The era of Quad-Core is upon us!


Posted by Brandon LeBlanc on Friday, September 14, 2007 5:48 PM 6 Comments

On Monday, Nick and I flew out to San Francisco to attend AMD's Premiere Event announcing their quad-core Opteron processor. With Intel's quad-core hardware and now AMD moving full speed ahead - the era of quad-core processing is here!

Prior to the event, we met up with Featured Community members Michael Reyes, John Obeto, and Carlos Echenique to attend a blogger meet-up with some folks from AMD. Michael is from the website HardwareGeeks , John owns and runs the website SmallBizVista, and Carlos runs the website PlanetAMD64. I also had the huge pleasure of meeting Alessandro Perilli from the website Virtualization.info. Alessandro is one of the leading bloggers in blogging on virtualization technology on the web.

At the blogger meet-up, we were all surprised by a visit from AMD's CEO Hector Ruiz.

 

At the Herbst International Exhibit Hall, AMD had several demo stations set up for folks to play with quad-core PCs. Nick had a chance to play Midway's upcoming game Stranglehold powered by AMD's Phenom quad-core processor. AMD had several different demo stations including one demoing some very impressive video-editing capabilities.

 

Later, we were all bused over to the Letterman Digital Arts Center for the launch event. The Letterman Digital Arts Center was created by George Lucas and LucasFilm on the grounds of the Presidio. The Letterman Digital Arts Center houses many of the LucasFilm divisions (such as ILM) and is a state-of-the-art digital entertainment facility. When arriving, we knew right away we were at a LucasFilm facility as we were greeted by some familiar faces:

 

We then made our way into the Letterman Digital Arts Center where we were directed into their 298-seat, state-of-the-art, THX-certified screening room equipped for digital projection. It was a very impressive theater room. The event kicked off with AMD's Hector Ruiz announcing the Opteron quad-core processor and then introducing LucasFilm producer Rick McCallum to talk about LucasFilm's partnership with AMD.

Rick showcased a really neat video of the special effects ILM did for the movie Transformers. Take a look at the video:


Video: AMD Barcelona Launch: ILM Video

Overall, I shot over 9GB of HD video footage from the event. Using Windows Movie Maker, I spliced the video into segments and uploaded the special effects video above to Soapbox. If I had a quad-core processor, editing and rendering video such as my HD footage would be quite a bit faster and more efficient. Quad-core processors will offer quite a bit of advantage to Windows Vista users as they hit the market as they will enable the user to do much more with digital video, sound, and even games.

Special thanks to AMD for having us out for the event.

SEP 14
 

Posted by marshall

So what's the verdict?  Intel or AMD better?  No diplomatic response like "Each has its own merit" type please.....
SEP 15
 

Posted by newscientist2000

That Transformers movie was cool, my favourite part was when Optimus had the fight on the freeway.

As to which cpu is better well thats a decision for each person to make based on their own harware requirements, Im sure Brandon has a preference for one or the other right now.

For me its whoever provides the fastest processor for the cheapest price :-)

One thing is for sure though having Intel and AMD fight out for the top spot, has been a major driving force that has given us the powerful PCs we have today.  I have both a Intel and a AMD machine, both work great for my needs.

SEP 15
 

Posted by Brytown

ill always and forever be amd. But ill wait till 09 to build again my computer is fine for now. Transformers was a gre8 movie They made the new starwars movies on AMDs as well as many popular Xbox games too. That vid of how they broke it down DEFINATLY is cool. Hope its on the dvd. I wonder if theyll make robotech with amd too :) oh and ahem  "Each has its own merit"

SEP 16
 

Posted by hen770

AMD for desktop PC they are cheaper and performance per price ratio are great.

but for mobile platforms i would prefer the Intel rig , because they  are less heat , and they are platform (CPU,Wireless,MCP) that good for troubleshooting.

SEP 17
 

Posted by Hurricane Andrew

Not sure of the need for Quad-Core on the desktop, but it will definitely be a boon in servers.  In tha arena, I think that AMD is the clear winner.  Independent memory controllers, a true quad-core CPU, dual dynamic power management, all make Barcelona an excellent choice for a server platform.

On the desktop side, it's far more an issue of bang-for-the-buck.  I'm not sure how much of a difference AMD's architectural advantages will really have in the desktop space, though it still is likely to be the "better" chip from a technical perspective.  Real world, jury's still out.
SEP 22
 

Posted by shellp

I have what Hp said is the newest m8120n, & Vista Home Prem., with this installed. Have already started having issues.

Intel Alert Service.exe, stopped working

Mp telemetry/ COM surrogate,And it really hates Flash Player9...I'm a Newbie, so can't tell if its me or the system.  
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