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  • Spoelie - Friday, November 14, 2008 - link

    ..Shanghai is it for the next 2 years?? That, except for some frequency bumps and a platform change to DDR3/HT3 (which will likely yield next to nothing on the desktop), they will be on a virtual standstill? For 2 years!

    Meanwhile Intel will have another tick and will replace Penryn (which Shanghai performs well against) with Nehalem (which it don't) top-to-bottom.

    And by the time Bulldozer rolls in, it's tock time for Intel.

    Somehow I'm disappointed.
  • mutarasector - Friday, November 14, 2008 - link

    I was rather disappointed at this news as well. AM3 w/DDR3/HT3 was supposed to be available by Q2/Q3 2009...

    I was trying to decide between waiting for AM3 mobos, or a 790FX/SB750 mobo. Gigabyte doesn't have one just yet, and as far as I know, only Asus and Foxconn currently have a 790FX mobo paired up with an SB750 southbridge. I figured on waiting for AM3 mobos w/an improved SB800 southbridge, but now it looks like there will be a lot more time for more mobo makers to rework their existing 790FX boards with an updated SB750 southbridge.
  • Griswold - Friday, November 14, 2008 - link

    You just dont know how things work when you're under financial pressure in horrific economy times like these. So it doesnt surprise me that you're disappointed.

    AMD is finally getting their act together with realistic goals and timelines and apparently a solid product on their hands.
  • sampsa5 - Friday, November 14, 2008 - link

    Deneb features 8 MB of total cache.. not L3 cache:

    4 x 512 kb L2
    6 MB L3
    --------------
    TOTAL: 8 MB
  • MadMan007 - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link

    Please Please get your hands on the AVIVO transcoder. If it's not poor quality like Badaboom it will save me a lot of money because I will get a dual core instead of a quad :)

    If you can get it maybe give some feedback to AMD - make the encoder app semi-open. Allow plugins or extensions so people can use an encoding engine of their choice and make it usable for audio files as well. Not that the latter are slow but hey I've got a video card already right? That's in addition to overcoming the shortcomings of Badaboom like limited resolutions etc.
  • BigLan - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link

    How is this new? There's been an avivo converter available for 3 years now, though I think it only works on x1x00 series (I couldn't get it to work on my 3850.)

    http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2645...">http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2645...
  • Griswold - Friday, November 14, 2008 - link

    Why bother asking if you gave the answer yourself? It does not work with any of the current processing monsters - nuff said. I just hope it also works on the 3000 series - they've just announced it for the 4000 series of GPUs, which doesnt make a lot of sense to me, considering its the same architecture anyway.
  • JarredWalton - Friday, November 14, 2008 - link

    I don't believe the original AVIVO handles H.264 at all. I remember trying it, and it was quite fast... when it worked. Unfortunately, in my testing it failed on so many files that it was practically useless, and even when it worked the settings you could tweak were extremely limiting.
  • JarredWalton - Friday, November 14, 2008 - link

    Sorry - the linked article wasn't coming up, but I was at least partially wrong. H.264 in AVIVO was present, but the options and file support were still very flaky last I tried it. Admittedly, that *was* over two years back, though, so maybe it got better at some point.
  • kuk - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link

    Hurray for the F1 naming scheme.
  • melgross - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link

    And what happens if Intel prevails, and AMD is no longer considered to have a license from them because of the Foundry split?

    If the idea of that was to give the Foundry the ability to compete for other customers, it could be a bust, and both halves will flounder.
  • Griswold - Friday, November 14, 2008 - link

    Its not up to Intel to decide and I'm sure AMD still had the money to hire an army of licensing and patent rights seasoned lawyers to test this deal for its water tight sealings beforehand.
  • hechacker1 - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link

    Intel Platform: 9.7FPS?

    I have a 1080p capture of Heros. Using Nero Recode (latest version) I get ~38FPS on my q6600 G0 @ 3.15GHz.

    Thats to a native resolution iphone format.

    I'm sure there are even faster encoders. I though ati's previous encoder was cpu based and still faster than their claim.
  • MadMan007 - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link

    It's marketing slides, what do you expect, truth or details of the testing?
  • hechacker1 - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link

    And I should mention cpu ultilization hovers around %60 percent. Nero's encode doesn't do so good on that particular sample. For 720p material I get ~50-60fps with hq settings. I'm sure it can be tweaked to get more fps.
  • JarredWalton - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link

    I'm pretty sure Nero Recode doesn't do H.264, which is typically about 3X slower than something like DivX, which in turn is 3X slower than straight MPEG2. I could be mistaken, but last time I used a Nero Recode it was only MPEG2.
  • Griswold - Friday, November 14, 2008 - link

    Of course Nero is capable of using H.264. They call it AVC, thats all.
  • hechacker1 - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link

    It's h.264 AVC standard profile I believe for an ipod. Nero has supported this for a while now.

    I'm just saying there are CPU based encoders that do much better than AMD's claims. And probably with higher quality.
  • JarredWalton - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link

    iPod supports HD H.264!? Why? I mean, you only need a piddly 480x270 resolution or something for that display, right? I suppose if you can connect it to an HDTV via component or HDMI... but you can't. LOL
  • Griswold - Friday, November 14, 2008 - link

    Yes they all support h.264. Whats wrong with that? Its not just a HD codec, you know...
  • hechacker1 - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link

    The iphone/ipod touch has a h.264 decoding chip. The main reason for support is battery life and higher quality for a given file size. it also uses YouTube's h.264 videos (a.k.a high quality videos).

