 2 virtual HT), and despite HT being much maligned it works well in some scenarios.

It is not possible that if processor A is faster than B in every task in a single threaded environment and they share the same cache and memory, in a multi-cpu environment that A is slower than B. Of course in this case Conroe=A and Presler=B and they don't share the same L2 cache architecture but if anything Conroe has a better sharing of L2 cache than Presler.

[vitaminc]

Intel can afford to set lower prices with its manufacturing power. 4x 12" 65nm fabs at matured yields is helluva better than AMD.

I’m with you, but if they lose more in cutting their margins than they gain by increasing their market share, their profits will decline. But AMD currently has a lot more to lose than Intel in a price war, so maybe that’s what Intel is heading towards!

Intel won't lose that much margin even with price cuts. 65nm vs 90nm. You can price down a lot more and yet maintain a good margin due to superior process technologies.

And Intel's goal is always generate cache, thus using MCP dual/quad cores before real dual/quad cores to increase the margin.