Confused about AMD Processors

[Trevor Schell]

Hi!,

Just a little confused about the variety of Processors that are offered by AMD.
I assume currently the fastest AMD processor available is the 1.4 GHZ speed. However there seems to be a small selection of variety's.
I have come across the T-bird, an AMD Athlon 266 and a Palimino with all rated to run at 1.4 GHZ.That leaves three to choose from.

I was just wondering what are all of the differences in the processors and which would be suitable to go with the ABIT KG7 motherboard.

Thanks,




Trevor
My HomeTheater S.E.
Sonically Enhanced
C5

[JonMarsh]

Hi Trevor,

T-Birds (socket A) currently come in two varieties; 200 MHz front side bus and 266. The 266 obviously has a bit quicker through put to the MB chipsets, and it's what's used with the DDR chipsets to get full throughput, though they can be throttled back for the 200 MHz chips, too. CPU multiplier is based on FB speed.

The "Palamino" products are just starting to come out. They have a slightly enhanced core, plus MP capabilities, and run cooler due to the use of isotropic silicon wafers and some other refinements to the core. Most shipping Palaminos right now are mobile processors. Ironically, the first desktop version is a "Morgan" Duron.

The biggest core enhancement for this new series is an enhanced pre-fecth function. This results in some startling improvements in performance in some applications, such as as MPEG decoding or encoding, where large cache sizes don't help a lot because of the streaming data. The new 1GHz Morgan Duron is a "monster" in these applications, due to it's pre-fetch enhancements, taking much better advantage of DDR memory than older versions of the Duron or Athlon.

http://www.aceshardware.com/Spades/read.php?article_id=45000210

Moral of the story? If you haven't bought your CPU yet, WAIT! Get a Palamino version Athlon when they're available; should be sometime in September, I understand.

Regards,

Jon




Earth First!
_______________________________
We'll screw up the other planets later....

[Trevor Schell]

Thanks Jon!,

The Palomino will definately be the one.
Motherboards.Com is selling the Palomino's now but I did not realize that this was a notebook processor. Check it out just to make sure.

MOTHERBOARDS.COM




Trevor
My HomeTheater S.E.
Sonically Enhanced
C5

[Bing Fung]

Trev, what you are seeing is the T-Bird and the Palomino. What's confusing is the T-Bird was launched initially with a 100/200 mHz FSB (B chip). It was then increased to 133/266 mHz (C chip) and currently clocked at 1.4 GHz.

The Palomino is the chip that replaces the 100/266 mHz T-bird. It is also know as the Athlon 4 or MP, that is it is AMD's first chip to support dual processors. It's only available as 133/266 mHz FSB and curently clocked at 1.2 GHz.

It main improvments are lower core voltages, meaning less heat, a reduction of about 20%. This was targeted for the laptop application.

Increased L1 translation lookaside buffer (TLB), this is another form of cache much like the L1 & L2. It's main purpose is to translate virtual addresses to physical addresses, allowing the CPU to access it in the TLB rather than main memory, which we all know is a slower process.

Data prefetch, which predicts what data it will need before it is requested and fetches it from main memory into its cache. This works along side with the L1 & L2 caches.

SSE, this is an instruction set that was first seen in the Pentium 3, AMD's answer to that was 3DNow. Simplistically, these are a set of instructions that allow a single instruction to be applied to multiple datasets during 3D operations. Speeding up 3D transformation of mathematical space to vector coordinates. ie,It only needs to use the "Add" math once rather than a bunch or times to render a box.

Software can be optimized to take advantage of SSE, 3DNow or SSE2 (P4's). The advantage here is the Palomino can use it's native 3DNow or SSE (Intel) optimizations. It's said the next AMD chips will utilize SSE2 (P4) as well.

On a clock for clock basis the Palomino is about 2-15% faster that the T-Bird. It's initial release was targeted more for the mobile market and desktop versions are to follow. That's not to say you can't use a Palomino in your KG7, the chip is the same, it's more marketing I suspect.




Bing

[Bing Fung]

Good answer Jon, we must have been writing at the same time




Bing

[SiliGoose]

Another factor to consider is price.

The 1.4 (266FSB) Thunderbird can be had for around $107. The 1.4 Palomino will run you at least $250 (lowest prices found on Pricewatch).

Is the 1.4 Palomino $140 faster than the 1.4 Tbird? No.
Would I buy a Palomino over a Tbird if I needed a CPU today? Hell yes!! I want the biggest and the best!

Actually, I think I'd wait for the 1.5 Palomino that's due to be released any day now.




-Sili

[Trevor Schell]

Any timelines available for future speeds such as 1.6, 1.7 , 1.8, or even 2.0 Ghz?




Trevor
My HomeTheater S.E.
Sonically Enhanced
C5

[Bing Fung]

Generally information like that is unknown, otherwise we would all be sitting on our hands waiting for the fastest CPU :W

Why by the 4.5GHz now when the 8.9 is available next month...




Bing