I will wait to see if it is a worthwhile upgrade before even considering it. Previous articles listed these chips at quite an expense. While it may be worth whatever price they give it, I still think that Steamroller will be money better spent for my applications. It's just wait and see for me.
Perhaps someone can explain why this is important? I thought the industry was looking for cooler, more efficient processors and the speedrace was essentially over, so I'm a bit confused with the announcement.
If I read correctly Anand said the cost would be around $200 which is within my price range for a new piledriver. Rumor was that the TDP was at 220W but that sounds far fetched.
If I read correctly Anand said the cost would be around $200 which is within my price range for a new piledriver. Rumor was that the TDP was at 220W but that sounds far fetched.
Yeah, I'm not really buying that TDP. I fully expect it to be well above 125W, but 220 sounds like a recipe for toasted silicon.
I would also expect these to be packaged with an AMD-branded water cooler or a note saying "DON'T USE THE STOCK COOLERS"
I dunno.... the 5GHz speed is top turbo mode which, IIRC, is only achieved when it shuts down a bunch of the cores and overclocks the remaining ones. Wouldn't that help keep the heat down as well?
Yes, that's one of the reasons it's done that way. Helps keep the advertised thermal and power numbers down a bit.
My guess: If AMD says a single module can handle 5GHz, all four of them will be able to do it simultaneously, given a sufficient aftermarket cooler - air or water.
I hope to get a review unit when they become available. Failing that, I could see purchasing one for the lulz.
I don't imagine AMD will package a cooler standard. Maybe a special edition with a closed water cooler?
I would think that anyone purchasing this CPU isn't going to be upgrading their cheaply sourced components. It should be priced way out of that market's budget. If you paid $600 for your entire system there's no way a $200+ CPU would be appealing.
If a cooler is included, I bet it'll be the same package as the liquid cooled FX-8150. Probably with a similar price.
AMD TurboCore does not require cores X number of cores to be disabled to hit a prescribed frequency. It's not like Intel turbo with its (e.g.) 3/2/1 multiplier thresholds.
In other news, to answer @nights, PC gaming is a $40,000,000,000 industry. You don't play high-end games on ULV CPUs. Performance requires frequency, cores, threads, etc.
AMD is trying to make up for lack of efficiency with speed, like in the early Pentium 4 days when the 3.06 Ghz was the uber-pwns CPU.
This 5 Ghz unit that can probably only do the full 5.0 Ghz on one or 2 cores is like putting a 10 speed bike in low gear and trying to go fast by pedaling like a maniac. Not efficient.
In other words, AMD, you are embarrassing yourself. I will not be surprised if this new CPU can't clearly beat an i5.
The above bike reference made me think of a bike I built a long time ago. It was a 20 inch bike with the curved tubes for its frame, the long 1970's style banana seat, high rise handlebars, a set of 13 inch stroke cranks off a 10 speed bike, and low 36/19 gearing. And it was about 6 different colors. It could torque its way up a hill without even having to stand up on the pedals, and could pop wheelies under power easily, but keeping up with other kids on their bikes took some work and a lot of pedaling. I forget what ever happened to that bike.
AMD is trying to make up for lack of efficiency with speed, like in the early Pentium 4 days when the 3.06 Ghz was the uber-pwns CPU.
This 5 Ghz unit that can probably only do the full 5.0 Ghz on one or 2 cores is like putting a 10 speed bike in low gear and trying to go fast by pedaling like a maniac. Not efficient.
In other words, AMD, you are embarrassing yourself. I will not be surprised if this new CPU can't clearly beat an i5.
The above bike reference made me think of a bike I built a long time ago. It was a 20 inch bike with the curved tubes for its frame, the long 1970's style banana seat, high rise handlebars, a set of 13 inch stroke cranks off a 10 speed bike, and low 36/19 gearing. And it was about 6 different colors. It could torque its way up a hill without even having to stand up on the pedals, and could pop wheelies under power easily, but keeping up with other kids on their bikes took some work and a lot of pedaling. I forget what ever happened to that bike.
Sure this is a marketing tactic for AMD to attempt to change moral, momentum, and coarse. And I think it may just be worth the wait to see what these chips cost and how they perform before judging. I guess that's easy for me to say since I already run an FX-8350 at 4500mhz ON 8 CORES 24/7 running Folding @ Home, AutoCAD, Hawken, etc .... All I have to do is continue my watercooling upgrade as originally planned, drop in an FX-9000, and apply TIM. It doesn't require an expensice annual chipset & motherboard renewal.
