Intel fights AMD's 4x4 with new quad-core tech

There aren't many arguments that Intel has a winner -- however temporary -- with their new Conroe Core 2 Duo chips, but they aren't relaxing just yet. With the oncoming threat of AMD's 4x4 chips in the performance/gamer space, Intel is getting a bit of quad-core action of their own with the new Kentsfield and Clovertown setups for consumer and server use respectively. Originally due in the first half of 2007, near when AMD's "Conroe killer" K8L was set to drop, both have been bumped up to fourth quarter '06 status, which sure has Intel looking smug. There are differences, however, in approach: Intel's Kentsfield architecture squeezes four cores into one socket, as compared to the dual sockets used by AMD's 4x4. This means the Intel chips will have less memory and frontside bus bandwidth available to each core, which will hurt them some in the performance race, but it also means cost savings that could give them an edge in the bang for buck arena. If anything, this is an indication of the intense competition going on for our chip dollars, and even if the quad-core war is a bit of a semantic one, we'll accept all the Photoshop crunching and AI processing power these guys want to push our way.

[korey @ Jul 21st 2006 9:40AM]

Can you say Quadcore??

[** Hello Moto ** @ Jul 21st 2006 9:48AM]

I don't get why its called 4*4... Its only 2 cores by 2 cores, not 16 total cores. Its a huge gimik by AMD. I have a feeling that the quad core chips will both be disapointing. The dual socket has been done for years, and the current sockets will not support four cores effectivly, especily not with the windows system for managing cores.

[korey @ Jul 21st 2006 9:56AM]

goodpoint but i mean damn once they are atleast 95% supported computer well seem fast as hell making a 1.7ghz seem like a 177mhz bell packard

[bitwise @ Jul 21st 2006 10:18AM]

Well, 4x4 trucks don't have 16 wheels, they have 4 wheels that are all powered, so I don't see this as a gimick.

Also, the ALR Revolution 6x6 was a 6 proc Pentium Pro system, so the NxN (N = Procs) isn't anything new...

[noah @ Jul 21st 2006 10:33AM]

Its called 4x4 because you get 4 cores (cpu) and the motherboard is also quad-sli enabled. 4 cpu's, 4 gpu's.

[Aaron Robinson @ Jul 21st 2006 10:49AM]

Maybe you all should CHECK THE INTEL LOGO. How'd you feel if I put some extra lines in your logo? the E isn't a dropped E anymore boyz!

[teo @ Jul 21st 2006 11:08AM]

Aaron - chill, they're just trying to show that intel is out dated and let their little-guy bias toward AMD. It's all good.

Also, doesn't Intel's tactic of cheaper smack of someone trying to catchup? Isn't that what AMD did all those years that they were behind? If performance is the name of the game(ing), sounds like AMD is ahead.

[Sharikou, PhD @ Jul 21st 2006 11:32AM]

teo is totally right. Intel's new CONroe is only "better" because Intel has the money to bribe reviewers. Look at any Chinese site, not influenced by Intel, an you see that AMD pulls ahead in nearly every test.

Moreover, this stupid quad core shit is full of marketing only. Why do you think Intel can't make a two processor board? It's because they use old FSB technology. It's time to embrace the future and that's exactly what AMD is doing. With 4x4, AMD will be able to hook up two 3800x2's and frag CONroe's X6800 at only 50%-maybe even 100% of its performance.

And by the time TOrrenza comes out, it's all over for Intel. They've got nothing this time around to beat a coprocessor. The benchmarks make AMD 500% faster. Lets see Intel bribe itself out of this one. Hah. Right guys?

This is what Intel gets for shoving inferior tech down our throats for so many years. Now they play catch up with marketing and money only. Its so funny. All you Intel fanbois should get a job and maybe learn how to read and recognize lies. By the time K8L comes out, Intel will have bankrupted in those 5 quarters.

Read my analysis at sharikou.blogspot.com

[hmurchison @ Jul 21st 2006 12:03PM]

OMG

I'm NOT going to your website if the misinformation here is indicative of the quality of your tech knowledge.

Conroe is aimed at single socket motherboards. Intel makes SMP dual socket motherboards for Xeon procs. FSB has nothing to do with it.

Conroe is not faster than AMD because of reviewers its fster because it has a 4-issue core vs 3-issue. Its faster because it has a 4MB L2 cache that can be dynamically partitioned between the cores. It has 128-bit single cycle SSE and Macro and Micro OPS fusion.

You bozos shouldn't give up your day job. Being in Tech isn't about running a blog it's about keeping up with the trends and understanding stuff. Good day.

[Prashant @ Jul 21st 2006 12:26PM]

Good point hmurchison. And just as a FYI - If Intel had won most of it's battle through 'bribing' the press, it wouldn't be hiring engineers anymore. AMD is a good competition and the technologies coming out of both camps are remarkable. For someone to say 'Game Over' for either one means THAT certain someone doesn't care about technology but just names. Some people of this kind were romping on blogs and newspapers when IBM bowed out of PC business. And if I am not mistaken, IBM is still a respected name in the industry as are Dell and HP etc.

[Jordan @ Jul 21st 2006 3:14PM]

hmurchison - rock on man.

Most people that comment about Intel paying off reviewers don't even understand the complexities of these chips. Nor have they tested them.

There is a LOT to a chip, a lot more than the marketing hype, that most people don't understand the performance implications of.

