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AMD Delays Release of Quad-Core Athlon II.

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Phenom II based with cut down L3 is risky. A major reason for Phenom II improvement was the additional L3 cache. I'd be worried that a low L3 cache quad core would just be excess power draw and heat for no reason. Don't kid yourselves, even some enthusiasts care about that stuff and there are whole sites of 'enthusiasts' who like low power with good performance (SPCR.)

Do we really need cheaper quads just for the sake of being cheaper? They are already pretty darn affordable.
 
The fact is no games use 4 cores and even if they did, GPU is the bottleneck at high resolutions/AA/ect.
If you want a super budget gaming rig, dual core is fine. But old X2's are slower than core 2 duo's, these new ones will be able to hang.
 
Phenom II based with cut down L3 is risky. A major reason for Phenom II improvement was the additional L3 cache. I'd be worried that a low L3 cache quad core would just be excess power draw and heat for no reason. Don't kid yourselves, even some enthusiasts care about that stuff and there are whole sites of 'enthusiasts' who like low power with good performance (SPCR.)

Do we really need cheaper quads just for the sake of being cheaper? They are already pretty darn affordable.
Yes! The OEM market will eat them up just because they are cheaper, which either makes the machine cheaper to sell or the profit margin higher. For OEM's that's good business. And the power consumption isn't that much of an issue, if anything less L3 will result in less power usage. Already the Phenom II's are competing well in power efficiency and CnQ & C1E will take care of the rest ...
 
yay phenom x2 soon!

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no crap they pushed the dual core i want back to june. crappy

I am glad I am not the only one who noticed it.

Kinda funny how they work.
We push back few products half a year, but we launch these duals in June. Hey weren't those supposed to come out 2 months earlier ?

I think the Athlon 2 was pushed back to launch about the same time as I5.
Ever since I heard about the dualcore nehas been looking forward to the benches between the two, seems AMD aims them against dual nehas, will be the most interesting battle of marches this year.
 
why would AMD try and release their duals at the same time as intel's? thats suicide? shouldnt they just beat them to it.

No they put the L3 less quads against Intel's dual I5s which have HT, price, performance and power consumption of these different solutions sound very interesting to me.
The duals will be AMD's new bottom feeders tiny and cheap.

I would say they call it Athlon 2 to match Phenom 2.
 
For the looks of it I just have to wonder if AMD is going for a one size fits all die?? It seems that the 1 meg L2 duals must be a modified core or are the starting a modular design and................never mind I don't think they are smart enough for that.
 
Actually that might be real, not really modular design but still a good idea. Because the cache is between the cores, on the native duals they leave the cache of the two removed core so they double the cache for those duals.

From ground up modular design will be Bulldozer but the mobile line might come first those are much more in need of a refresh than their desktops.

I am quite certain I will pick up one, for the price it will be fun.

Another thing I just read that the Istanbul will be an upgraded design of K10.5 with better power savings not just 2 additional cores, it might trickle down to these new cpus which could also explain the delay.
 
The fact is no games use 4 cores and even if they did, GPU is the bottleneck at high resolutions/AA/ect.
If you want a super budget gaming rig, dual core is fine. But old X2's are slower than core 2 duo's, these new ones will be able to hang.

facts are wrong, a few games do use quad cores and well, team fortress 2 and left 4 dead are 2 popular ones, with my Q9650 and 4850 running 1920 x 1080, i get upto about %80 cpu usage with Tf2 more often then not.

Games are going with more cores period, buying a dual core now for gaming, i see no point, buy a cheap quad and overclock it to 3Ghz and your golden and will last a little longer when more and more games use more and more cores as they already have started to.
 
OK, so is this what we have left in the 'upcoming' stable-:

K10.5 = Phenom II
------------
Deneb(X4) 925,945,955 --> April 09
Heka(X3) 7XX----> ???
Callisto(X2) 5XX ------> May 09

K10.5 without L3 = Athlon II
-----------
Propus(X4) ------> Delayed
Rana? (X3) ------> Delayed
Regor(X2) ------> June 09 (target computex with RS880)

Chipsets
-----------
RD890 (aka RD790+ / replaces 790FX) -------> Second Half 09
RS880D (aka RS780D+/ replaces 790GX) --------> Second Half 09
RS880 (aka RS780+/replaces 780G) --------> June 09
MCP82XE (aka 980a SLI) -------> March 09 :-/

The chipsets are only indicated to be minor clock improvements that add improved CFX support, that would be disappointing,:( but since they dont have the MCH anymore what more to ask :beer: . I dont think chipsets are something to wait for, if we can find high clocking chips right now ;)
 
A modular design would be cost effective and MORE VERSATILE than just cutting off cores the possibilities are limitless with one base die design. This disabled crap may be a good thing in the end as it may lead to a flex design concept in which cores can be cut and caches combined or split or halved ............ you get the picture. A way to use all of what is there neede to be implemented ?reserve registers? redirect commands? offloading through HW to a sud processing unit? the registers are there tha pipes are open if the core is not up to spec hardwire the CPU to offload to a slower locked core when load reaches XX% of core max load.
 
