AMD to bring six-core 'Thuban' processor to the consumer realm
By Darren Murph 
posted Sep 21st 2009 9:11PM
posted Sep 21st 2009 9:11PM
Look out, Intel -- six cores are mightier than four, don'tcha know? Shortly after introducing a six-core processor in the server sector, AMD is reportedly angling to issue a hexa-core chip over on the consumer side. The chip maker has confirmed to Maximum PC that a six-core slab of silicon (codenamed Thuban) will be released in 2010, with the real kicker being that it'll be fully backwards compatible with existing AM3 and AM2+ mainboards. It'll be based on 45nm process technology and will boast an integrated DDR3 controller, 3MB of L2 cache and 6MB of L3 cache, and while the outfit wouldn't confirm, word on the street has it that the final product will sport a Phenom II X6 moniker. So, Core i9 -- what have you to say now?
More cores are cool, but there was also a time when I thought clock frequency stood for something.
Cache seems kinda low.
Depends, it has half the L3 that Gulftown has, but twice the L2.
Cache is enough. The Athlon II CPUs have no L3 cache whatsoever and they are only about 10% slower than Phenom II CPUs.
This seems rather pointless since even now unless you're encoding videos or rendering all the time it's really hard to utilize 4 cores. The best Core2 Duo's put out performance numbers above a whole slew of quad cores even now (pretty much everything except i7) since they can hit higher clock speeds.
I really have a hard time seeing how a home user is going to benefit from having this over having a quad core processor with faster cores.
The benefit will come when software designer write for the multiple cores.
Right now, the OS and motherboard or dividing up the workload as it sees fit.
correct me if I error: high voltage!
Watts...
quite the contrar
more watts less voltage more amps =P
Well, I don't think this is what you meant, but it's your civic duty on the internet to correct someone's grammar so....
"Correct me if I err" would be proper, though awkward as err is a bit archaic these days. What you've got is "Correct me if I [noun]".
This message has been brought to you by the flaming liberals in support of the Patriot Act.
http://xkcd.com/386/
Dear AMD/ATI
I am a Amd-Ati fan who uses Intel Nvidia products for fear if I use you product I will be disappointed
What I am trying to say is kick Intel's and Nvidia's asses already and get into gear
Dude.... nVdia? How are you even a fan?
The new 5850 beats the GTX 285 by a good 20FPS, and the 5870 just utterly rapes it.
And combined with an AMD processor, AMD FUSION kicks in and boosts FPS by a whole lot. How is a good time to go AMD AND ATI.
But still, I think Core i9 and 5870X2 will be the best gaming system ever.
Son, I am disappoint
5850? Isn't that an HP DeskJet?
Son, I like turtles.
Cheesus Crust, how's the 5870 compare to the GTX 380?
WTF. how do you even consider yourself a fan then? thats like saying i love Chevy but i drive a Toyota because im afraid my Chevy will be unreliable. you make no sense.
get a Dragon platform and then tell me how disappointed with them you are
Cheesus, you understand that the the HD5870 is part of ATi's new lineup, right?
As in, it will be competing with the GTX 380.
Cool, the new ATI gpu that hasn't been released yet can beat a GPU that is from January. It's pretty bamf that their high end, next gen gpu can beat an old gpu that isn't even top of the line.
@ Jacob
At least 1.7% better.
What you must all understand is the 380 will actually be competing against the 5890, which is for sure gonna come out, and that apparently there might even be a 5970 (dont know how true that is)
but right now the 5870 is by far the best card out there, it sometimes does better than the 295, which is actually two gpu's. with my phenom II and 5870 setup, I can seriously play any game at full settings (even crysis)
well damned it be!!
i payed a heck load on a core 2 quad thinking itd be a good investment and now they frikin announce 6 cores? >____<
im not buying another computer unless it cant get any better >_>
Dont worry! It's just going to be like every new AMD cpu and be slower than intel, but the pricepoint will be fair for the performance. Just like it always is.