Since AMD is currently employing some of the highest and most respected and accomplished talents in the industry, I certainly believe that they deserve the benefit of the doubt to produce a product that is even somewhat competitive to the current market, despite Zambezi. Let's face it, we already know what they have to work with and it seems they are doing the best they can to resuscitate the K10 core architecture and move it forward.
These processors will only begin going out to systems integrators so they shouldn't show up at Newegg for a while now. It may pan out, and yet it just remains to be seen.
Looks like the 220W TDP is true. I'm a couple parts short of having a water cooling build for the AMD system. Might be a good time to start looking for a pump and radiator.
Let's face it, we already know what they have to work with and it seems they are doing the best they can to resuscitate the K10 core architecture and move it forward.
Maybe I should have said K15. Idunno the K models anymore.
I take exception to the "the world's first commercially available 5 GHz CPU processor" claim. IBM's POWER6 CPU hit 5GHz in May of 2008, and that's standard clock, not turbo-core.
Not saying this isn't cool (Tom's Hardware-type sites were pumping to 5GHz using cryo-cooling, but now we're doing this on air), but the claim in the press release is blatantly false.
OK, maybe more along the lines of first available to Joe Consumer. I don't think POWER6 was available to buy outside of a system, at least not for normal users.
I was going to lay off the IBM issue with it since half of the stuff written about AMD's proc mixes in that is the first AMD 5GHz processor, some times.
mertesn you can buy systems with unpopulated sockets so the processors are sold individually but they are IBM processors thus not useful outside of enterprise based environments.
mertesn you can buy systems with unpopulated sockets so the processors are sold individually but they are IBM processors thus not useful outside of enterprise based environments.
Comments
I would also expect these to be packaged with an AMD-branded water cooler or a note saying "DON'T USE THE STOCK COOLERS"
My guess: If AMD says a single module can handle 5GHz, all four of them will be able to do it simultaneously, given a sufficient aftermarket cooler - air or water.
I hope to get a review unit when they become available. Failing that, I could see purchasing one for the lulz.
I don't imagine AMD will package a cooler standard. Maybe a special edition with a closed water cooler?
If a cooler is included, I bet it'll be the same package as the liquid cooled FX-8150. Probably with a similar price.
In other news, to answer @nights, PC gaming is a $40,000,000,000 industry. You don't play high-end games on ULV CPUs. Performance requires frequency, cores, threads, etc.
No, I do not know the TDP of this part.
//edit: accidentally some zeroes
This 5 Ghz unit that can probably only do the full 5.0 Ghz on one or 2 cores is like putting a 10 speed bike in low gear and trying to go fast by pedaling like a maniac. Not efficient.
In other words, AMD, you are embarrassing yourself. I will not be surprised if this new CPU can't clearly beat an i5.
The above bike reference made me think of a bike I built a long time ago. It was a 20 inch bike with the curved tubes for its frame, the long 1970's style banana seat, high rise handlebars, a set of 13 inch stroke cranks off a 10 speed bike, and low 36/19 gearing. And it was about 6 different colors. It could torque its way up a hill without even having to stand up on the pedals, and could pop wheelies under power easily, but keeping up with other kids on their bikes took some work and a lot of pedaling. I forget what ever happened to that bike.
Since AMD is currently employing some of the highest and most respected and accomplished talents in the industry, I certainly believe that they deserve the benefit of the doubt to produce a product that is even somewhat competitive to the current market, despite Zambezi. Let's face it, we already know what they have to work with and it seems they are doing the best they can to resuscitate the K10 core architecture and move it forward.
These processors will only begin going out to systems integrators so they shouldn't show up at Newegg for a while now. It may pan out, and yet it just remains to be seen.
Not saying this isn't cool (Tom's Hardware-type sites were pumping to 5GHz using cryo-cooling, but now we're doing this on air), but the claim in the press release is blatantly false.
mertesn you can buy systems with unpopulated sockets so the processors are sold individually but they are IBM processors thus not useful outside of enterprise based environments.
Sounds inefficient to me. It will probably need a special motherboard design just to feed it 220 watts. And run hot.