AMD Spider Platform - Phenom, 790FX, RV670

Good review, thank you. AMD needs to get more IPC though. Or something. We went the frequency to stay as low as possible to help power usage. I guess for this core design, all we can hope for is them to ramp up the frequency.... and hope that the next core can get massively better number at lower clocks. Other than buying one, I wish there was some way I could help them. I don't know anything about chip design and I'm pretty bad at math, so I'd be no use. But if I could help, I would.

This one is easy, at least from my perspective. AMD needs to simply incorporate larger on-chip cache. They're currently in 65nm versus Intel's 45nm, so incorporating on-die cache is more expensive, die real estate-wise for AMD than it is for Intel. BUT that's the one true way to increase IPC efficiency and I'm fairly certain it's largely why Intel is faster clock for clock.

With smaller L2 cache, AMD has to go "off chip" for data more often than Intel's architecture does. This was a necessity for Intel, since their FSB arch limits their available bandwidth going off chip versus HyperTransport for AMD which has a lot more bandwidth. However, regardless, if you have to go off chip to process, rather than stuffing a bunch more in cache and then just pipelining, it's going to cost you performance.

If AMD had 8 to 12MB of on-chip L2, things might look decidedly different but that would cost a bit in power and heat as well, especially at 65nm, which is another story all together and something that AMD is obviously dealing with as well.

i got to agree good review 

Hundred percent agree, stuff a load of cache on chip, crank up the 45nm process time frame, and maybe stand a chance with performance against Intel.  I think partially it's in doing so they'll increase the cost and so lose their one solid edge against Intel.  If they weren't cheaper right now who'd buy. 

The AMDs are not worth it at all, not only they perform poorly compared to the Intel Quad-Cores, but also use more power than the most powerful Intel Processor now. Excellent Review by the way. :)

Progress is progress, however meager it may be. It would be nice if AMD were more of a threat to Intel, rather than always one step behind. Hopefully they will be able to shorten the gap with their 45nm chips, but by the time they get them out Intel may verywell be onto bigger (or smaller) and better things.

AjayD:

Progress is progress, however meager it may be. It would be nice if AMD were more of a threat to Intel, rather than always one step behind. Hopefully they will be able to shorten the gap with their 45nm chips, but by the time they get them out Intel may verywell be onto bigger (or smaller) and better things.

 

And that is indeed happening, Nehalem will slap Shanghai right out the door...I'm predicting it now...so in 7-9 months from now..I'll be the first to say I tell everyone I told you so .