[mascotzel]

PLACI DE BAZA/PROCESOARE

Agena, K10 pictured running

We told you before K10, Agena works just fine. We had a chance to witness it and we can even prove the existence of this 65 nanometre part. The Agena processor is an AM2 version and fits in 940 pin boards.
The CPU-Z 1.39 recognizes the CPU Opteron 148 but you can clearly see that this is a 65 nanometre part with 1.273V, with four cores.
It works at 1.9 GHz or 1908 MHZ to be precise with multiplier at 9.5 and the bus speed of 200.9 MHz. The 0.5 multiplier settings are back. You can also clearly see that we are talking about quad core processor with four cores and four threads.
Agena at 1.9 GHz has 4x64KB L1 Data cache memory, 4x64KB L1 for Code, 4x 512 KB L2 cache and finally all cores share the 2048KB L3 cache.

Agena 1.9 GHz overclocks to 3.05 GHz

We've showed you the Agena AM2 CPU at 1.9 GHz and now we have some more. Yesterday we showed you the world's first screenshot of the Agena AM2+ CPU here. What happens if you try to overclock this lovely part? With the default multiplier set to 9.5, you can raise the FSB all the way up to 320 MHz.
You only need to increase the voltage from 1.273 to 1.297V and you hit over 3 GHz or 3042 MHz to be precise. This is an 1142 MHz overclock or 62 per cent from the stock speed and the machine was stable at all times.
So AMD's native quad core is a really overclockable part.

Agena K10 quad runs on today's boards

Nforce 590 SLI overclocking

Last week we showed you the first screenshot of the Agena K10 CPU. You can read all about it here. Now we are ready to disclose a bit more details about the machine. Believe it or not, the future generation AM2 CPU will run at today's motherboards, the Nforce 590 SLI to be more precise.
The amazing 3.05 GHz overclock from last week was done on a retail available motherboard from one of their manufacturers.
The machine was running a quite usual memory setup with 2x1 GB of DDR2 memory. So the good news is that you don’t need to swap your motherboards, you just need abios update and your AM2 boards should be able to cope with Agena processors.
Even the overclocking was done on Nforce 590 SLI motherboard and not on Wahoo or Mako next generation chipsets. Agena FX is the first one, coming in Q3, and Agena will follow at later time.

K10 at 2.5 GHz beats Intel quad at 3.0+

The new K10 based processors will really make Intel run for its money, at least till the end of the year. Just as Intel stole K8's mojo with Merom aka Core 2 Duo and quad, AMD is ready to finally fight back. It took them almost a year to prepare for the big clash.
Barcelona / Agena FX will beat Intel Core 2 Quad at 3.0 GHz+. Intel knows it and it is scared. Intel also knows that it cannot go over 3.0 GHz with 65 nanometre, at least not at 120 W TDP. Some reports already claim that QX6850 with FSB 1333 and 3 GHZ clock is already pushing the envelope as intel's 120W TDP is actually 150W+ at least on AMD's TDP scale. TDP stands for Thermal Design Power.
Intel needs to go over 3.0 GHZ to 3.2 or more to match Barcelona / Agena parts at 2.5 GHz. Intel knows that it needs to go to 3.2+ GHz and it needs the 45 nm Yorkfield core to match Agena 2.5 GHz.
Finally AMD should be able to make 2.7 if not even more with its 65 nm process. Intel has a good fighting chance with next the generation Nehalem core in the second half of 2008.

HyperTransport 3 good for dual sockets

Barcelona and Agena FX / Agena K10 parts won't have the HyperTransport 3 support. These chips are scheduled for Q3 2007 or later and only the late Q3 / early Q4 part Budapest will actually have the magic HyperTransport 3.
For a single socket machine HT3 won't make any difference as you don’t need the fast interconnection. You should not be able to see any significant difference with a single socket quad core processor.
Agena FX might suffer a bit as it will be meant for dual socket, eight core setup. The normal people's Agena AM2+ CPUs wont actually give a damn about HyperTransport 3 at least not that much. HyperTransport 3 is also important for multi chip servers as well. It will make things faster in dual, quad or eight socket setups.
We don’t think that speeding up the interconnection between Northbridge and Southbridge will make much difference anyway.

K10 desktop volume is next year

Opterons and Quad FX parts in 2007 only

AMD won't have much K10 parts for desktops, at least not in 2007. The initial batch of Barcelona K10 parts will be reserved exclusively for servers and at a later date some parts will be released as the Athlon FX socket 1207 parts. This is expected in Q3 2007.
Unfortunately you can expect only a few AM2+ based desktop parts this year and this will happen in Q4 and not before. The real volume production of desktop K10's is scheduled for early next year so it is not that they will be widely available for the pre-Xmas shopping spree.
The good news is that K10 at 2.5 GHz makes Intel's 3GHz run for its money, just as Core 2 Duo makes K8 runs for its.

all@Fudzilla

AMD: Barcelona quad-core 50% faster than Intel’s quad-core Xeon (@TGDaily)

There are lots of question marks surrounding AMD’s first quad-core CPU, the Barcelona server/workstation processor. How fast will it be and - most importantly - will it be able to outpace Intel’s quad-core Xeon 5300-series (“Clovertown”) processors. It will, says AMD, and in fact upgraded its performance expectations.
So far, we the company had claimed that Barcelona will surpass the performance of Clovertown by about 40% at any given clock speed. Now the company says that it believes that Barcelona will have a 50% advantage over Clovertown in floating point applications and 20% in integer performance “over the competition’s highest-performing quad-core processor at the same frequency.”
AMD did not release the specific clock speeds of Barcelona. Intel’s Clovertown currently tops out at 2.66 GHz, but the company has begun supplying limited numbers of 3.0 GHz server quad-core processors.
AMD also announced the new dual-core Opteron models 2222 SE and 8222 SE, which somewhat had been announced already at the beginning of this month: AMD claims that the new 3.0 GHz Opterons beat comparable Intel Xeon 5100 series processors in three server-specific benchmarks (SPECint_rate_2006, SPECint_rate2006, SPECompM2001) by up to 24%.
The 2222 SE is available for a tray price of $873, the 8222 SE is priced at $2149. Intel’s 3.0 GHz Xeon 5160 processor currently sells for $851.