AMD's Triple-Core Phenom X3 Processor Launched 234
MojoKid writes "AMD officially launched their triple-core processor offering today with the
introduction of the Phenom X3 8750. When AMD first announced plans to introduce tri-core processors
late last year, reaction to the news was mixed. Some felt that AMD was simply planning to pass off partially functional Phenom
X4 quad-core processors as triple-core products, making lemonade from lemons if you will. Others thought it was a good way for AMD to increase bottom line profits, getting more usable die from a wafer and mitigating yield loss. This is an age-old strategy in the semiconductor space and after all, the graphics guys have been selling GPUs with non-functional units for years. This full
performance review and
evaluation of the new AMD Phenom X3 8750 Tri-Core processor shows the CPU
scales well in a number of standard application benchmarks, in addition to
dropping in at a relatively competitive price point."
3 cores sounds "wrong", but... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:3 cores sounds "wrong", but... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:3 cores sounds "wrong", but... (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing I don't see happening is fractional counts - 7.5 cores (7 full, and one "handicapped"). The OS would then have to learn to avoid the "gimpy" cores for CPU hungry processes.
Re:3 cores sounds "wrong", but... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:3 cores sounds "wrong", but... (Score:5, Funny)
I suppose it could be worse, you could have some kind of fractional symmetry fetish and only feel normal surrounded by mandelbrot sets and serpenski gaskets.
Re: (Score:2)
"Every one of them is a splinter in my eye.
I hate the Peano Space and the Koch Curve
I fear the Cantor Ternary Set
And the Sierpinski Gasket makes me want to cry!"
But that Mandelbrot Set is one badass fucking fractal!
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:3 cores sounds "wrong", but... (Score:4, Interesting)
So for me "driving" a 3-core computer would feel pretty normal.
Re:3 cores sounds "wrong", but... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:3 cores sounds "wrong", but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In hindsight, expenditure of that energy on infrastructure that would last and be useful for a thousand years seems much more sensible than spending it on t
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Well a machine running an AMD triple-core, loaded with PrOn and using 3-phase power should be really popular with trisexuals. Taking gaming to another level?
Re: (Score:2)
almost-equal power to 4-bangers
Whoah there. The Insights were definitely cool, but at 67 horsepower, they aren't even close to moderately powered 4 cylinder engines. Four cylinder engines are in some really fast cars. Consider the Subaru WRX STI, the Dodge Neon SRT-4, or the Lotus Elise.
In the case of the Insight, my understanding is the the hybrid design supplements for the shortcomings of the combustion engine, so it might feel peppier than a 3 cylinder usually would.
Along the same lines, give the Acura Vigor a look. Mid 90s
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:3 cores sounds "wrong", but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:3 cores sounds "wrong", but... (Score:5, Funny)
you can buy one today (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
... The only thing I don't see happening is fractional counts - 7.5 cores (7 full, and one "handicapped"). The OS would then have to learn to avoid the "gimpy" cores for CPU hungry processes.
The Cell processor can be said to be 7.5. One Power-based processor and 8 SPE units, with one of them disabled (higher yields).
See wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(microprocessor) [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
The Cell processor can be said to be 7.5.
Given how you have described the processor, attaching the "7.5" quality is probably misleading. You really shouldn't combine processors of different architectures into the same number. Even if you should combine them, I'm not sure that it would be fair to quantify the Power processor has half of an SPE - from what I've read, they actually have very similar performance. Also, while I did leave it unsaid, I assumed that we were talking about cores operating in an SMP environment. Different architectures,
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Why not wear half-socks? I'm sure you could find two with defects in different regions to compensate, and wear two on one foot.
Re:3 cores sounds "wrong", but... (Score:5, Insightful)
And as the GP states,The beauty of it (from an engineering point of view) is that every core has been designed with 3 HT links. One goes to the memory, and two connect to other cores. So really, in a four-core system, there is an additional latency because information needs two hops to reach all of the cores. Three cores is the max AMD can do while still keeping latency at its lowest.
I'm not exactly sure if this is how the demoted quad-cores will work as well, but I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to reconfigure the fourth HT bridge (on the disabled core) to act as a short-circuit.
