AMD's Barcelona performance gain "is not that obvious"

 

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By David Fearon

Posted on 24 Jul 2007 at 12:22

A major motherboard manufacturer has told PC Pro that the performance gain of AMD's new quad-core Barcelona CPU "is not that obvious".

The representative added that this conclusion was based on an early sample of the B0 stepping of the new CPU, which the company has been testing.

The motherboard firm expects performance to increase with the B1 release, although it could give no definite indicator of the extent of the boost.

The manufacturer has had access to the silicon in order to design and test motherboards to be ready at the launch of Barcelona.

The representative also claimed the major reason for the delays in Barcelona's release has been keeping the voltage of the new CPU at the same level as the current generation of Rev F Opterons. Getting the voltage under control is vital to achieve power consumption that doesn't exceed the current-generation level of 95W, a key feature that AMD has promised for the new range of CPUs.

Initially only available in Opteron-branded server versions, Barcelona's native quad-core architecture will be rolled out to desktop products later.

Originally slated to have appeared earlier this year, the official launch will now be the second week of September.