I always write the title last...
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 23, 2003 11:28 PM EST- Posted in
- Anand
So, I used to do this all the time during the "early days" of AnandTech. Many of you will remember the old "Site News" section which featured everything from insider industry information to movie recommendations. I got mixed responses from my old, more personal posts; some of you liked em and enjoyed them, while others felt they had no business being on the website.
Life got busier, the site has grown tremendously as did the number of praises and complaints for the updates - so I was put in a situation I put myself in everytime I write anything, trying to please everyone :)
The idea of a weblog came up a few months ago in an internal meeting and I liked the idea, but I wouldn't commit to it until I felt that all the new editors I'd been working towards bringing onboard were ready. That time has come and today, the evening of the launch of AMD's Athlon 64 - I bring you my first blog update.
The blog section has been purposefully kept off of the frontpage, so if you don't want to read them you won't have to be bothered by them. The link will remain on the left nav and I plan on posting to them regularly, bringing you everything from little tidbits of information from the industry to a quick note before I head out to see a movie. Agree, disagree, love them or hate them, they're here because I got enough requests for them and because I always enjoyed sharing more with you all. All too often writers will talk down to their audience, but with you all I want to make it clear that we're all on the same level - just a bunch of folks talking shop online.
With all of that said, let's get to the topic of the day - AMD's Athlon 64. I'm hoping that by now you've read my review and interestingly enough I've seen mixed responses to AMD's launch. Whereas the Athlon XP was an overwhelmingly positive launch for AMD, the Athlon 64 and the Athlon 64 FX are more of a mixed bag. While I think the Athlon 64 is definitely a promising solution, I'm more cautious about recommending the FX. The issues I have with the Athlon 64 FX are mainly related to AMD's insistance that the chip is an "enthusiast's chip" while very few "enthusiasts" would be too happy about tossing their 512MB - 1GB of DDR400 to upgrade to AMD's "enthusiast" processor. Interestingly enough, AMD may have put a bit more enthusiast flair in the Athlon FX than is apparent at first glance.
It seems as if the Athlon 64 is shipping with its multiplier locked (how difficult/possible it is to unlock, we will have to wait and see), while the Athlon 64 FX ships with an unlocked multiplier. This unlocked multiplier is actually the number one request I received when I posted about the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, so it's interesting that AMD would actually have the foresight to include such a feature without first being asked - AMD may not have lost touch with the community after all.
Currently an unlocked Athlon 64 FX multiplier doesn't mean much as the chips that we have don't overclock all that well, but things may change in the coming weeks as process improvements begin to trickle down. Socket-940 motherboards will begin shipping with multiplier adjustment support in the very near future, so stay tuned to see if the FX does end up being a true enthusiast chip.
There's much more to talk about, but I'll leave it at this for now. I hope you all enjoy this section, if not, I'm sure we've got much more interesting pages for you to read :)
Take care,
Anand
(yes I still do sign everything like that)
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SHADERMARK - Saturday, October 11, 2003 - link
since you ignored me last time..We want to know the difference where pixelshader matters.. you morons..
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amdrok - Wednesday, September 24, 2003 - link
Being personal is not a bad thing... some think it unprofessional, but it just shows that you still connect with other guys that share the same interests... like computers ;)ASMatic - Wednesday, September 24, 2003 - link
Hi Anand,I've been a regular since the days of the K6 and I have been missing the personnal news for a long time. Glad you brought them back. I totally agree with the early comment on quality and enjoyment going down when the site owners quit. Been a VERY long time since I read something interesting on THG...
Please tell us about the movies you saw with your girl and what happens in school. You're a grad student (or very close) now aren't you? How is it goin' ? Any research projects profiling up?
A lot of us DO care,
Keep it up!
narzy - Wednesday, September 24, 2003 - link
glad to see your well :), and the weblog is nice. I was wondering when you were going to get back to me on the T-shirts/store and the other thingie I brought up. its been exney on the ommunicationcay recently.be well,
Tthorpe
ala narzy.
Anonymous - Wednesday, September 24, 2003 - link
The blog's a great idea. It was a great idea the first time around and I missed the personal touch on the web site. I've been following this site since '97 and one thing that has changed with me is that I not use a Mac as my primary rig. What I'd be interested in seeing are reviews of IBM's non-Apple PPC 970 offerings though. Do you plan on doing any coverage of those machines? I believe they're attempting to break into the Linux market with them.Zuni - Wednesday, September 24, 2003 - link
Ordering has been addressed.Cheers
Pete - Wednesday, September 24, 2003 - link
OT: the ordering of replies seems to be a bit screwy. Someone should take a look at that, as it's unusual to see the reply before the question. :) Perhaps you could also warn people it takes some time before their post appears, to avoid the double posts.Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, September 24, 2003 - link
#29Intel does have much more experience with their 90nm process and it looks to be coming along quite well. There shouldn't be much of a learning curve with 90nm SOI for AMD, SOI just means different wafers at this point. We'll just have to wait and see as there are many variables that will determine the outcome for AMD (and Intel).
#30
AMD uses an updated version of their benchmarking suite to derive the Athlon 64's ratings - so the 64 3200+ will inherently be faster than the XP 3200+
#31
It's feedback like yours that helps a lot, thanks :)
Take care,
Anand
SpaceRanger - Wednesday, September 24, 2003 - link
Anand,It's good to see you doing the personal touch again to the website. It was something I personally enjoyed, and welcome back with open arms.
UlricT - Wednesday, September 24, 2003 - link
Another question I had was on the Model rating of the regular A64. Since both the AXP and the A64 have chips with a 3200+ rating, shouldn't they perform about equally? I know they don't, but wasn't that how AMD explained their rating system? How did they "rate" this new processor?