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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.
Probably the best place to look for info:w s&file=article&sid=3165&mode=thread&order=0&thold= 0
http://amdzone.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Ne
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Coral Cache: http://www.hexus.net.nyud.net:8090/content/reviews /review.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD0xMzE3
http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review_print. php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD0xMzE3
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I know I can't wait to do spreadsheets in 2.8Ghz, 64-bit glory. >_> That aside, this is still a pretty awesome development.
'Every story, if continued long enough, ends in death.' --Ernest Hemingway
I stopped caring about CPU advances when the Pentium II reached 233 MHz. I run Windows 98 on my machine wihtout a firewall and I have never had a problem with spyware or viruses. How about we focus research and development on somehting more important, like fuel cells to power my wireless mouse.
Because this processor is mainly aimed at the gaming community, and games often aren't multithreaded, so the second core would just be idle and convert electricity into heat.
Interestingly though once there was only one Athlon 64FX, and if a new one came out, its predecessor would then, if remaining on sale, be renamed. This time the old Athlon 64FX (55) remains on sale with the 64FX name.
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:\>
Will a beowulf cluster of these run OSX?
(I honestly can't tell if I'm being +5 funny or -1 troll some days...)
What is 1 MiB of L2 cache? 1 Million Bytes?
It's the binary count of bytes, 2^n, instead of the decimal *10^n
Let the commencement BEGINULATE!
For a definition of MiB see this wikipedia article -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mebibyte
n 64/fx57/001.htm
And here is a random review that includes the actual cache numbers -- http://www.gdhardware.com/hardware/cpus/amd/athlo
Did you see the power requirements? 104W for a single core? I really can't imagine Apple preferring this to a Pentium-M derivative.
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The reason it costs so much is you just outfitted your rig with some seriously serious hardware. You went close to top of the line of your own volition. The top-shelf stuff will always cost you a premium - one that doesn't usually scale to the increase in performance - because you're going for best of the best.
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.
Well AMD's production capacity isn't as big as Intel's - that's one of the big issues. AMD has an agreement with Intel to use x86, but this means that AMD may only outsource a limited amount of its production to foundries. But the new fab in Dresden, Germany will soon be opened to boost AMD's production capacity.
Intel also has big deals with huge system builders such as Dell and HP.
It has nothing to do with the smarts (or lack of) of the market. It has to do with their capacity and with marketing.
99% of the users out there don't even need a 2ghz P4, let alone a 2.8ghz FX-57. AMD has long been catering to the enthusiast market which is a very, very small fraction of the overall market.
Pull up task manager and look at how much CPU usage you have when your machine is just sitting 'idle', not running a game or other CPU intensive app. If you have a higher end CPU, it's probably maybe averaging 1-2%. That's not a lot of stuff to toss on the other CPU. The FX chip will run at much more than 2% faster than the dual-core chips available now, so it's the better option for games (99.9% of which won't take advantage of 2 CPUs). In a couple years when more games are written for SMP systems, then the dual-core will be the way to go.
All the FX chips are Socket 939. The only chips that are socket 940 are Opterons. The Athlon-FX chips are basically Socket 939 Opterons.
Socket 939 is for the single CPU systems (including multiple cores).
Socket 940 is for multiple CPU systems (ie. Opteron).
The ratio of people to cake is too big
AMD has long been catering to the enthusiast market which is a very, very small fraction of the overall market
That's OK as an R&D goal - an enthusiast machine 5 years ago was a 800MHz P3, barely enough to get XP & Office running today.
If you get your performance out for the enthusiast, next year you can get it into your consumer line, then the year after figure out how to run it in a laptop. At least, traditionally that's how it's done - Intel seems to be kicking ass in the laptop line and bring it up to the desktop - wise from a watts/$/flop perspective. Of course you can argue that was just about the Intel Marketing Department getting hold of R&D for a few years and screwing things up so badly that they're back to the P3 track and Marketing didn't notice what the blokes in Israel were up to.
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It is all about quantity. People seem to think that the more of something you get in a product, the better. This marketing rationale is used for other kinds of products. Just look at fastfood ('Gorge yourself on our 10lb. McGutBomb Burger!'), automobile ('Scale Mt Everest in your new 3000 horsepower Chevy Truck!') or computer ('You'll need a 3.4Ghz machine to run Word and send email!') advertising. We've become a society of 'More is always better'. I don't think efficiency and quality are not important to the general public anymore.
The memory controller has also been tweaked to support mismatched memory module sizes - something some enthusiasts have been crying out for
I wonder how AMD was able to translate fanboi-talk from
Wah Wah! Make it faster! Make it faster!
to
Please tweak your memory controller to support mismatched memory module sizes...
It boggles the mind!
The games might not be multithreaded, but the other core can run primary OS tasks. Plus, games will be, more and more, written to take advantage of those extra cores.
antipaucity
Also, the 940 boards have to be 6-layer (costs more), and they have to have ECC (IIRC), whereas 939 can be 4-layer, and use cheaper, faster non-ECC memory.
Then Intel will need two bolt of lightning.
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!
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Check it out. Anandtech has a review as well.