Core 2 Quad is a good chip you actually don't need more than that if your playing games, just have a good graphics card.
That's impossible. Technology is moving exponentially faster every year. You don't always need the best and fastest, that's why I wait for things to go become cheap after a new product comes out. Hopefully this will make the Core i7 cheaper. I use my computer extensively for video editing, and even so, there's no need to buy the best. A good product yesterday will still be great today, even if something newer came out. Buy wisely.
I think that only adding more cores and not keeping up with Intel on their changes of eliminating the northbridge is going to hurt AMD.
With the Lynnfield chips, you can make a lot more powerful motherboard for less because you only need a southbridge. This not only cuts out the cost of one chip, but also simplifies the motherboard, removing a high-speed interconnect and the costs of laying out and manufacturing it.
AMD is looking backwards, making sure they can sell new chips to people who already have AMD chipsets, instead of looking forward at how they can make sure a new AMD system competes with an Intel system on performance and cost.
But Intel loses money, because Lynnfields are bigger than Bloomfields and sell for less, and they can't make up the cost in northbridge sales. The P55 platform is overall cheaper, but nets Intel less money per unit sold.
Actually AMD had on-processor-die memory controllers and point-to-point interconnects starting with the Athlon 64 back in, what, 2003? So actually you're completely backwards, Intel is the one who took most of a decade to catch up to AMD with the northbridge stuff.
First, you realize that AMD integrated the memory controller back when the introduced the Opteron in 2003 (which is what Intel JUST did with the Nehalem architecture, allowing them to debut "northbridge-less" motherboards)?
Next, doing a quick look on Newegg, P55 motherboards seem to be equivalent in price to comparable AMD-chipset motherboards, which kinda blows the "more motherboard for less" argument out of the water.
Finally, since when was backwards compatibility a bad thing? Sure, it helps those who already have AMD-based machines, but it can also help new sales too by giving users a clear upgrade path, and showing that you are committed to your platform.
Would you have gone out and bought a Core 2 Quad machine knowing that the Lynnfield chips were on the horizon, and that you would have to replace the motherboard and RAM as well as the CPU? Probably not.
On the other hand, if you knew that the Phenom II X4 system you were buying allowed you to do a drop-in replacement to the 6-core chip, with no other major changes, would you be more willing to invest in the hardware? Probably.
i've used a Athlon 64 X2 3800, 6400 and Phenom II X4 940 all on the same board. and i could get a Phenom II X6 and STILL use it on this board. how is that a bad thing?
BC isn't a bad thing, but it does limit the changes you can make.
By going with a new socket(s) Intel has leapfrogged AMD in chipset design.
That wouldn't have been possible with say LGA775+.
Mike:
Intel isn't dumb enough to lose money.
Tom & Fr0:
No, AMD moved the memory controller off the northbridge to the CPU. They didn't eliminate the northbridge. The northbridge is still there and handles PCIe and fast I/O (and GPU on some machines). Whereas with Lynnfield, the northbridge is gone since Intel moved the memory controller to the CPU a little while back and moved the PCIe controller onto the CPU with Lynnfield. And the CPU connects directly to the southbridge with a low-speed (10Gb/sec) connection. So in fact, you have it backwards.
Backward compatibility is a bad thing when it keeps you from moving forward. As happened to me with my Athlon X2 4200+. AMD didn't want to change the socket and thus I ended up with a system that only supported DDR1 when DDR2 was already mainstream. Thus, within months, I couldn't even afford to upgrade my RAM, it was cheaper to buy a new CPU, mobo and RAM then to try to get 4GB of DDR1!
Beyond that, there's no disadvantage to backward compatibility. But there's no advantage to not being able to capture new customers because your products cannot compete effectively with competitors' new systems either. And that is what AMD is in danger of.
As to the cost of P55 motherboards, they've only been out a few weeks and they are already price competitive to AMD low-end chipsets (that they kill on performance). Does that not seem like a problematic trend for AMD? Where do you think it'll be in a few weeks?
