AMD in the Hotzone
All this leaves AMD in a very uncomfortable place. AMD’s latest high end CPU has a rated thermal power of 140W, and the http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/phenom-x4-965,2389.html reviews haven’t been glowing. If Lynnfield performs as well as expected, that puts even more of a damper on AMD’s CPU product line. If AMD can’t compete on price, where can it compete?
At least AMD’s graphics group is firing on all cylinders, having recently shown off working, DirectX 11 compatible silicon. That puts it ahead of graphics rival Nvidia, who allegedly only taped out their GT300 DirectX 11 GPU http://www.semiaccurate.com/2009/07/29/miracles-happen-gt300-tapes-out/ in late July. And I’m seeing a lot more design wins for AMD mobile GPUs in laptops. But graphics is a topic for another time.
Meanwhile, the good news is that lower cost Nehalem is on the way, but socket 1366 isn’t obsolete. And all that is very good news, indeed.
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3 comments
Markeyse
August 22, 2009 at 4:12 am (UTC -7)
I believe the 1366 is for people like me that needs raw power, expecially for content creation. The 1156 is for people that want good performance for less. So this means that the i5 is for mainstream and i7 is for performance.
Loyd Case
August 22, 2009 at 10:48 am (UTC -7)
Sure, but the vast majority of people — even gamers and power users doing interesting work — don’t benefit from the additional memory bandwidth. When you can push Lynnfield to the same clock speeds as Core i7 triple channel, you’ll see similar performance for most apps. Of course, the stock clock speeds for Lynnfield will be a little lower, most likely.
The Jedi
August 30, 2009 at 8:17 am (UTC -7)
Good motherboards cost money, so I’m skeptical as to the cost savings that will be seen with P55/1156. The i7/1366 is basically a server chip with an enthusiast platform so it results in some higher quality motherboard designs. Enthusiast class mobo’s will still likely be over $200, as was for example the nForce 680i/780i/790i. Online feedback on MSI’s first $180 X58 ATX board was pretty frightening as to indications of the quality of that board.
Another thing is that early adopters will want a nicer (more expensive) board that’s upgradeable, considering as far as clock speed, Socket 1156 may scale further than Socket 1366 in the long run. The Turbo Mode max of 3.6 GHz may indicate that. Now I guess IF the 1156 chips are all held at 95W max with 1366 being the ongoing high performance line, that may be a different story and the two sockets might even coexist.
Just my $0.02.