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AMD Launches Athlon 64 FX-57
Kez writes "Today AMD release what could be the fastest x86 processor to date. The FX-57 is the first 90nm Athlon 64 FX from AMD, clocked to 2.8GHz, with 1MiB of L2 cache and support for SSE3. The memory controller has also been tweaked to support mismatched memory module sizes - something some enthusiasts have been crying out for. Hexus.net reviews the new processor, which, in gaming benchmarks, walks all over any of Intel's offerings." There's going to be plenty of reviews I'm sure - if you've found other links, please post them below.
I've been looking to upgrade (just buying a new mb/cpu/ram combo), but which processor is which out of MANCHESTER, CLAWHAMMER, SAND DIEGO, VENICE, and WINCHESTER??
C:\>
AMD only have about 15% of the market after beating Intel numerious of time tell you how smart the general public are.
Did you see the power requirements? 104W for a single core? I really can't imagine Apple preferring this to a Pentium-M derivative.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Well, that's what you get for not researching properly before buying things. :)
So, there are three socket types for AMD64 CPUs. The low-end stuff is Socket 754 - Sempron and Athlon64 and such. S754 is basically a dead end.
Socket 939 is a much more promising long-term socket for Athlon64 upgrades. Most new S939 boards these days are being made with PCIe, which dovetails nicely with the fact that the high-end graphics card vendors are all moving PCIe as well.
Socket 940 is for Opterons and Athlon64-FX chips. The FX chips are really expensive and really fast, but more expensive than fast when compared to their S939 brethren. Socket 940 boards come in both AGP and PCIe variants (since S940 is relatively old and predates PCIe, many AGP S940 boards exist).
As far as I know, there aren't any plans for dual-core chips on the S754 chipsets. However, the Athlon64-x2 chips are S939, and the dual-core Opterons are all S940. If you have an S939 board, it's probably smarter to forget the FX chips and go straight for an A64-x2 once they become a bit more affordable.
Regardless of who it's aimed at, this would benefit those of us trying to run multiple apps such as Photoshop, email, web, various centralized management apps, vmware, etc, many of which are vying for CPU time. You know, those of us that are trying to do something productive with our time?
Ernie
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
I'm not exactly an Apple Fan boi. I understand that they have their flaws etc but the move to x86 still doesn't fit right in my head and this news just crystalizes it for me.
In the past, we could all group around the fact that it was impossible to really tell if PPC was actually any good when compared to x86. We knew games sucked, but were confident in the fact that the desktop apps we owned 'felt snappier' and that we were more productive as a result. Now we're being told that actually x86 is probably about as good as PPC, and in the future it will be better. Thats fine. As long as I'm running on the best hardware for my Mac and I don't have to start waiting for the x86 version of my favourite apps to become available I don't care. But the problem is that we all know that Intel isn't the best at making x86 chips. So when I buy my 'Intel inside' Mac, I'm going to know that Joe 'AMD' Linux, with his fancy new 128bit, 1024 core, $15 AMD can, and will, actually toast my Mac, no questions asked, with verifiable benchmarks to prove it and I'm powerless to do anything about it without breaking the EULA. That sucks.
Bottom line: Apples hardware should be the best platform to run OS X. If that means using AMD, I want AMD in my Mac - and at the moment boy do I want one of those suckers in my Mac!
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
It looks like Apple will be switching the low-end line of computers to Intel first - which suggests that perhaps there is something suitable for the high-end on Intel's roadmap in a year or two that might not be accurately represented by their current models.
Even ignoring this, when Apple committed to this deal, I'm certain that Intel's future offerings have been a more significant factor than their current ones. If this isn't the case, Apple has been surprisingly short-sighted. Realistically, they've probably had Intel commit to an agreed (non-public) roadmap with sanctions if they don't deliver.
It's likely that Apple has agreed to prefer Intel over AMD as long as Intel delivers on their promises. The primary reasons for choosing Intel over AMD have probably not been technological, but their ability to deliver - even when AMD has been ahead in technology, they have occasionally suffered from an inability to deliver in volume. This is probably the main reason why high-volume manufactures (like Dell and now Apple) haven't gone with AMD.
Some manufacturers with smaller volumes for whom the technology has been important have gone the AMD way (e.g. Sun has been delivering Opteron-based machines for quite some time). The real difference between Intel and AMD today is that Intel still is better "guaranteed to deliver". The end result is that Intel is a better deal for high-volume system integrators. AMD is a better deal for (some) individuals and low-volume high-end vendors.
Most of my PCs (three out of four) are AMD because they were the most powerful for the price at the time, and I have a couple of Macs, which I desired for the user interface and specific software only available for the Mac.
I'm the kind of user who'll always choose the best tool for the job, depending on my needs, and who can build his own systems with no trouble.
Oh, and I don't run MSWin on any of my machines. It's FreeBSD, Linux and MacOS X all the way - there's no MSWin software that I need or want, and MSWin isn't the easiest way to run any of the multi-platform software that I use.