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A modular design would be cost effective and MORE VERSATILE than just cutting off cores the possibilities are limitless with one base die design. This disabled crap may be a good thing in the end as it may lead to a flex design concept in which cores can be cut and caches combined or split or halved ............ you get the picture.

The L2 less duals are native. No disabled crap, that's why they can launch them sooner than the quads and the triples.
Exactly as you would like it, they took the quad kept the L2 of the 3rd and fourth core, but removed the cores (will not take up die space) so this way the dual will have twice the cache of the L3less triplcecore and quadcore. This is how I imagine they will make the modular designin the future, they skew the die space so one cpu ends up with less modules while the other more and this can be adjusted wiith relative ease compared to current cache and core salvaging.
That's why I said it is nicely done.
 
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A modular design would be cost effective and MORE VERSATILE than just cutting off cores the possibilities are limitless with one base die design. This disabled crap may be a good thing in the end as it may lead to a flex design concept in which cores can be cut and caches combined or split or halved ............ you get the picture. A way to use all of what is there neede to be implemented ?reserve registers? redirect commands? offloading through HW to a sud processing unit? the registers are there tha pipes are open if the core is not up to spec hardwire the CPU to offload to a slower locked core when load reaches XX% of core max load.

Like an X3.5 :D

Cost is the major factor and transfer speeds are the other. Could they produce a modular core die, sure but not with an evil beast breathing down your neck. On that X3.5, you have a point, why not just release the X3s with the lame core running in low gear.

The whole pardigm needs to shift and get away from X86 and go with one of the cell designs. Sure a few programs run on quads but how many titles are available in scaleable threads? Also consider the trend to "boxes" that has just about decimated the PC game market.

AMD will soon drop the TDP on the quads and up the speed, we know that's coming. I'll get one of the newer low power AM3s and a mobo later when the timing is right. I may also get a dual if it will run in a AM2+ board.
 
The fact is no games use 4 cores and even if they did, GPU is the bottleneck at high resolutions/AA/ect.
If you want a super budget gaming rig, dual core is fine. But old X2's are slower than core 2 duo's, these new ones will be able to hang.

Fact is there ARE games that use 4 cores :)


GTAIV

Yee old FSX (with patch)

Crysis

SupCom

And I think WIC

Just to name a few. Some use 100% of all 4 cores, others see limited usage of 3rd or 4th core.

There are games being released this year that will also benefit from a quadcore.
 
There have been a couple of people who have unlocked the 4th core only to lock it back up again due to instability. Even running a slow 4th core the CPU either isn't stable even at stock or won't OC as high with the 4th core enabled. I know of at least one example where the 4th core was clocked clear down to 1 GHz (AOD) and was still causing problems. Yes, there have been some success stories from the unlocked core but there are also plenty of disasters.


On the subject of games v quad - it's only a matter of time. One only needs to look back to threads posted three years ago to see similar discussions and opinions about dual core v single core. See any singles out there today? That's where duals will be in another couple of years ...
 
There have been a couple of people who have unlocked the 4th core only to lock it back up again due to instability. Even running a slow 4th core the CPU either isn't stable even at stock or won't OC as high with the 4th core enabled. I know of at least one example where the 4th core was clocked clear down to 1 GHz (AOD) and was still causing problems. Yes, there have been some success stories from the unlocked core but there are also plenty of disasters ...

Although this may be true you would think that if it runs, the faulty registers or other weak points could be identified, compared to other faulty cores find similarities or even a common fault, chunk the outliers, make some mods (perhaps the SIMD registers have a fault) and wa-la dual core with 2 sub-offload cores.
 
FSX blows as far as multi core support goes. Even with the patch installed, I only see 1, and half of a second core getting any usage when monitoring with task manager. Same goes for crysis. Love both games though.

I think if you had a "3.5" core, that would actually be slower than having a full blown triple, because of how windows balances out the load, some of the demand would be getting sent to the slower "4th" core.
 
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