thorton

[snvpa]

anyone know when the thorton's will start to appear.

[Josebmw]

I would guess close to the Athlon 64 launch. The thing that I do not understand is that, they will run at the same frequency and speed ratings as a 2000+, 2200+ and 2400+, the consumers wont see a difference. I guess AMD wants to make these their low end chips and the Athlon 64, of course high end.

[AKULA]

I thought a Thortons where just Barton with 1/2 the L2 cache turned off and sold under the tbred-B name?

[c627627]

Link:

Athlon FX a.k.a.Thorton, unlike T-Bred, will have "Barton grade processor modules without extra L2 cache." (http://forum.oc-forums.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=213004)

[Josebmw]

Yes, even so, to a consumer there is no difference. The only difference is overclocking ability of these chips.

[snvpa]

makes sense guys thatnks for the input. I'll be interested to see the if there is any increase in oc ability over the current tbred b's due to the increse in die arear and hence increase in cooling efficiency.

[Shade00]

By the time we see the Athlon FX the Barton production lines should be well enough into production to be turning out high grade chips. So hopefully we'll see some good speeds coming out of those chips; let's hope for AMD's sake that the cores are able to go further than the current Tbred-Bs.

[IR1]

Why name it the Athlon FX there is already Nvidia with their FX... they want people to think "damn I got a GFX 5200 so I gotta gets me a Athlon FX cause they would be more compatible and faster."

Enough with the FX already, 3dfx is already 6 feet under... it doesnt need its name driven any deeper into the ground!

[c627627]

I think it's a good thing overall because Athlon FX 2000+ will tell you straight up that it is a 2000+ Thorton chip. If it weren't for the FX, you would have to guess whether it's a Palomino, T-Bred A, T-Bred B, or a Thorton. FX makes it clear that it's a Thorton.

Choosing 'FX' as the name though was less than smart. Do they want us to associate FX with that major nVidia marketing screw-over? (http://forum.oc-forums.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=196482)

[Josebmw]

Most likely, AMD and nvidia are large partners...."XP" Xtreme Performance "FX" no idea.

[altec]

I think that like some other members said, the Thorton will be released when the Athlon 64 is close to or has been released. The Thorton is supposed to take over the lower end market, and will hopefully overclock as well as the Barton cores and the thoroughbred B cores. This way they can make Barton's, Athlon 64's, and Opteron's. For the lower end Thorton CPU'sm all they will have to do is diable half of the Barton's L2 cache and put it on the market. In other words it will save tem some money in production because it will save them from having to make two seperate cores for the Barton and Thoroughbred. Hope that makes sense. :D

[c627627]

Yes but I still don't understand why is it going to be impossible to re-enable the other half of cache with a mod.

[altec]

Who says it will be? I bet there will be some way to get around the disabled cache...it will just be a matter of figuring it out.

[snvpa]

It will also be reliant upon the extra cache being good. will probably be like the soft mod for 9500 np some times it works because the pipes are usabnle and just disabled. sometimes they are unusable.