Incorrect. (Score:5, Informative)
AMD's cores (the compute engines inside a single chip package) are NOT connected by HT links. HT links are used for communication with devices OUTSIDE of the chip package, and run at a clockspeed much less than that of the core clock.
AMD's cores are connected by a full speed crossbar switch, much, MUCH faster than HT. Most people really don't get that HT is chip-to-chip or chip-to-chipset, and that AMD has a fullspeed crossbar in the die. To say it one more time: AMD's cores within the same chip are connected at full CPU speed, and every core is exactly two hops to another: core-to-switch-to-core.
Re: (Score:2)
486sx (Score:3, Interesting)
i believe instead they disable a not-quite-functional core from their quad-processor reject bin.
Ah, good old intel trick.
Back in the day, the 486 had a built in FPU (maths co-processor) which was expensive. The 486 could execute integer instructions about twice as fast at the same clock speed as the 386 (which didn't have a maths co-processor built in).
So, to compete with Apple, Atari (Falcon) and Acorn (Archimedes), intel launched the 486SX, which was a 486 with the broken maths co-processor disabled.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
For that matter, why would you suspect the rest might be dodgy? They've passed functional testing.
Re:3 cores sounds "wrong", but... (Score:5, Informative)
What's going on is out of 500 million transistors, perhaps ONE of them is defective. Whatever cache/core/etc that one transistor is in, is therefore useless. But in no way does this make the rest of the chip 'dodgy'.
Re: (Score:2)
I have no idea how they disable the 4th core, but there are plenty of good ways to do it so that it would cost more to re-enable it than to just buy the quad.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:3 cores sounds "wrong", but... (Score:5, Informative)
POWER4 - released in 2001, POWER4 is the first commercial multicore system with 2 cores per chip, and 8 cores per socket.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:3 cores sounds "wrong", but... (Score:4, Funny)
We call this formation the "flux capacitor."
Re:3 cores sounds "wrong", but... (Score:4, Funny)
A less rosy assessment (Score:2, Informative)
http://techreport.com/articles.x/14606
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
http://techreport.com/articles.x/14606 [techreport.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Ternary dreams (Score:2)
AMD does NOT want 3x cores to be too popular (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this might explain the pretty lackluster clockspeeds. Phenom has never clocked well, but when you can buy a 2.5Ghz quad core for not much more than the top of the line 2.4Ghz triple core, it's pretty clear AMD wants to unload these things, but not to make any big waves about it. If anything the triple cores ought to clock much higher and have substantially better power usage... but that is not the case.
Re:AMD does NOT want 3x cores to be too popular (Score:5, Informative)
Everyone already does that. That's one of the reasons that Celerons used to be so popular with the overclocker crowd. When Intel didn't have enough of one kind of Celeron but had too many of another, they would mark down the faster chips or disable some cache on a P3.
Due to yields, if you buy a slow processor there is a good chance that it is capable of running quite a bit faster. When you buy a top of the line processor, that's much less likely.
GPU makers have been known to do the same thing. I remember when you could flash a low end card (one of the GeForce 4s?) to be a more expensive one (more shaders) and you might end up with a working card (wasn't disabled due to errors, just to 'meet quota').
This is normal. If they didn't do this, people would have to buy the faster chips which would cause their price to drop.
Re:AMD does NOT want 3x cores to be too popular (Score:5, Informative)
That may have happened, but usually when chips are marked down it's because they didn't perform within specs in the higher slot. The fact that they don't show obvious problems in the hands of an overclocker doesn't mean they didn't meet the maker's QC cutoffs.
Re: (Score:2)
Right. It's rare that chips perform massively above their spec, or are disabled just for fun. Most of the time it's because they won't perform at that higher speed or have some other error (some bad cache). OCers do other mods to try to make things more stable (like run extra voltage through the chip, stronger cooling, etc). Without those changes the chips won't run faster without crashing noticeably often.
I was just trying to point out that this isn't something new that AMD invented to screw with people.
