AMD FX 4350 a true Quad Core?

[briguyy]

Hi, I just purchased a Fx 4350 "Quad Core" CPU and it shows up everywhere as "Quad Core" except in task manager and a couple benchmarking tools where it says 2 cores 4 threads, is this supposed to be or did i get a dud?

 

[caddi daddi]

that's how they show up, 2 cores are paired in a module and share a few things, a 4 core is 2 modules, a six core is 3 modules and an 8 core is 4 modules.

 

[Blaylock]

Hmm that's odd. Caddi is correct 2 module - 4 core. But CPU-Z should still show 4 core - 4 thread.

Here's my FX 4130
http://hwbot.org/submission/2751995_blaylock_hwbot_prime_fx_4130_3149.28_pps

and someone else's Validation of an FX4350

http://valid.x86.fr/unlvtt

 

[briguyy]

that's how they show up, 2 cores are paired in a module and share a few things, a 4 core is 2 modules, a six core is 3 modules and an 8 core is 4 modules.

Thanks for clearing that up and explaining it. I could have been sure though that my Phenom II x4 955 always showed up as 4 cores.

 

[Kenrou]

Ripping this from another thread (same thing for all 4***, 6***, 8***, 9***), please correct if it's wrong :

"It's not a simple answer. Yes, the FX-4350 does have 4 cores, but each of the cores shares resources with another core. Therefore, one core can be waiting while the other core is busy using those shared resources. The FX-4350 has 2 modules each of them contains two cores and the shared resources.

The shared resources includes the prefetching module, decoding units, a floating point unit and the L2 cache. This design approach is better than Hyper Threading because HT only "creates" virtual cores. Simply stated, the virtual cores shares resources with the physical core much like how every two physical cores shares resources in the FX-4350.

The problem with the FX-4350 is that they process less data/instructions per 1MHz than any processor in the Core i3/i5/i7 series. Therefore, an AMD FX series CPU has to be clocked higher in order to perform as well as their competition."

 

[trents]

Thanks for clearing that up and explaining it. I could have been sure though that my Phenom II x4 955 always showed up as 4 cores.

Yes, it did. But the architecture was different and it showed up as four true core modules instead of two modules and four threads.

You see similar things in the intel i3 and i7 series with HT technology that gives you twice as many threads as cores.

 

[MaddMutt]

This has been debated since BD first came out. An Overclocker "CHEW" got a chance to play with the BD before it was released. At that time, he set a World Record by taking the 8150 to 8.1xGHz. When the NDA lifted on the BD, he made a statement about his time with the BD. He said that "Calling the BD an 8 Core chip was PR by AMD, it's better to think of it as a 4 Core 8 Thread chip.

So you have some NEWER software that lists BD/PD as 2c/4t, 3c/6t, 4c/8t and some current/older software that lists them as 4c/4t, 6c/6t, 8c/8t.

 

[Johan45]

A module is two compute cores sharing a scheduler. Unlike intel that will run two threads though one core simultaneously. To me that a big difference between threads and cores. This has been hashed and rehashed. Guess it depends on your definition of what a "core" is. In my view each side of that module is a seperate processing core. There were many things that affected the performance of the module. Design wasn't the only factor.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

Hi, I just purchased a Fx 4350 "Quad Core" CPU and it shows up everywhere as "Quad Core" except in task manager and a couple benchmarking tools where it says 2 cores 4 threads, is this supposed to be or did i get a dud?

Interestingly, Windows 8x and 10 will say 2 cores and 4 threads like a Core i3 3225. And an FX 8350 looks like a 4790K to Task Manager of Windows 8x and 10.

 

[ShrimpBrime]

It's 4 integer and 2 FPU. Simple as that. 4 real x86 integer cores. FPU does not count as X86 integer core.

First processors ever made did not have FPU and was still a core.

 

[Bluefalcon13]

So if you recall, many moons ago, there was performance issues due to the Win7 scheduler loading up processes on the same module. The work around MS did was to treat ever second core as a virtual core, so the windows scheduler would load only one core per module first. This eliminated some of the problems with the shared resources between cores on a module.

 

[saturn]

If I recall the FX cpu's have a core for each thread, but only one FPU for every 2 cores.

 

[Johan45]

It's 4 integer and 2 FPU. Simple as that. 4 real x86 integer cores. FPU does not count as X86 integer core.

First processors ever made did not have FPU and was still a core.

If I recall the FX cpu's have a core for each thread, but only one FPU for every 2 cores.

 

[ShrimpBrime]

To answer the question more directly for people, it IS a true quad core. It just lacks 2 FPU units.


floating point calculations are done with software, which takes more processor time but avoids the need of extra hardware.

So the software program MUST make use of FPU instructions.

Still a quad. Even if it had NO FPU units available. It just wouldn't be able to process FPU instructions.