Would I have bought a Core 2 Quad knowing that Lynnfield was coming? Actually, I've known Lynnfield is coming for a long, long time now. It's easy to find this info out on the internet. But I didn't buy a Core 2 Quad. I actually bought a Core i7/920 knowing Lynnfield was coming! I would have to replace my motherboard to upgrade, but not my RAM. And yes, Lynnfield blows away my Core i7/920 (Nehelem) on price/performance and performance/watt.
Would I buy a Phenom II X4 instead? No, I didn't. The performance figures showed that would be foolish. And the performance figures per watt were extra, extra foolish. AMD coasted a long time on power by convincing enthusiast sites to compare total system power against Intel machines using power-sucking FB-DIMMs. Now that Intel dropped that and went to DDR3, there's no comparison at all. Anand found their Lynnfield system used the least power at idle of any system they have checked in years. It would have been down to perhaps as low as 60W if they didn't have a GeForce 285 in there sucking up power. It is 30W lower than AMD's chips (Phenom II X4 965 BE) at idle and 40W at speed while handily outperforming it. It is 50W lower at idle than a Phenom II X3 720 and it obliterates it on benchmarks!
Yeah jon, just look at AMD's old socket 754 chips versus their 939 chips. The 754s were cheaper, but were hampered by their socket. It was a successful play at selling chips to existing customers, but the 754s were not built for the future. That's why AMD had the 939s. This new chip is the equivalent of an Athlon x64 in a 754. So where's the 939 equivalent?
My honest guess is that although they'll have 6 cores, it'll be 6 less-efficient cores over Intel's next 32nm stuff that is likely to be cooler and faster. :\
WOW you are a genius to realize that a 45nm cpu will be less efficient and hotter than a 32nm cpu
I remember a ... "bigger stick" competition like this a while ago. AMD would put out a better processor and Intel would put out something that was 120000 MHz faster just to keep up (and give you an alternate method for cooking eggs, while they were at it). Now, AMD is the one that didn't learn the lesson: more of a slow processor does not make a fast processor. And not until we have massively parallel applications will we actually be able to use 6 cores.
That said, I'll take four for my web servers please. :P
im new to the computer realm so correct me if im wrong, wouldn't u be using a lot of powerful apllications at once to be utilizing all 6 cores. do cores have an effect on speed?
Odds are you'll never be using all 6 cores so therefore this technology is really useless until someone creates something that requires that many processors. The speed of each core is what matters.
You barely need four cores so why would you ever need 6?
Bragging rights
Maybe you don't need more than 2 cores, some of us do more than play games and surf.
I'm sure you don't do anything that is so demanding you need six cores just to do it.
I thought l kids today were supposed to be able to multi-task.
I run more than one program at a time, even if that weren't the case there is plenty of video SW that will swallow as many cores as you can feed it.
Your computer usage =/= other people's usage.
Open up your task manager. How many processes do you have running? I have 55, and I'm only running Firefox and IM. Those can all run on different cores.
E-pen
probably will be very expensive, im fine with my 3.0ghz e8400, its fast with games along with doing everyday things like homework
Oh guys, sorry.
I though Fluid's Dynamics, Ray Tracing, and everything that is pretty much Thread Level parallel, would benefit for any N numbers of extra cores (I dare to say that anything that benefits from SSE could be easily compiled with OpenMP to fast and dirty results with more cores, even those spreadsheet software) .Including encryption, were those Complex decoders on the K10 helped a lot.
Also more cores add more stability and security. Ask Google and it's Chrome developing group.
Being realistic, making a processor isn't easy, therefore, such things are made by smart people, people that surely know what they are doing.
But you guys, made me realize I must go back to the MIT... I fell so ignorant...
Now down-rank me.
Of course I meant Feel, Now on my way to Harvard...
What? I had to read that 3 times before I was able to comprehend your point. I hope you're working on your spelling and grammar.