AMD and DDR2: The AM2 Athlon 64s @ SimHQ

Vikingod · May 28, 2006, 05:16 PM

Source: SimHQ
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With the launch of the Athlon 64s in late 2003, AMD was able to firmly wrest the gaming performance crown away from Intel, though the aging Pentium 4 architecture's hyper-threaded design still put up a tough scrap in media and multi-tasking chores. Yet with the introduction of dual-core processors last year, Intel could do little else but watch its desktop CPUs lose in virtually all key performance areas to its market rival's offerings. And as Intel's engineers futilely continued trying to find a way around what became a rather insurmountable thermal wall, AMD only widened the performance gap as the company continued releasing new Athlon 64 parts. Yet AMD has lagged behind Intel by several years with its lack of support for DDR2, a choice most likely based on the sensitivity of their Athlon 64's integrated controllers to memory latencies. With the launch of the AM2 socket, however, AMD is bringing a wide lineup of desktop processors that support DDR2/667 and DDR2/800 to the market.

May 28, 2006, 05:16 PM	#1
Vikingod Int'l Fish Liaison Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: By the light of lamp I sit and type... Posts: 16,197 Rep Power: 112 System Specs	AMD and DDR2: The AM2 Athlon 64s @ SimHQ Source: SimHQ _____________ With the launch of the Athlon 64s in late 2003, AMD was able to firmly wrest the gaming performance crown away from Intel, though the aging Pentium 4 architecture's hyper-threaded design still put up a tough scrap in media and multi-tasking chores. Yet with the introduction of dual-core processors last year, Intel could do little else but watch its desktop CPUs lose in virtually all key performance areas to its market rival's offerings. And as Intel's engineers futilely continued trying to find a way around what became a rather insurmountable thermal wall, AMD only widened the performance gap as the company continued releasing new Athlon 64 parts. Yet AMD has lagged behind Intel by several years with its lack of support for DDR2, a choice most likely based on the sensitivity of their Athlon 64's integrated controllers to memory latencies. With the launch of the AM2 socket, however, AMD is bringing a wide lineup of desktop processors that support DDR2/667 and DDR2/800 to the market.