Intel Yamhill... 64 bit ?

[Ribbit]

Of course, since the Xeon socket (and socket 478?) have the 36 address lines, a Yamhill CPU could plug in there and make a 64GB flat address space available - I doubt the chipset cares whether it's through PAE or not.

[leech]

So the question is at this point, if Intel DOES release a 64bit version of a Pentium 4, (Socket 478) Does that mean essentially all I'd need to do with my P4PE is upgrade the Bios and slap that puppy in? Also are the x86-64 just a standard 'open' set of instructions? Actually I've been wondering for a long time why 64bit hasn't really taken off that well. Was really considering building an alpha machine way back when... but ended up being too expensive, and not enough things ran on it natively to be worth it.

Leech

[KvHagedorn]

Well, Alpha was ahead of its time, and the software issue was the killer for mainstream usage, as was the price. Hammer uses X86 instructions, so it runs regular apps at least as well as a fast 32 bit Athlon, but has the 64bit set as well. This is exactly analogous to what Intel did with the 386 and 32 bit. It actually took MS 10 years to take advantage of it though, as compared to almost already with 64 bit Windows for X86-64. Price and compatibility made Opteron fly.. unlike Itanium. Intel screwed up by forgetting what made them the gorilla.. AMD didn't.

[Indiana]

Originally posted by KvHagedorn
Price and compatibility made Opteron fly.. unlike Itanium.

Yeah, but with the Opteron alone AMD would never be able to push their 64Bit. It's definitely the A64 with it's excellent price/performance/compatibility ratio that most likely will push AMDs 64Bit implimentation beyond Intels.

[DentyCracker]

I suspect that by Opteron Kv was referring to the entire Hammer line, if I am wrong then this is just another whored post

[az]

You whore you! Be glad that I am not a Moderator in this forum (Or I would have no 30 second post whoring-delay here also )

AZ

[KvHagedorn]

Actually I was referring to the server chip, since that one can actually take advantage of 64-bitness now through database and other applications that require huge amounts of memory. Sales have been pretty good in the server market, especially when you compare to Itanium. For the database server market, Xeon might as well pack it in, unless of course they want to ape ( ) Opteron and make an X86-64 version.

Having an Athlon64 machine on your desk right now might be a cool topic for discussion, but you probably aren't going to see much benefit over running a Barton, unless you test win64 or need to run some pretty rare proggies in *nix. Maybe in a year or two, though.. for some things.

[Admiral]

Windows XP 64-Bit Preview: First Look at Athlon 64 Performance

Anandtech

[leech]

That's what I was thinking, Kv. Not much point besides, "Look at the cool 64bit thingy on my table" I could say that with my Atari Jaguar . The thing is, not much out there (in the windows world at least) will even take advantage of 64bit. In many ways it'd be like getting a multi-processor computer on your desktop. Not enough applications are multithreaded to to take advantage of it. At least if you're just running the standard net apps and playing some games. Though it's pretty nice to see a multi-processor set up compile things. Anyone know of any benchmarks comparing optimized x86 to optimized x86-64 with regards to linux?

Another quick question, if I were to go out today and put together a system with the amd64, would I be able to compile the parhelia driver for linux and use it properly? I'm guessing it'd only use the 32bit path of it...

Leech

[The PIT]

Too early to make any comments. Drivers haven't been optimised as yet for 64bit. Give it another month or so.

[Indiana]

Originally posted by KvHagedorn

Having an Athlon64 machine on your desk right now might be a cool topic for discussion, but you probably aren't going to see much benefit over running a Barton, unless you test win64 or need to run some pretty rare proggies in *nix. Maybe in a year or two, though.. for some things. [/B]

Well, you obviously never had access to an A64 system...
The A64 (even the cheapest 3000+) easily beats any Barton by quite some margin with 32Bit software, except for some rare cases where software uses the wrong codeset (e.g. using SSE2 instead of the 3DNow! Pro that's faster on the A64 in quite some cases). The 64Bit software will likely gain another few percent, but you don't have to wait for such software or an 64Bit capable OS to have a fast CPU.

And that IMO is one of the things AMD did right with its AMD64: it delivers superior performance over the old model now with a probable minor further speed increase when 64Bit software becomes available.

[DukeP]

Hey I had a Jaguar as well!
Actually the whole "Do the Math" was kind of screewy.
The 64bitness was actually the sum of the 32bit Tom and the 32bit Jerry chips - one handling graphics, the other IO etc.

Still, Aliens vs. Predator rocked big time.


~~DukeP~~

PS: Shameless Thread Jacking.

Edit: Splelign

[bsdgeek]

Off Topic:

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Well, I was always one for Tempest 2000 & Raiden...

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[Taz]

Originally posted by DukeP
Hey I had a Jaugar as well!

Had, I've still got mine

I drag it out once in a while to play Tempest 2000

Back to the subject at hand, I agree with Indiana, why not buy one now, it performs as well as the current fastest XP plus gives you the option to run 64bit OSes and apps should you want to later on. The only downside to the A64's is upcoming socket change which kinda spoils it's futureproofing but then that's the nature of the IT industry.

[Indiana]

Yes, the socket-thing is about the only downside I can see with the A64 at the moment - but then even the Socket754 with its limited future seems much more future-proof than the SocketA (really nothing more to come after the quite lackluster XP3200+) and the Socket 478 (very near EOL, too).


P.S.: I had an old AthlonXP oc'ed to 2300MHz before I got the A64 3200+ and the A64 is quite a bit faster at 2000 MHz than the XP was at 2300MHz - not to speak that the A64 can be oc'ed to 2300MHz as well....