AMD's "Barton" Athlon - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

[sptw]

The guy Here (http://www.users.bigpond.net.au/liamc/q12003/barton.htm) has a interesting point of the view about the Barton AMD processor.Althought this new generation has a 512KB on-die L2 cache, the Barton Model 3000+ is sometimes slower than the Thoroughbred Model 2800+.Yes, it seems right.The Barton is clocked slower than an equivalent Thoroughbred.
Thoroughbred 2800+ has 2250 Mhz of clock speed and Barton 2800+ has 2083 Mhz of Clock speed.For Barton 3000+, it is comparable to the Thoroughbred 2700+= 2167 Mhz of clock speed.
Can 512 KB on Die L2 cache makes really a difference?

[joek71]

Thats a great article, I dont know why they even bothered with Barton should have just put the Hammer out and that would be it. Lets hope Hammer gets the job done better then the Barton did.
:2guns:

[Drake]

I suppose Barton is out there to offer more upgradeability for socket a boards, and people just placed too much hype on it.

[joek71]

So if they placed so much hope in it, why did AMD make it slower then the Thoroughbred. I think it is a waste of time for AMD.

[mdzcpa]

They made it slower only in terms of mhz. Performance wise the Barton XP 3000+ is still their best performing chip for most applications. AMD is no doubt stretching out the life of the K7 core. They will be releasing faster mhz cores in the coming months. They obviously felt that the 2.167ghz Barton was fast enough to stay competitive with the P4 3.6 and did not want to use up remaining headroom in the core in order to try to beat the Intel (which they could easily have done by releasing a 2.25ghz Barton). However, they are trying to milk the Barton along until the Athlon 64 comes out.

[joek71]

Would you knonw when the Hammer is coming out and at what speed? And cache?

Thanks,
Joe

[Farabomb]

Apr 22 is the relase for the Opteron (server class)

You won't see the Athlon 64 for a while. I'm thinking Oct.-Nov.

Maybe, I'm just guessing. :)

[Drake]

I've not heard anything about Athlon 64s, but yea, the Opterons should be out this month or the next.