Intel Corp (INTC)

[wbmw]

K8L Demo = Pathetic

I followed the link to AMD's website, where they showed a 3 minute video. During the entire course of the video, they spent about 3 SECONDS showing a Windows Task Manager with 16 threads, taken completely out of context with NO shots of the demo system, NO details of the configuration, and NO evidence of any workloads being run.

In fact, it was supposed to be a video of "quad core demo", but it basically avoided showing anything close to an actual system.

All it had was some AMD VP schmuck who stood there pounding the drum about native quad cores being the only thing that satisfies their customer's needs.

But they did talk about performance "projections" (I guess the systems aren't functional enough to run these tests). OLTP scores (read: TPC-C) get a 70% improvement (how much of this is due to more memory, or a larger L3 cache is unclear), while SPECfp_rate gets a 40% improvement.

40%!?!

AMD's next generation QUAD core that's supposed to be all that more impressive than Intel's "two dual cores on a package" ONLY GETS A 40% IMPROVEMENT IN SPECFP_RATE?!?

LOL, I wouldn't call that impressive.

They also reiterated a Q2 launch of this platform, which I think is bunk if they can't even show real workloads being run. They'll need at least two more steppings of the CPU with this level of functionality, and you don't even have time for full validation between now and then.

Is it just me, or does this seem as underwhelming as the QuadFarter to anyone??