Dan3: you responded that system performance was all that mattered so, since Intel offered dual channel chipsets and AMD didn't, AMD's better performance on a given memory technology didn't matter.
I see your point there, but would respond that memory technology has always changed much more slowly than CPU speed, and that it's usually much easier to just adopt a current, known, technology than create a new one.
AMD cannot utilize dual DDR for their Athlons; the EV6 bus quite simply won't scale that high (while keeping production costs reasonable). In this sense, Intel certainly has a huge advantage with the 4x100MHz bus (soon to be 4x133MHz).
If chip speeds continue to increase faster than main memory speeds (which has been just about as consistent as Moore's law), memory perfomrance will become the major performance bottleneck, and Athlon/Hammer's architecture should substantially outperform Intel's.
From all indications, Clawhammer will be at a significant disadvantage to the P4 when it comes to memory bandwidth. Sure, latency will be lower (maybe 30% or so), but in those applications where bandwidth is the bottleneck, the integrated memory controller isn't going to be much help.
Intel has done a lot of work trying to make latency less of a problem. It's chipsets, cache technology and prefetching features are all a part of this. That leaves bandwidth and unless AMD suddenly changes their mind and makes Clawhammer's integrated memory controller wider (128 bits), P4 is going to have a serious advantage.
-fyo |
