Barcelona ES Cinebench Results

[maverik-sg1]

Dailytech reports on promising news from AMD on their native Quadcore due out later this year:

Earlier today, AMD announced that it successfully demonstrated Barcelona across the server market. The company did not publically state how fast the processor was running, the stepping of the processor, the processor thermal envelope or the eventual ship date.

We had the opportunity to benchmark the AMD Barcelona, native quad-core on an early stepping. We only had a few minutes to test the chip, but we were able to run a quick Cinebench before we were instructed to leave.

The AMD benchmark ran on a single-socket, K10 CPU running at 1.6 GHz on NVIDIA's nForce Professional 3400 chipset. According to the system properties, the AMD system used 4GB of DDR2-667.

The most similar Intel system we could muster up on such short notice was an Intel Xeon 3220. The Xeon X3220 is clocked at 2.4 GHz, and ran on Intel's Garlow platform (Intel X38). This system property profile stated the system utilized 4GB of DDR2-800.

Cinebench completed the default benchmark in 27 seconds for the 1.6 GHz K10; 17 seconds for the Intel Xeon X3220. The Kentsfield Xeon was 58% faster with a 50% higher clock frequency for Cinebench.

Both systems ran Windows 2003 R2, 64-bit.

AMD partner engineers tell DailyTech the chip we tested was the latest revision silicon. The same engineers claim 2.0 GHz Barcelona chips are making the rounds, with 2.3 GHz already on the desktop and server roadmaps.

AMD's current guidance suggests a late July announcement for Barcelona. However, when DailyTech tracked down the individual partners named in AMD's press release, all cited "optimistic September" ship dates for motherboards.

 

[K404]

I`m hearing way too much crap about Barca right now. In the past week i've heard:

*B0 silicon is full of bugs and isnt benchable

*the article posted above

*Memory controller sucks- max clocks are 2GHz at the mo

*dancing in the aisles- memory controller on first silicon was so good they were gonna increase launch clocks up to 2.8-3GHz

dont even get me started on release dates!

Too much...well....crap surrounding this chip. Generating hype, but not really the kind AMD want

 

[Master_G]

More Barcelona stuff here: http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=3006

Im with Kenny on this one, too much BS being posted, and the problem for AMD is that the chips still havent really shown up.

The main thing that troubles me is that demo is a 1.6GHz, whereas Penryn was at 3.3GHz (or there abouts IIRC).

Interesting point of view here:

http://www.overclockers.com/tips01165/

Basically says that the financial stats of AMD's Q2 results may have as big if not bigger impact than the current state of Barcelona etc.

And so the rumor-mill turns . . .

G

 

[maverik-sg1]

More news from The Inq - on forthcomign FX product part numbers:

AMD IS COMING out with Phenom SKUs at last. The official roadmaps we've seen push it out another quarter from late Q3 to early Q1/08 on the desktop side.

Officially, the Phenom FX will be November or December for the 1S variants, 2S will be Q1/08. The newest information from AMD shows that there will be a 1S FX-80 at 2.2-2.4GHz, the spread at this point is somewhat worrying, a 2S FX-90 at the same speeds, and an FX-91 at 2.4-2.6GHz. TDPs are not officially listed.

The lower level classes will be ranked by class and series, with class being a two letter prefix and series being a 4 digit number. The classes are XY with Y=P being 89W TDPs and up, S at 65W and E at 45W.

The X is the product name with G mapped to high end Phenoms, L being low end, and B ending up in the middle. The FX line stays FX with no specific meaning attached.

The four digit number is taking on an Intel like confusion, with the official guidance being "indicates major benefit steps" and "increases with feature enhancements withing a family". Hopefully they will not be as belligerently obtuse as Intel in this regard.

In the end, it ends up with new names and desktop parts for 1S this year, 2S next. We can't say we are very happy about this, but that is the latest