AMD's hexacore Phenom II X6 will offer Turbo Core automatic overclocking
By Vlad Savov 
posted April 8th 2010 3:49AM
posted April 8th 2010 3:49AM
posted April 8th 2010 3:49AM
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AMD Stepping it up, and it's about time!
@n0ne
I'm a big AMD fan. This one is SWEEEETTTT!
@n0ne
i actually thought the phenom 2s were great..so i consider that as the time they were stepping it up. they were a big improvement over the first gen phenoms.
btw...can someone tell me the dates for the quarters they mention on the chart? like when is the start an end of Q2? or Q3? Q1? Q4? please cause i'm like quarters? where is this on my calendar lol
@ILL Thief "btw...can someone tell me the dates for the quarters they mention on the chart? like when is the start an end of Q2? or Q3? Q1? Q4? please cause i'm like quarters? where is this on my calendar lol"
you do know what quarter means, 1/4 ?
Q1 = first quarter, Q2 = second quarter, and so forth
if someone said a product was to be launched in the first half (H1) of a year, would you understand that?
@n0ne
You can buy FIVE AMD hexacore processors for the price of a single Intel one, or three of the AMD Black Edition hexacores with a good wad of money left over.
@ILL Thief Q1 = Jan, Feb, Mar. Q2 = Apr, May, Jun. Q3 = Jul, Aug, Sept. Q4 = Oct, Nov, Dec
@tkuhl87
in reality, Q1 likely equals Mar 31 11:47 pm, Q2 is code for June 30th, etc.
One thing I really like about AMD, is that they keep a socket format alive for long.
Looks good. Hoping to see some benchmarks soon.
@Black. me - not really. My +4yo Athlon 64 X2 4200+ runs everything (games included) more than adequately.
If I'm going to upgrade, it would be only for the sake of more cores (as software developer I can really take advantage of them), not for the sake of raw performance.
That looks delicious. And is there a release date for these procs,or an estimated quarter?
@HatefulHater
See last column. Therein lies the answer.
@HatefulHater April 26 is the release date of all but the 1075T model. It is also the release date of the 890FX chipset that will be in the new enthusiast line of Mobo's
Looks good. Hoping to see some benchmarks soon.
Yahtzee!
Some people were discussing today about companies saving their technology and bleeding it out slowly, maximising profit upon each step.
I said that such tactics are only true if there is a monopoly on the market. Once there are 2 or more "competitive" competitors, these baby steps stop and all it takes is one competitor to start raking in market share at the other's expense and we get innovation as fast as each company can afford.
Competition is good. We need AMD to push Intel (and if the tables were somehow turned, we'd need Intel to push AMD). No love lost there. I for one don't like seeing the growth of computing stagnate. The core i7s aren't being given a good run yet, so we're kinda seeing some stagnation there - but I hope AMD is able to step up to the plate next round. Win for the consumer!
@buoy Monopoly or illegal arrangements ;)
@buoy
Actually, most people talk about how companies reserve performance and bleed it out slowly, not technology. And regarding technology, I don't think you are right on that either. There are plenty of instances of car concepts with bleeding edge technology and where the bleeding edge technology never makes it to production, or the company cans the tech, only to see it appear years later on a competitors model.
@Toy Yoda i see your reasoning/point but i'm willing to bet most of these exceptions are actually due to the competition not being competitive or the technology itself not being competitive.
@buoy
Maybe. But I don't think there's more dimensions than just competition. A company will hold back on a technology because there won't ever be interest, it's too advance for it's time, or they can't bring the cost of the technology down. Each one of these things happen often enough.
Just look at the Palmpilot market. It fits all your criteria. Plenty of players, no monopoly. Lots of interest (at the time). Sony could have gone to town and been light years ahead of any palm players out there. They didn't. So here's a case of a company holding back. So how would I know? Well, because I owned top of the line Sony palms 'back then', and they were way more feature rich than any other palms out there. In my opinion, the palm model I had rivals the 2G iphone and in many ways was better and still is. In fact, it's resolution was better than my 3GS iphone now for the same size screen!!
Sony even had an Organic LED screen palm,back in the palm days. Organic LED screens are a 'new feature' for phones today, but Sony had this stuff miniaturized and selling in Japan like 10 years ago.
