Ethan McKinney in Products on June 07
Until 2005, AMD and Intel were caught up in what we generally referred to as the gigahertz race. We are going to see both CPU manufacturers picking up clock speeds again and surpass the magic 4 GHz limit before the end of the year.
AMD today reanimated its desktop processor enthusiast brand FX, which died several years ago – pretty much with the disastrous dual-socket Quad FX platform that consisted of two Athlon 64 FX processors and brought bunsen burner heat to desktop PCs. AMD will be releasing socket AM3+ FX processors code-named Zambezi in the third quarter of the year and will be challenging Intel in the higher-end mainstream processor segment.
AMD will be offering Zambezi as quad-core (FX-4000 series), hexa-core (FX-6000) as well as native octo-core (FX-8000) processors. There has been no specific announcement of processors so far, but AMD confirmed to us that it will be hitting base processor speeds in the “mid 3s” with turbo speeds reaching “about 1 GHz higher”. The Internet rumor mill currently lists the FX-8150P as the proposed top model with a base speed of 4 GHz and a turbo mode at 4.4 GHz, while even the base octo-core 8100 will scale from 3.5 GHz to 3.9 GHz. The power envelope will remain at 95 W to 125 W.
So, how much performance can you expect from such processors? AMD told us that it will be “competitive”, but declined to mention specifics. The company confirmed that it will be pricing these processors “very aggressively” and it appeared that the target is Intel’s upper i7 range, which would include the hexa-core (12 threads) i7-970 (3.2 GHz) and the quad-core (8 threads) i7-2600K (3.4 GHz) – which are tray-priced at $583 and $317, respectively. We would expect the FX series to top out in the mid- to high 300s.
We were told that there will be no $1000 AMD desktop processor and a spokesman noted that it is “laughable” that Intel still believes that there is a market for such CPUs. What kept us wondering is the fact that AMD is anticipating a 1 GHz turbo improvement over the base processor speed. If the unconfirmed 4 GHz chip will, in fact, be marketed from the start, there is a slight chance that AMD will be approaching 5 GHz next year.
Do we care? Sure. The desktop processor has been commoditized, confusing sequence numbers have diluted previous excitement for these processors. Even if more gigahertz do not necessarily make a better processor, we believe that it can be a marketing tool again to build enthusiasm for desktop processors again – in a time when mobile computing is threatening to push the desktop PC into a niche. AMD will still be marketing FX as a platform deal, which includes its chipsets and graphics solutions. The FX Scorpius platform will be rolled out with 9-series chipset motherboards as well as Radeon HD6000 graphics cards.
publish in ConceivablyTech
Until 2005, AMD and Intel were caught up in what we generally referred to as the gigahertz race. We are going to see both CPU manufacturers picking up clock speeds again and surpass the magic 4 GHz limit before the end of the year.
AMD will be offering Zambezi as quad-core (FX-4000 series), hexa-core (FX-6000) as well as native octo-core (FX-8000) processors. There has been no specific announcement of processors so far, but AMD confirmed to us that it will be hitting base processor speeds in the “mid 3s” with turbo speeds reaching “about 1 GHz higher”. The Internet rumor mill currently lists the FX-8150P as the proposed top model with a base speed of 4 GHz and a turbo mode at 4.4 GHz, while even the base octo-core 8100 will scale from 3.5 GHz to 3.9 GHz. The power envelope will remain at 95 W to 125 W.
So, how much performance can you expect from such processors? AMD told us that it will be “competitive”, but declined to mention specifics. The company confirmed that it will be pricing these processors “very aggressively” and it appeared that the target is Intel’s upper i7 range, which would include the hexa-core (12 threads) i7-970 (3.2 GHz) and the quad-core (8 threads) i7-2600K (3.4 GHz) – which are tray-priced at $583 and $317, respectively. We would expect the FX series to top out in the mid- to high 300s.
We were told that there will be no $1000 AMD desktop processor and a spokesman noted that it is “laughable” that Intel still believes that there is a market for such CPUs. What kept us wondering is the fact that AMD is anticipating a 1 GHz turbo improvement over the base processor speed. If the unconfirmed 4 GHz chip will, in fact, be marketed from the start, there is a slight chance that AMD will be approaching 5 GHz next year.
Do we care? Sure. The desktop processor has been commoditized, confusing sequence numbers have diluted previous excitement for these processors. Even if more gigahertz do not necessarily make a better processor, we believe that it can be a marketing tool again to build enthusiasm for desktop processors again – in a time when mobile computing is threatening to push the desktop PC into a niche. AMD will still be marketing FX as a platform deal, which includes its chipsets and graphics solutions. The FX Scorpius platform will be rolled out with 9-series chipset motherboards as well as Radeon HD6000 graphics cards.
publish in ConceivablyTech
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