Saturday, September 29, 2007
Barcelona B2 sucks?
I am not sure at what stepping Barcelona is now, but I just did some testing with the B2 stepping at 2.5 GHz, and it seems that contrary to what some people have been claiming, that this stepping has actually a slightly slower northbridge.
BA BArcelona revision is B1 with the northbridge fix. FWIW they found the erratum after B2 taped out.
So, lab test with B2 enginnering sample will show slower Northbridge. We will have to wait B2A production release? In the meantime please note slowdowns that make AMD's strange IMC ratios.
What about Intel's Nehalem on the same topics?
The north bridge strategy will stay active in CSI era as well. Chipzilla will not take AMD's route and simplify chipsets to a point where "chipset" is actually a single chip, but will keep current two chip configuration?.
Nehalem comes with CSI: (Common System Interface), but it will be connected to 65nm north bridges that will spot additional memory controller. It is quite obvious that FB-DIMM controller will be removed/disabled for the desktop and notebook part, and chipset will be the one that will provide DDR-2/DDR-3 support. This also applies to servers with registered ECC DDR2 memory.
BA BArcelona revision is B1 with the northbridge fix. FWIW they found the erratum after B2 taped out.
So, lab test with B2 enginnering sample will show slower Northbridge. We will have to wait B2A production release? In the meantime please note slowdowns that make AMD's strange IMC ratios.
What about Intel's Nehalem on the same topics?
The north bridge strategy will stay active in CSI era as well. Chipzilla will not take AMD's route and simplify chipsets to a point where "chipset" is actually a single chip, but will keep current two chip configuration?.
Nehalem comes with CSI: (Common System Interface), but it will be connected to 65nm north bridges that will spot additional memory controller. It is quite obvious that FB-DIMM controller will be removed/disabled for the desktop and notebook part, and chipset will be the one that will provide DDR-2/DDR-3 support. This also applies to servers with registered ECC DDR2 memory.
THIS LINK posted by Joseph Bell : 6:32 PM