    The iphone supports 640x352 maximum (I encoded for the maximum target). The screen is 480x320.
  • JarredWalton - Friday, November 14, 2008 - link

    Ah... targeting 640x352 is a huge difference from 1920x1080. I'm not positive on this, but I'm pretty sure encoding times scale linearly with resolution under H.264. So, based on that, 1080P encoding would require 9.20 times longer than 640x352 encoding. It may not be *exactly* nine times longer - depending on quality settings among other things - but for sure the higher resolution encode is more processor intensive.
  • overzealot - Saturday, November 15, 2008 - link

    My experience with h264 encoding follows your theory, fairly linear increase in encode time.
    It's worth noting that Nero AVC quality is quite average. It is to h264 what xing was to mp3 encoding. It gets the job done fast, but at what cost?
  • Agitated - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link

    I may have missed this since I'm reading the article on a blackberry but was there any mention of them throwing out an am2 socket 45nm quad core opteron?
  • pugster - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link

    Today they can scrap up something to compete with the Intel Atom processor but they didn't. Even ARM is doing it. I guess they don't get the hint.
  • teldar - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link

    I don't think they have the development budget for ANYTHING right now that's not going to make some real money. Even Intel SAYS they aren't making as much because ATOM is taking sales away from higher margin parts.
    That's really not a market segment AMD can get into right now. Maybe if they make some money for a few quarters... But I'll believe all this when I see it.

    T
  • Griswold - Friday, November 14, 2008 - link

    Humm no, Intel never said that. Its just a theorie that didnt show up in hard numbers in their reports yet (albeit, its a theory that isnt too far stretched).
  • R3MF - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link

    A netbook format, but not using the fusion CPU/GPU single package, i wonder what it is............

    low-power dual-core Phenom II at .045u and probably around 1.6GHz
    low-power 780G chipset at .055u, hopefully paired with the SB750

    Could be a very compelling product when put in a 10" chassis!
  • 3DoubleD - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link

    I'd put my money on downclocked, super low voltage dual core athlons. It was demonstrated not so long ago that such an Athlon chip running below 10 Watts wipes the floor with the Intel Atom. Personally, I don't buy into the whole netbook thing, but I think this is the right way to go for AMD. I feel like I pioneered the idea when I assembled a 12.1" laptop (from a barebones kit) with the slowest (eg. lowest power components) available ~4 years ago. I was able to get ~7 hours of battery life at only ~4lbs. Having said that, I would not trade any more performance for power savings if I did it again. Getting any smaller than 12.1 inches is also crazy unless you are planning to only use it for web surfing. I don't see the allure of paying all that money for something that just browses the web. I understand the desire to bring a laptop everywhere, but it should be useful, that's why I think the super low power X2 Athlon would be a good call.

    On that note, I don't think that Phenom can be low power enough to suit their needs. AMD is really really good at making Athlons, which is why they can run so low power.
  • teldar - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link

    I would love to have something similar to the eee but actaully with a little bit of power. But that's me as a student right now. It would be nice to be able to pull up the prof's power points during class and add notes by typing rather than writing. And it would let me get some other things done while sitting in class when there's not a whole lot of info being disbursed.

    But it would be nice as well if it could get a couple things done at the same time. Not an option with the atom netbooks.
  • gochichi - Tuesday, November 18, 2008 - link

    They actually make these, they are called LAPTOPS.

    I have a 13" Inspiron 1318 that I picked up for about $650.00. It has a 2.0GHz C2D, 4GB RAM, 250GB HDD, 9-Cell battery (this being key as it gives an actually useful battery... say 5 hours easy). It is definetely useful, and I have to tell you that the 13" screen is actually kind of small as it is.

    Now a junky-junk-junker of a netbook is about $400.00, maybe $350 even. For $300 more you get an actually useful device. Also, sometimes you can find used Dell Latitudes X1s for about $300.00... they are 2.5lbs, 12" widescreen, 2GB RAM and about 4+ hours battery.

    A used ultra-portable may be a good option for you if you're dead set about having something below 4lbs. Also Lenovo makes a killer product called the X200 which is also quite light and exceedingly fast. Though my top choice for power/price/portability would be the Lenovo T400 (14" though, which I think would be ideal, especially cause it's a little higher res 1440x900 vs 1280x800). Check out the X200 though, I think it's under $1k if you buy it with a coupon and it's going to outlast a crapbook by about 5 years (seriously).
  • Orthogonal - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link

    Looks like AMD didn't learn their lesson with Barcelona. You don't do a process shrink AND new micro-architecture at the same time. Maybe they've learned from their mistakes, but it's just way too many variables to control at the same time. 32NM and Bulldozer.
  • Martimus - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link

    AMD is rolling out 32nm in 2010 with Magny-Cours and Sao-Paulo, which is really just a 8 and 12 core MCM version of Shanghai and Istanbul. Bulldozer is coming in 2011 according to the road map. So, they are in-fact doing a process shrink before they start the new architecture.
  • BLaber - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link

    Deneb a.k.a Phenom 2 X4 has 8MB OF L3 cache,that was not heard of before and not even shown in any Deneb ES samples seen so far ;)
  • Veteran - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link

    The writer of this article misunderstood it

    its 8MB of total cache = 6MB L3 cache + 2MB of L2 cache
    Propus is a quadcore without the L3 cache => total of 2MB cache

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