Replies to post #68164 on Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[HailMary]

I've seen some unsubstantiated rumors claiming that Conroe will debut at 2.93GHz

Now my next question is: These next gen cores lengthened the pipeline compared to today's Yonah. Was IPC sacrificed to do so? I know there are numerous uarch improvements to the core. I'm wondering how overall IPC is going to fare for these new cores. If they can sustain or improve IPC and and also get to around 3Ghz, I think AMD is going to have some serious competition. I don't expect AMD's initial 65nm parts to solve that problem. If we remember back to when AMD launched 90nm parts, the 130nm parts were clocked higher at the time. This was due to mature process vs. new process, and I expect the same when going from 90nm to 65nm.

Assuming Intel hits their plans this time, Intel will be in good shape. All the rumors point to being on track, as well as the early demo of these cores they did at the last IDF. As an AMD shareholder I'm not going to count on Intel screwing up again.

I think AMD is going to have a spectacular 2006 financially, but I'm not so sure about the stock because of the fear of an Intel comeback.

[Ixse]

Wbmw, HailMary, I've seen some unsubstantiated rumors claiming that Conroe will debut at 2.93GHz:

Yeah but as you know x86-secret's among the utmost unreliable sites out there. Here's a quote from another albeit only slightly pro Intel site THG that strongly implies differently:

Presler, however, is unlikely to live long enough to see any significant upgrades, since Intel's next-generation processor architecture "Conroe" will already debut in the second half of 2006. Consuming less power than the current Pentium 4 architecture and carrying up to 4 MByte L2 cache, the chip will enable Intel to lift processor performance to a level of a comparable 3.6 GHz dual-core Pentium D with Presler core at debut. Conroe will merge into the Pentium D 900-series as 940, 950 and 960 models, actual clock speeds have not surfaced yet.
http://www.tgdaily.com/2005/07/14/more_clock_speed_for_pentium_d_with_arrival_of_900/index.html

Another angle somewhere in between, possibly a bit more in the direction of x86-secret, is from yesterday's preview of Yonah (part 2): Honestly, as it stands today, if Intel can get clock speeds up, the only area that they will need to improve on is gaming performance to be competitive with AMD. We wouldn’t be too surprised if the comparisons we have shown today end up being very similar to what we encounter at Conroe’s launch: with AMD and Intel performing very similarly at the same clock speeds, but with AMD’s on-die memory controller giving it the advantage in gaming.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2648&p=14

Anyways for the moment I think it's unlikely that Conroe debutes at ~3GHz.

For comparison Merom was said to debut at 2.33GHz which I believe is reasonably realistic. My WAG for Conroe isn't more than 2.7GHz at intro.

Regards,

Rink

[Dan3]

Re: I think it's likely that it will be somewhere in the upper 2GHz, but perhaps 3+ GHz is possible for their Extreme Edition parts.

So if Conroe debuts at less than 2.8ghz, you will consider it to be a failure?