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."
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: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.
Anything... (Score:5, Insightful)
After all, healthy competition keeps them honest, eh?
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.
Re:3 cores sounds "wrong", but... (Score:3, Insightful)
For that matter, why would you suspect the rest might be dodgy? They've passed functional testing.
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.
Why do you care if they are failed quad-cores? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:3 cores sounds "wrong", but... (Score:5, Insightful)
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 discount relative to the quad.
I'm having flashbacks to the original Pentium, where a production line manufactured 120 MHz CPUs but when packaged the CPUs could be 75, 90, or 120 MHz. Some 75s were CPUs that failed at 120 and 90 but passed at 75, but many were good 120s that shipped as 75s because all the 120 orders were filled and 75 orders were pending. Hence the legendary overclocking of the 75. I wonder if dual cores will someday follow a similar pattern. The production line manufactures quads but they are packaged as quads or duos depending on testing and orders to be filled.
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.
Re:Please someone explain (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 bigger problems than just this.
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:AMD does NOT want 3x cores to be too popular (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 to fit somewhere between higher end department stores (Macy's, Nordstrom, etc.) and Target/Walmart.
I think outlet malls are really where people expect deep discounts on slightly flawed merchandise.
there's not a terribly good reason for anyone to buy one.
If they price it between dual-core and quad-core, it will be marketable IMO.
Personally, I would sell them at dual-core prices and get rid of the whole lot pronto.
Sell them at dual-core prices, and you will get orders for them instead of for dual-core.
This business isn't a retail shop where you can say "if it's not on the floor we don't have it - sorry"
Dell/IBM/HP/whoever orders thousands of these months in advance.
Why would their purchasers order dual-cores if they can get better specs for the same price?
So now AMD has to use fab capacity for quad-core chips instead of dual-core chips. And that would create significant increase in their costs.
I would expect that AMD has someone looking at models of demand vs price points and what their yields are and making a pricing decision that they think makes them the most money. That might be high enough that they wind up with a little extra supply of 3core rejects than just don't get sold. Or it might be low enough that they have to make some perfectly good 4-core into 3-core. (I'd bet on the latter - they'll probably have only a little demand for quad-core, and they expect more demand for 3core - but the natural production is probably the reverse of that.)
Re:AMD does NOT want 3x cores to be too popular (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:you can buy one today (Score:1, Insightful)
This is not really true. Unless the games/apps have been written to take advantage of the 6 other cores (SPEs), then they will not use them, everything will run on the PPE, including the OS.
Re:3 cores sounds "wrong", but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:3 cores sounds "wrong", but... (Score:4, Insightful)