Slashdot Mirror
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
No gods, no demons, and no masters. Secular Humanism!
Toms Hardware Review
Coral Cache: http://www.hexus.net.nyud.net:8090/content/reviews /review.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD0xMzE3
http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review_print. php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD0xMzE3
This is filler. This is more filler. This is even more filler. This is a rant about the captcha.
-theGreater.
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
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.
Will a beowulf cluster of these run OSX?
(I honestly can't tell if I'm being +5 funny or -1 troll some days...)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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/$/flop perspective. Of course you can argue that was just about the Intel Marketing Department getting hold of R&D for a few years and screwing things up so badly that they're back to the P3 track and Marketing didn't notice what the blokes in Israel were up to.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
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.
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.