AMD and Intel's six-core CPU plans revealed by mobo makers
By Vlad Savov 
posted January 29th 2010 7:35AM
posted January 29th 2010 7:35AM
You have to love DigiTimes and those loquacious sources it seems to keep finding. The latest word from the Taiwanese grapevine suggests that both Intel and AMD will be bringing out six-core CPUs to the consumer market by the middle of this year. We're using the term "consumer" rather loosely here as Intel's first Gulftown chip is expected to be priced north of $1,000. The Core i7-980X is slated for a March release, which just fits inside the Q1 window that earlier rumors had suggested. If you butter your bread on the AMD side, you'll have to wait a while longer as those 45nm Thuban chips -- hereafter to be known as the Phenom II X6 1000T series -- won't be landing until at least May. The usual caution when dealing with anonymous sources is advisable, but this sounds like a roadmap with a high likelihood of being accurate.
Hopefully the phenom II x6 will be based on am3 :). If it is intel is screwed.
@Giac it's AM3 don't worry :D
AMD FTW!!
@(Unverified)
Competition FTW
AMD better submit a product worth deciding over. I've been only spec'n Intel for last 3 years at least. Intel knows it and prices are high.
@Ken J
Only bought an AMD based computer (PhenomX II 940) last time because the cost of the entire unit saved me about £300 over the i7 920, it isn't just their chips that cost the extra money but alas as a student I needed quad for CAD.
Adding more cores is fine for multitasking, but what about gaming? I want to see higher clock speeds dammit! Show me a 4 or 5 Ghz CPU and then I'll get excited.
@nachotech
I'd rather see game dev's putting more time into using multiple cores!
@Hobsie Totally agreed! The only problem is that it will take little while even before quads are widely deployed enough to make them focus on it. For now, the having a quad for gaming only serves only to make sure that there will be mostly two free cores for the games...
It'll be AMD for me again. Sure, Intel has the upper hand in terms of top-end performance, but AMD's are dirt cheap for what you get.
Core 2 Duo E8600, 3.33GHz (dual core) costs about £200
Phenom II X4, 3.4GHz (quad core) I can get for £140
@plastik hmm... that wasn't supposed to be a reply
@bvds
Hopefully all the PS3 devs can give a helping hand in these situations because lets be fair, if you've done a lazy port to PS3 its going to run like ass out the box :P
@nachotech
IBM will be happy to sell you POWER6 at up to 5GHz. Just be prepared to pay for it...
@Kira
They'd be happier to sell you a Power7 chip.
that's the most beautiful stained glass window in the world.
@Anonymoose pokemon, gotta catch em all
More than likely you will have to get a new Intel MoBo. Im just so glad that AMD is people friendly. Sure AMD is not as fast as Intel most of the time... fast enough for the majority though, but at least they don't rape your wallet like Intel loves to do.
6 cores..... you'll be multitasking like a mo fo...
@Kennykenken
980X runs on X58 boards, samples have already made their way around
@tgluak a X58 mobo alone would rip my wallet... (iPad?) iPass...
@tgluak
Hope that will be the case.. im just going by the core i(x) mobos... which i understand why... totally different chip all together
if current benchmarks are to go by the amd hex cores will only match a intel i7 920 (quad with hyperthreading) in performance.
That's fine with me as long as it's a) cheaper and b) cooler.
How much are the X6 expected to be priced at?
@(Unverified)
I would guess $200-300.
Sexacore, thou shall be sexy.
Going massively multicore is great and all, but if AMD wants to compete in the multithreaded feild they need to start using some form of simultaneous multi-threading (like Intel's HT). I think IBM's Power7 processor can do 4 threads per core. Share some of that goodness with AMD, IBM!
@Nitesh HT isn't all about cheating the OS? For me, it did make sence in the 90', with the XP and all... but, i mean, is this making any difference on the Win7?
@bvds Its more than just tricking the OS into thinking there are more threads, doing so allows the processors execution resources to remain filled all the time, decreasing time the processor spends waiting for the RAM to send along instructions. It also prevents a core from locking up if a thread stalls.
Windows 7 is even better with Hyperthreading, Intel and Microsoft partnered up to develop hyperthreading-specific technologies to enhance performance, such as always filling up "real" cores before virtual ones, ect.
@bvds If you need more evidence, look at Core i7 reviews that show performance with hyperthreading both on and off.
@Nitesh Alright then... ignorance may be bless, but not that time =P
@Nitesh
In application that are designed for it HT can boost things by 14% or so.
And recently intel revealed that they worked with MS and the kernel of w7 is actually tweaked to work better with hyperthreading.
Nevertheless the showing it as actual separate cores in taskmanager is a blatant lie I agree, and one that seems to work.
Oh and with singlethreaded applications like games it can actually be slightly decremental I'm told, I guess that's why you can turn HT off in the BIOS settings.
On the other hand MS is putting multi-threading in DX and graphicsdrivers are starting to be multithreaded too, so because of that even singlethreaded games should get a slight boost from multiple cores, or at least in 'lowest FPS' becoming higher than before, less lag spikes I imagine, and because of that break even even with HT enabled (again that's a guess).
Great for both intel and amd but the only issue that i have is the price. i will wait a few months after they get released to get on board
@MaxDiablito
I wonder what kind of cooler 6 cores need though, even at 32nm, the current third party coolers for intel already are too tall for many cases, and too wide to not start interfering with the RAM slots, so I guess that expensive gulftown and beyond as well as the AMD versions will include a 'boxed' watercooler?
I got a notice from hp that the z600 motherboard will be changing slightly to accept the 6 core versions of the xeon cpu's . I thought this was pretty much well known.
@majortom1981
Xenon aren't consumer processors though, they are server chips.
Quad Core still isn't even "main-stay" in the consumer market yet as dual-core is...ffs...can't they just wait a bit longer?
I'm sorta happy I didn't get any quad-core systems yet.
@Plazmic Flame
I think you might be a bit out of touch, quad cores are ubiquitous and dual cores are mainly picked by people that know that a higher clocked cheap dual core is better in games than a lower clocked quad, but the new adaptive stuff intel released does the changing to single/dual core and ramping up speed automagically now, so that old wisdom is going the way of the dodo too, and now the last few months only low budget stuff does dual.
Besides, initially, the first 6 months at least, six cores will be only for the 'enthusiast' since it will start at $999.
What nanotech has mentioned is key.
I can't wait to see high end 32 nm chips. Nothing beats the power of overclocking.
As for the future, it's going to be exciting to look forward to even smaller ships like the 22.5 nm that can (theoretically) run even faster. Just have to wait for most of the 45 nm chips life cycle to end.
good lord intels busted