Like WOW!
The more the better.
Thats great...the 95W TDP 1055T sounds very nice...
3.2 GHz base frequency? 125 W TDP ? That just sounds bad. Call me when it will have the same processing power at 1.6 GHz and 40 W TDP.
@stoffer I was a huge AMD fan but intel makes faster chips with less power comsumption. Recent AMD are great but the fact is that all of them are power hoggers.
I hope that someday they will realize that cutting power comsumption is very important too.
@Shark Tek
125W for the six core is the same as the previous four core, It´s a 33% reduction in energy consumption in one generation.
Just to compare: a Core i7-860 uses 95W with 4 cores, if you would expolate that to six cores it would burn 142W. And a 35W i7-610E would use 105W if it had six cores
@rj7855 I do not think that the number of cores is a good performance measure. It is a good selling point though. AMD starts doing similar thing with cores what Intel did with CPU frequency in Penitum 4.
After all this time I'm still hesitating to go back to AMD. Maybe when these baby get benchmark and that it beat the cr@p out of my cpu then I'll look foward to it. I think my intel quad (Q9550 @3.6) will last me a few more.
What I don't understand is that with minimal training, just about anyone can achieve stable overclocked performance with a few tweaks in the BIOS.
I have three computers for example running 3.4Ghz on a chip originally designed for 2.4Ghz, thanks to an oversized heatsink, 75oF room, and voltage bump.
Why can't automated software perform the same function that a 14yr old kid can?
@Ducman69 If you can do it, then make a program that does same thing you did?
AMD is a bit too late for me. I couldn't wait any longer and I upgraded to i7 920 OC to 4.0GHz on air. Video cards department are also future proof 16x/16x/16x PCI-e. I can't see myself to do another upgrade in about 7-8 years. Hopefully AMD will give us something wonderful by then.
I think I'll stick with my overclocked (all four cores) 4GHz 965 BE for now.
@MRCUR same here I love my 955 :)
Maybe I should go with AMD for my next rebuild of my desktop?
@Dafrety
Maybe you should.
@Dafrety, IMO AM3 system is a quite good choice right now. Even if the AMD would decide to introduce a new socket, for some time the new CPUs would be available for the AM3 socket too.
I hate the fact that on Intel's side, one has to pick early: either socket 1156 or socket 1366. Latter would cost you premium right now. Former in the best Intel's traditions might become obsolete soon. One simply can't get cheap socket 1366-based system and with minor upgrades over time keep it relevant...
I love Intel's performance and quality, but I still prefer AMD.
AMD rocks my world. Why you ask?? Cause when I'm done buying my new CPU from them I have enough left over for beer and pizza
Thanks but no thanks, I'll stick with my overclocked i7 975 overclocked at 5GHz ;)
I will use the Phenom II X6 in my next build along with 5870 :)
My older computer is i7-950 @3.9 GHz on air with 4870 @940 MHz on air.
Its fun buying newer technology :)
My last four desktop builds (spanning 10 years now) have all been built around overclocked AMD processors. You can't beat the price to performance ratio.
These TDP numbers are assuming all cores are fully-loaded, right? So 125W / 6 = around 20W per core max?
I'm not sure I fully understand the AMD state diagram. Am I correct in assuming that in an idle system[1], the CPU is going to be running in the boost state (3 cores hot, 3 cores at 800mhz)? If so the chip will dissipate at least (3 * 20W) + (3 * whatever a core dissipates at 800mhz) = 60W + X where X is probably in the 10-20W range. So probably somewhere in the 70-80W range. If true, that's pretty yucky for an idle system.
It would be interesting to see how the Phenom II X6's long term power usage compares to i7's. It might be that the i7 isn't substantially better?
Once you take gaming out of the desktop pc, all this extra processing power is useless.
The reason I'm on an AMD right now is because of how they're more bang for your buck. Sure the i7 965 EE may be better than my Phenom II 940, but would the under-10% difference be worth the extra thousand dollars? I just hope AMD stays on with more bang for your buck.
@Dillon
I am assuming you mean the 10% performance difference is between Core 2 Quad platforms. Not the i7.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/phenom-ii-940,2114-18.html