Re:AMD does NOT want 3x cores to be too popular (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:AMD does NOT want 3x cores to be too popular (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally, I would sell them at dual-core prices and get rid of the whole lot pronto.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
That is somewhat accurate for Marshall's but not for Kohl's. (Marshall's uses over-stocked / past-season merchandise - not so much flawed things)
Kohl's is pretty much a normal department store. They have decent prices, but nothing I would call 'deep discounts'. And they don't have 'slightly flawed merchandise' as a mainstay of their store. For those not familiar with Kohl's, it is trying
Stop the obsession with clock speed (Score:2)
Dangerous game? Prices are tweaked up and down to stimulate demand for various products. When you have to compete, you have to make tough decisions about products. AMD has been in business for a long time competing against bigger established chipmakers
Pricing... (Score:5, Informative)
Missed Marketing opportunity (Score:5, Funny)
I agree, if they were smart they would have called it the "Trinity" chip, stuck a cross logo on the box, and sold it to the same Christian Fundamentalists who read the Lost Behind novels.
A failed core goes from being a sign of bad engineering, to a sign from God.
Re: (Score:2)
Even better - engrave an image of the Virgin Mary onto the defective core. That way you can appeal to the catholics as well as the baptists.
Re:Missed Marketing opportunity (Score:5, Funny)
That's Left Behind. Lost Behind is the less successful spin-off where we discover that everybody who was carried off by the Rapture just got sent to a tropical island filled with Polar Bears.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I find that Christian Fundamentalists have no trouble finding their behinds since they spend a good portion of their
day with theirs heads up in it.
But what I think you were referring to was the Left Behind series of novels: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_Behind [wikipedia.org]
Not even God gets a 100% yield (Score:5, Funny)
That would be manufacturing not engineering, and no one gets 100% yields out of manufacturing. Not even God, look at the defect rate in his creation, human beings.
Jehovah or Neo (Score:4, Funny)
Which god, Jehovah (old testament) or Neo (The Matrix)? Matrix fanbois would probably be a more lucrative market. Use the name Trinity but make the CPU packaging a glossy black instead of matte black.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Jehovah or Neo (Score:5, Informative)
The speeds were in reality 333.33... and 666.66..., so simple rounding produces 333 and 667. Perhaps they were merely using better mathematics than when they named the 133 and 266.
Anything... (Score:5, Insightful)
After all, healthy competition keeps them honest, eh?
It's also greener (Score:3, Insightful)
And it is a greener strategy, less waste of resources and energy, so there are public relations and marketing benefits as well.
AM2+ vs AM2 (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
However, due to the lack of support of HyperTransport 3.0 and separated power planes in Socket AM2 motherboards, AM2+ chips will be limited to the specifications of Socket AM2 (HyperTransport 2.0 at the speed of 1 GHz, one power plane for both Cores and IMC).
Source: Wikipedia
Re:AM2+ vs AM2 (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Nit-picky beyond belief (Score:2)
More reviews that seem more correct (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?type=expert&aid=550&pid=2 [pcper.com]
http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/14606 [techreport.com]
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/04/23/amd_phenom_x3_8750/1 [bit-tech.net]
this review seems to summarize it well. (Score:3, Interesting)
'I can't help but think this all must have looked different on AMD's roadmap when it was first being put together. I doubt they expected that the fastest Phenom would only run at 2.4GHz and, in doing so, would only just match the Core 2 Quad Q6600--an older product on the way out, replaced by the Core 2 Quad Q9300. That's the reality, though, and it's constrained AMD's pricing so much that the top Phenom quad core is $235. The compression through the rest of the
Seem is the operative word (Score:2)
Did you read them? (Score:2)
PC architecture review? (Score:2)
Wouldn't it be better to spend some research resources into a new PC architecture with things like crossbars [wikipedia.org] in order to really exploit all those parallel CPU cycles?
Re:PC architecture review? (Score:4, Informative)
Contrast with Intel's "solution" which involves two sets or north and south bridges. Hardly elegant, and fails to expose the NUMA properties that the north bridges mitigate between one another.
Once AMD gets the clockspeed bit tuned in, I expect Phenoms to hit the high-performance market like a bar of soap in a sock. HPC likes memory bandwidth, but they like low memory latency even more and that's where AMD has Intel by the goolies. (ever wonder why even Athlon X2s hold their own in game benchmarks? doesn't matter how many gigahertz there are in the chip, games have datasets far larger than that 6-meg L2 cache.)
TechReport's review (Score:2)
Is their yield that bad? (Score:2)
Is AMD having fab problems?