Unless they are comparing the chips themselves, or have a review site that they can trust, forget about it. They're not a quarter as smart as an AMD OR an Intel engineer, so they don't need to criticize them.

[Lucas @ Jul 31st 2006 7:39PM]

i still don't see why there are so many fanbois around....i bought an AMD chip when i built my current rig, because amd was better and cheaper. my next rig, barring AMD pulling a rabbit out of it's hat sometime in the next few months, will be a Core 2. why? because now intel is faster and cheaper. if i take my 6400 and OC it, i should have a pretty decent CPU.

buy whats good. don't base your decision on a name.

[Greeniguana @ Aug 4th 2006 8:51AM]

Conroe is not better because Intel has the money to bribe reveiwers, it is better because Intel has the money to lose selling the Conroes at the low prices they sell them at. Intel has been losing customers, so they are offering their newest products at very low prices (possibly even at a loss to them) in order to gain their customer base again. Conroe chips are faster than AMD chips of the same price, but only because Intel is willing to lose money to reverse the current trends. This is a very smart decision for Intel, because it brings many people who switched to AMD a reason to use Intel, and increases the number of Intel fanboys, who will post how great Intel's products are for many years to come, no matter how little knowledge they actually have, and no matter how bad their processors are in the future (as has happened before).

This can't last forever. Eventually Intel will need to start making a profit again, but for now, enjoy the ride. For me, I am sticking with AMD.

[NeoeN @ Aug 5th 2006 6:13PM]

Correct me if im wrong. The name 4x4 is actually for the future. Currently they only have dual core chips so its at 2x2. But by next year they will have the 4 core chips, meaning you can put in like 2 of em then ud get 4x4 (in the same MB that u could put two dual core chips).
Im not a fan boy or anything. And i really dont care who's leading and who ripped on us. All i care, is the cpu, which has good overclockablity and its performance. Both which AMD held the title, pretty much lost it to intel currently.
As for the bribe reviewers. . . Seriousily get your facts straight, if 100 say conroe is good and 1 guy saying its bad, i would side the 100.
Hmmm, funny thing is that the 4x4 would require a new MB, people will most likely wait till quad chips are sold. Coz i dont see the point in buying a brand new untested MB and getting 2x2 core chips. Might aswell wait till the MB market is stabalized and get em 4x4 core chips. But all i can say is this AMD is in trouble be it 4x4 or watever, they are in trouble at the moment. IF they dont do something before christmas/new years lot of em are gonna opt for the conroe.
On a side note, i cant wait to see what ATI+AMD has to offer. Im going to suspect its something that i wont like. Most prolly graphic integrated MB's which are like cheap shit. IT would be fun if they came out with something really awesome. . .

[Shinobi @ Aug 18th 2006 11:09AM]

hmurchison you missed one part about the conroe that is pretty important to its performance increase. The shortened pipeline. dropping from 31 pipes in the prescott to 13 in the conroe really helped to boost performance too.

and NeoeN its not a quad core single chip its a dual core chip but 2 chips on 1 mobo. Then 2 dual core gpu's so you have 2 cpus, 2 video cards each with 2 cores (see nvidia's 7950gtx2 ... a 2 tier card connected to 1 pci-ex 16x slot design).

If you forego the possible memory errors in the quad cores of intel's design (because you know they will fix them before or shortly after launch either by ramping up the fsb or adding more L1+L2 memory per core), they stand to be in a much better place than AMD does. Why do I think this? becuase how many people want to pay exorbadent amounts for 2 dual core cpus when they can get similar (perhaps more?) performance out of a single cpu with 4 cores on it.

This 4x4 seems like a short term stop gap measure for AMD though. If they were to keep this 4x4 design and then add a quad core chip to the mix then they would easily have a superior setup. But what would the cost be? the current 4x4 setup when fully loaded takes over a kilowatt of power to run... the thing is a space heater! (btw your average hair drier is 1600watts) id hate to see the consumption if you doubled the cores again per cpu!

Thats why I say INTeL has the better idea. yes they are facing issues with memory speeds but they are not going to just sit on their hands and release a product thats stumped by a memory issue without at least continuing to work on a solution (gotta get the product to market first and all that). If anyone had an intel I820 mother board back in the slot1 p3 days you know what I'm talking about. the memory controller hub would cause the pc to randomly restart of its own accord. Intel found the issue and released a new board and offered anyone who had an 820 a replacement plus an extra 128mb of pc700 RDRAM (yeah i know ICK but at the time it was 10% faster than ddr).

I personally have owned 4 amd cpus and 6 or 8 intel. The Intel cpus are almost all still running to this day (including a 150mhz p1) where are the amd chips? fried sitting on my window sill. Sure they ran great for a couple of years but with the stock cooling and no overclocking they just burned up... i guess thats the BANG in the saying more bang for your buck eh? Instead of talking about bang for the buck how about talking total cost of ownership? If you have to buy a jetfan to cool your cpu (and yes i know the prescotts used more wattage than the athlons) and a motherboard with a specific bios and chipset are you really saving any money if it burns up in 2 or 3 years and you have to go buy a new pc?

Anyway those are my thoughts and feelings on this topic... feel free to disagree as I wont be back here... I found this on a google search so its highly unlikely that I will bother to check back.

[sfoong1 @ Aug 25th 2006 12:17PM]

I am not as technical as you all.

But would like to know how many of you really tested both Intel and AMD quad core proc before posting your opinions??

If no, better don't put your own opinions without any proven results..