AMD Releases Dual-Core FX-60 Processor

mikemuch writes "AMD just released their new Dual-Core FX-60 processor which is basically two FX-55s strapped together. Unfortunately, the FX-60 doesn't blow away Intel's recently announced Pentium 955 Extreme Edition, and it's actually slightly more pricey. It gets a slight edge in games and runs cooler, as Loyd Case found when he put the FX-60 through ExtremeTech's battery of benchmarks. From the review: 'AMD now ships a dual-core CPU that's essentially the equal of Presler, while generating far less heat. In terms of performance, however, this means that AMD no longer commands the same type of lead it once did when Intel only had the somewhat anemic 840 Extreme Edition. In fact, AMD is now more expensive, at $1,031 (quantity 1,000), versus the 955 Extreme Edition at $999 (quantity 1000).'"

Comments

Other Reviews

[hattig]

Tech Report (FX60 beats out 955 in most of the benchmarks, if not by a large margin then at least consistently).

Also check out AMDZone, AnandTech, Björn3D, FiringSquad, HEXUS, HotHardware, LostCircuits,
PC Perspective, t-break, and TrustedReviews who all have reviews as well.

Re:Other Reviews

[kesuki]

DDr2 ram isn't being used because of it's abysmal timings. http://www.ocztechnology.com/aboutocz/press/2005/1 48
compare that to the 2-3-2-2 timings one can get on DDR modules.

The reason why there is such a huge discrepency between performance between some review sites and others is that some sites are using abysmal 3-3-3-3 timings DDR memory for the FX-60 while others are using the better timed DDR chips. For gaming there is a HUGE advantage to having 2-3-2-2 timings because the entire content of the ram can be dumped almost twice as often as 4-4-4 timed DDR2, which because of it's better frequencies can pump more data at a slower rate.

Mind you AMD will need DDR2 support in the future, unless they somehow decided GDDR3 was better, because in about a few years DDR2 modules will be coming down to the 2-2-2 timings level, and will blow away the standard ddr modules. i mean technically if you look at video cards with ddr2 and ddr3 memory there is no engineering reason why someone couldn't make a ddr2 or ddr3 memory that worked awesome today, but there is plenty of 'marketing' reasons why they nead to have a 'clear' roadmap into the future.

DDR memory still has a lot of years of life left in it if you get the good timings stuff, like ocz or patriot. too bad ddr2 is 240 pin and ddr1 is 184 pin, so one can't make them pin compatable.. and no doubht ddr3 and ddr4 won't be pin compatable when they come out either.

ah well, tought to say, but if i was at AMD and trying to think of a way to 'counter' the DDR2 solution intel is using i'd instead opt for the simplified GDDR3 as main system memory. At least i'd consider the viability of doing so. the high end memory card market overnight decided to drop agp support and ddr2 support and go all pci-e with gddr3, because they were simpler more elgeant and properly working designs. agp is, was and remains a kludge to work around a problem that a better solution hadn't been thought of and ddr2 is full of legacy design needs from it's legacy heritage too.

Anyways, I'd rather see an AMD system (on 65 nm core) with GDDR3 modules than DDR-II modules.

Re:Other Reviews

[default luser]

Mind you AMD will need DDR2 support in the future, unless they somehow decided GDDR3 was better, because in about a few years DDR2 modules will be coming down to the 2-2-2 timings level, and will blow away the standard ddr modules. i mean technically if you look at video cards with ddr2 and ddr3 memory there is no engineering reason why someone couldn't make a ddr2 or ddr3 memory that worked awesome today, but there is plenty of 'marketing' reasons why they nead to have a 'clear' roadmap into the future.

AMD needs DDR2 support in the future because, even with the latency issues, DDR2 at 667 MHz still outperforms DDR 400 with fast timings.

In addition, DDR2 uses a much lower voltage (1.8v), as opposed to DDR (2.6v), giving it significantly lower power consumption. If AMD wants to compete on the mobile front, they'll need to move to DDR2 pronto...Intel already made this move with Dothan and the mobile 915.

As for video cards, thay're not a good comparison. They get exceptionally good usage out of even high-latency memory becuase they perform non-random reads and writes. Graphics engines work on blocks of memory at a time, so they can take full advantage of the burst read modes (reads / writes multiple columns in one continuous burst) offered by DDR, DDR2 and GDDR3; this helps hide the high latency of these speedy parts. What, you didn't think that cards boasting 600-700 MHz DDR1 were doing it with low latency, did you? Fast DDR2 and GDDR3 parts are also very high latency

Sure, you can leverage burst reads on a PC, but only so much. If you have a lot of randomly-accessed data, burst reads will not be able to cover up the latency of reads / writes, and will simply mean more data to clog up your cache.

Also, GDDR3 is still not shipping at nearly the same density levels as DDR1 and DDR2. DDR1 is available with 2Gb density, and DDR2 is available in 1GB density. The best GDDR3 can do is 512Mb density chips, and these are currently only available through Samsung. The price of uptfitting a system with 1GB ram using these high-end 512Mb GDDR3 chips would be astronomical.

Re:price difference

[Sique]

It might make a difference for assemblers who try to put out machines priced under a certain limit. If they are trying to build something like a $1599 machine, they have $30 more headroom for the other components, leading maybe to the next better graphic card or a an additional 512 MByte of RAM.
In a market where specs for the components are everything, the prices are made to fit unter certain arbitrary limits, and the balanced choice of components takes a backseat, such $30 may be the deciding factor for choosing the processor architecture.

PC Gamer Magazine

[Neoprofin]

PC Gamer reviewed the EE955 and the FX-60 in their Febuary issue and stated:

"The FX-60 trounced the Pentium Extreme Edition 955 in test spins with Quake and F.E.A.R. Even more humiliating in F.E.A.R. the FX-60 came out ahead of the PEE 955 overclocked to 4ghz by 25FPS." ExtremeTech ran plenty of benchmark programs, but in real application tests there was no competition, The FX-60 showing to be around 30% faster in every benchmark.

Re:price difference

[InsaneGeek]

Idle the Intel 955 uses 189 watts
Idle the AMD FX 60 uses 148 watts
Difference of 41 watts
41/1000 = .041 watts per kWh .041 * $.078 = $0.003198 difference in cost per hour to run (7.8 cent average)
$31 / .003198 = 9693.558 hours = Electricity break even point ~403 days

Under load the Intel 955 uses 286 watts
Under load the AMD FX 60 uses 225 watts
Difference of 61 watts
61/1000 = .061 watts per kWh .061 * $.078 = $0.004758 difference in cost per hour to run
$31 / .004758 = 6515.34258 hours = Electricity break even point ~271 days