AMD Athlon 'BARTON' CPU's?!

Heretic · Post by **Heretic** » Tue Apr 01, 2003 4:06 pm

IS this AMD's Response to the P4?

shrek · Post by **shrek** » Tue Apr 01, 2003 4:10 pm

No its just AMD's latest CPU core.

Post by **mid_gen** » Tue Apr 01, 2003 5:11 pm

It's just the latest version of the Athlon core.

It's probably got a squillion gigabytes of L1 Cache and a 0.1x10^-56475 micron fabrication process..

i don't know really....hmmm

Seahorse · Post by **Seahorse** » Tue Apr 01, 2003 5:15 pm

The Barton takes over the crown as AMD’s spearheading processor core. It’s construction is very similar to the THOROUGHBRED, using the same 0.13 micron silicon wafers and 128k Level 1 cache. So what has changed? The most significant enhancement is the inclusion of a 512kb Level 2 cache which is increased from the 256kb of the thoroughbred. This brings the Barton up to the cache levels of the Intel P4 Northwood’s.

Blah, Drone etc...

Heretic · Post by **Heretic** » Wed Apr 02, 2003 6:40 am

Thanks!

LazyManc · Post by **LazyManc** » Wed Apr 02, 2003 11:54 pm

Still cant touch the higher end of P4's now though

Looks like its intel for the forseeable future if you want speed...

Seahorse · Post by **Seahorse** » Thu Apr 03, 2003 5:39 pm

Erm, September, AMD 64 (Clawhammer), forseeable...{Cough!}...

LazyManc · Post by **LazyManc** » Thu Apr 03, 2003 9:55 pm

If it makes September then i'll be suprised, but anyway, how many games are gonna be coded directly for 64-bit in the next 3 or 4 years it'll take the majority of people to move over? I know Clawhammer has x86 emulation as hardware but whats the performance like? Any better than the current generation of Athlons?

Dont get me wrong i'd love to see a P4 contender from AMD but the Athlon is too long in the tooth now to compete and the Clawhammer is as yet unproven.

(And how reliable is the first version of a 64-bit windows going to be?)

Post by **mid_gen** » Fri Apr 04, 2003 12:20 am

The 64-bit chips aren't going to be viable for desktop PCs for a good year or two. It'll take years for software to migrate. The move of Windows from 32-bit to 64-bit computing is going to be a lot smoother than from 16-bit (win3.1(1) -> win95), but it's still going to take a long time. Since game developers have to work based on hardware that is usually 18months to 2 years off cutting edge, Clawhammer/Itanium really isn't going to be worth it for gaming for a long time.