There are real 3-CPU parts. The XBox 360 has one; three PowerPC CPUs share a cache. The chip layout [ibm.com] is four quadrants, three with CPUs and one with the L2 cache.
Re: (Score:2)
Intel (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
If I were building a computer from scratch, it'd be a core 2 quad all the way.
Re: [AC]Intel (Score:2)
DDR2 vs DDR3 (Score:2, Interesting)
Selling crippled processors is old school (Score:2, Interesting)
I also have a couple laptops with the fully functional coprocessors. They are early tablet PCs with b/w pen-sensitive screens, and actually can do handwriting recognition with a 486DX running at a screaming 25 mhz. I might go downstairs and fire one up just for the nostalgia of it. Last I checked, they still worked.
Why do you care if they are failed quad-cores? (Score:5, Insightful)
less heat? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3293&p=9 [anandtech.com]
You'll see that the X3 produces 20W more heat under load than a Q6600, which is a *much* higher performing part. Then you can look at this:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3272&p=5 [anandtech.com]
Which shows that the Q9300 (in stock right now) performs better and consumes a lot less than the Q6600 again, albeit at a higher price. In short, they're fighting a
Re: (Score:2)
If I could remember anything about maths I could probably give you a more precise number
Re:where is the power of two (Score:5, Funny)
Re:where is the power of two (Score:5, Funny)
They're the 89.7597399923's to me. I still have an original Pentium P54C.
Re:where is the power of two (Score:5, Funny)
I have been doing logs since I started eating solid food.
It's log, it's log... (Score:4, Funny)
Manufacturing perspective: 4 - 1 (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't look at it from a marketing perspective, look at it from a manufacturing perspective. It is not a 3, it is a 4 - 1. A quad core with one broken core.
To AMD fanboi's who are reading, take a breath and do not interpret the above as an attack on AMD. This is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, why waste the three good cores and all the energy, time, and resources that went into producing them. Disable the failed core and sell the part as a trio at a disco
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why doesn't Intel (Score:4, Insightful)
Intel doesn't fabricate quad core processors - they only make single and dual core chips. They may well be selling bad dual cores as single core processors (or not), but their chips are tested well before two dual cores get glued together into a quad core so they don't have the same situation that makes triple-core make sense for AMD.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Please someone explain (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
The 3-core AMD CPU works perfectly well under any load.
That's not what TechReport says:
Three cores is weird There, I've said it. You know you were thinking it. We're modern folks, open to many possibilities in life, including this one. But three cores is just plain weird. You will need to know this before making the decision to drop a Phenom X3 into your own computer. Dude. Three. This weirdness manifests itself in several ways. Although many of the applications we use for CPU testing had no trouble recognizing the X3's triple cores and putting them to good use, some did. Several SiSoft Sandra modules lost bladder control when asked to quantify the performance of a tri-core processor and simply refused to run. Microsoft's Windows Media Encoder pegged the X3 at 67% utilization and would go no further; two cores were all it would use. Even the 32-bit versions of Windows Vista apparently have trouble recognizing odd numbers of CPU cores. Already, updates are becoming available to fix some of these problems, but owners of Phenom X3s are bound to run into such issues over the next little while as software developers adjust to unconventional core counts.
Emphasis added.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, the quoted text from TechReport doesn't say anything about how well the CPU works. It suggests that some applications were coded with performance hacks for two- or four-core systems and didn't deal too well with having three.
If the CPU executed faulty instructions, caused system crashes or failed to divide 4195835.0 by 3145727.0 properly then you could say that the CPU was not "working perfectly well". If causing Windows Vista to "have trouble" was a sign of a CPU not working then you would have much
Re: (Score:2)
In most cases, the failures like that are lack of imagination in the software design. There are some apps that genuinely do need the thread count to be a power of 2, but even there, there is some value on a typical PC to having a 3rd core taking care of everything else while the app runs on 2 out of 3 or 4 out of 6 cores.
Better density with powers of 2 (Score:2)
I'm a software guy who is guessing, but I expect that it has something to do with the density of circuits on a manufacturing wafer. Square or rectangular layouts may be more natural than other geometrically tight fitting shapes such as triangles or hexagons. If so, powers of two help preserve that geometry. A linear geometry, adding each core in a line, would technically preserve a rectangular geometry but the length of the "wires" is inefficient.