64 Bit?

[drdan]

What's the consensus on the AMD 64 bit processors? I saw Big Blue likes them. What are some other opinions? Price/performance ratio? Good boards that will run them? Compatibility? Heat issues? Reliability? Comparison to top P4's?

[saphalline]

So many questions!

I like them. Great CPU's with lots of future potential. A few quibbles about the AMD64 extensions of x86 (not enough registers!) but other than that, AMD seems to be in the 64-bit lead. Intel has no choice now but to follow AMD64 (IA-64 is no good for desktops).

Price/performance ratio? A bit high, especially for the flagship 64 FX's, but no one can deny AMD's lead in the performance area (slight edge over the P4EE 3.4). And this one can be argued either way - do you value a good price/performance ratio or do you follow Intel's historic stance that max performance is all that matters?

And besides, how quickly can people forget about prices? Yes, the Athlon64 FX-53 is about $800-850, but does everyone remember when the newest Pentium was always about $1000-1100? Compared to 3 years ago, we have absolutely no reason to complain about CPU prices. Besides, Intel's P4EE 3.4 is over $900!

Good boards? I hear VIA's K8T800 chipset is the current leader, until NVidia comes out with their NForce3 250/350 chipset (can't remember which). Asus' SK8V is supposed to be good.

Compatibility, heat issues, and reliability? No more so than any other new CPU. As far as 32-bit x86 compatibility, that's where AMD's K8 core shines. Full 32-bit performance and 64-bit performance in one package. That's more than Intel can say about their Itanium2!

I've already touched on the performance, but only for the FX's. The regular Athlon64's are a decent bunch, but certainly not P4-killers. They get most of their extra performance boost from the onboard memory controller.

Cool stuff. :D

[drdan]

Thanks, that's exactly the kind of info I was looking for.