Quad Core Battle, Intel Yorkfield vs AMD Altair

Joe writes "Yorkfield Extreme Edition based on the 45nm Penry core architecture will meet heads-on with AMD Altair based on the 65nm K8L core in Q3 2007 as reported by VR-Zone. Due to its advanced 45nm process technology, Yorkfield XE is able to pack a total of 12MB L2 cache (2 x 6MB L2) and still achieving a much smaller die size and higher clock speed of 3.43-3.73Ghz. Yorkfield will feature Penryn New Instructions (PNI) or more officially known as SSE4 with 50 more new instructions. Yorkfield XE will pair up nicely with the Bearlake-X chipset supporting DDR3 1333, PCI Express 2.0 and ICH9x coming in the Q3 '07 timeframe as well."

Re:I for one...

[jimstapleton]

I don't think I've ever replaced my computer.

Rolling upgrades for 10 years or so. Never more than half the computer has been replaced at any one time.

Re:Isn't that going a bit far?

[DrDitto]

I mean, frankly... isn't 12MB L2 overkill? We're barely putting today's 2-4MB to good use.

Are you kidding me? With a 4-way superscalar processor running at 3GHz, any cache miss can result in the processor being completely idle for 50-100ns. At an aggressive 50ns memory latency, this is up to 600 wasted opportunities to retire instructions.

Re:Cheating? Yep...

[Svartalf]

It's not so stupid a remark.

L2 is what helps a CPU compensate the disparity of the FSB to the main system memory's speed.

The larger it is, the faster the CPU will run- so long as the data and executables remain there.

If you halve the L2 on the Core CPUs (Matching the AMD's Cache size...), you will see a 20% or
more drop in overall performance.

If you drop about 15-20% of the performance, you see that the Core Duo is actually SLOWER than
the comparable AMD and that the only real edge is the overal TDP which goes to Intel on this
round. The architechture itself isn't as good as AMD's and "wins" speed-wise only because
Intel can jam double or triple the L2 on die because of process shrink. If you run an app that
forces L2 thrash (which is a hell of a lot of them, actually...) you'll see the Cores running
roughly neck and neck with the AMD chips in the same class- and only there because of the larger
L2.

You pop off terms, but do you HONESTLY know what they all mean? From your comment, I'd say not-
I could be wrong, but it strongly looks like you don't get it. I do- it's sort of what I studied
in my Master's studies when I was working on my MSCS years ago.