Industry Update - Q4-2004: AMD adds SSE3 Support, Intel's 925/915 not selling and more
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 3, 2004 1:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
AMD Athlon 64 Revision E adds SSE3 Support
As we discovered most recently, AMD's 90nm CPUs are of a brand new revision that featured a number of bug fixes and performance improvements. Internally AMD refers to this CPU revision as Revision D. However we noticed something very interesting when looking at the latest AMD roadmaps while in Taiwan: the 90nm chips listed as San Diego and Venice (Athlon 64 FX and Athlon 64 respectively) claimed SSE3 support as a feature, but the current 90nm chips do not have SSE3 support.
We went around to quite a few manufacturers asking what the difference was between the 90nm chips shipping today and the 90nm chips that supposedly feature SSE3 support, and unfortunately we were left with very little information - until we learned to ask for the right thing.
Internally, AMD's San Diego and Venice CPUs are referred to as nothing more than Athlon 64 Revision E chips. Revision E includes even more bug fixes and performance improvements over those we found in Revision D, including support for the 13 new instructions that were added with Prescott, more commonly known as SSE3.
The performance enhancements that go along with Revision E chips include some optimizations to the Athlon 64's memory controller. The more optimized memory controller improves bandwidth efficiency with regards to unified graphics memory accesses; given that the only type of graphics that uses system memory (and thus the on-die memory controller) is integrated graphics, it's safe to say that the Rev E chips will offer better integrated graphics performance.
The first Revision E CPUs will begin shipping in early 2005. AMD also has plans to introduce an Athlon 64 4200+ towards the middle of 2005; they are not listing whether the part will feature a 512KB or 1MB L2 cache, but it will most likely run at 2.6GHz. The Athlon 64 FX-57 is also listed on the roadmap as a 2H-05 part, it's specifications are also unclear but we'd expect it to be a 2.8GHz part with a 1MB L2 cache. Both the Athlon 64 FX-57 and Athlon 64 4200+ appear to be 90nm parts built on the San Diego and Venice cores, respectively.
AMD's 2005 roadmap did not specifically list anything faster than the 4200+, although the classic "> 4200+" was present on the roadmap to indicate potentially faster parts.
On the Intel side of things we heard the name Cedar Mill thrown around a bit more. In the past some have referred to Intel's dual core Pentium 4 as Cedar Mill, but we now know that is Smithfield. This time we heard Cedar Mill referred to as the first 1066MHz FSB Pentium 4s that aren't Extreme Edition chips. Cedar Mill is supposed to be out in the 2nd half of 2005, which supports a claim we made in our recent review of the Pentium 4 3.46EE: "the 3.46EE will be followed up by the 3.73EE as the only two chips to support the faster FSB for almost a year."
So what does having no mainstream 1066MHz FSB chips until the end of next year mean? It means that Intel is holding out for Glenwood and Lakeport and that Sunday's launch of the 1066MHz FSB was merely a gimmick. The 925XE will be buried as the chipset that offered support for two CPUs that no one bought, while Glenwood and Lakeport will be the knights in shining armor that brought 1066MHz FSB support to all.
Intel seems to have learned from their 925X and 915 chipset launches - multiple fundamental technology changes without performance gains don't go over well. Glenwood and Lakeport will be able to support faster DDR2 (DDR2-667), 1066MHz FSB and dual core support upon their release, not to mention that lower latency DDR2 should be available by then (mid next year) and PCI Express graphics should be much more prevalent as well.
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ArneBjarne - Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - link
#36HyperThreading is not a part of SSE3, two instructions for thread synchronization are:
"Monitor and mwait instructions provide a solution to address Hyper-Threading Technology performance of the operating system idle loop and other spin-wait loops in operating systems and device drivers."*
Somehow I don't think the AMD processors have any issues with Hyper-Threading Technology that need to be addressed in the first place. Furthermore are you suggesting that Intel processors will stop supporting the rest of SSE3 if HyperThreading is turned off? I don't think so.
*http://developer.intel.com/technology/itj/2004/vol...
ShadowVlican - Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - link
wow.. i registered just to comment on how true and great this article is... great stuff Anand!it's true intel should know better than that... who in their dumb minds would pay MORE for something that's SLOWER... answer? the dumb public. nasty intel is targeting the average and ripping them off... GO AMD!!! i'm glad i have a XP-M 2400+ in my rig
PrinceGaz - Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - link
A superb article, this kind of news straight from the troops (mobo manufacturers) on the front-line is far more informative than what you get from the generals (Intel and AMD). At least two, ideally three of these a year would be fantastic for giving us a look at what is really happening in the computer market. Any more than that would probably reveal little new.btw- my use of military terminology above does not mean I condone any real action occuring, it was just a good way of describing my point in a way everyone would understand.
thebluesgnr - Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - link
#36,dual-core. ;)
Live - Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - link
Very nice report. I want more, more, more...This kind of articles is basically the only place I want to read about Intel. They have nothing to offer the enthusiast right know and probably wont until late 05. Since Intel very well might be what Microsoft is on the OS side they will continue to be the market-leader and earn more money then all the rest put together.
But for us AnandTech readers AMD is the CPU of choice and should be treated like that.
While we are on the subject of wants: follow ups to motherboard and GPU reviews when new bios/drivers appear would be most appreciated. Since you here at AnandTech often are very fast with getting out the reviews when products are new (which is a good thing) many bios/driver related problems seem to crop up. Are they later fixed? If so that might make a bad product shine. Now I don't mean you should follow every new bios or driver. But just do a re-roundup once in a while. Helps a lot cause when the prices of products have fallen and the time has come to buy the reviews are often old. Certainly nowadays when the next generation seem to offer less and less over the old follow-ups seems like a good idea, or?
quanta - Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - link
I doubt the revision E of Athlon 64 will truly be SSE3 compatible. AMD did not show any signs of including HyperThreading, which is part of SSE3 instruction sets. You can expect workstation apps are going to cripple this CPU because of this technical issue.glynor - Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - link
[Q]In fact, many of the Taiwanese manufacturers were confused as to why DTRs sold so well in the U.S., with ultra portable designs selling much better in Japan; after all, who wants to lug around a 10+ lbs laptop?[/Q]I suppose they aren't taking into account the sheer lazyness of the American public. They don't want to lug around a 10+ lbs laptop ... but they don't [i]walk[/i] anywhere anyway. What difference does it make if you have a 1 lb. laptop or a 15 lb. laptop when you only ever transport it in your SUV?
Marsumane - Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - link
I am also in favor of these types of articles. Very informative. Good work! :)Gnoad - Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - link
We need more articles like this more often.avijay - Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - link
Great Article Anand! Many more of these kind of articles would be very welcome! Its a pleasure to read your articles.