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AMD Phenom II Available To Distributors This Week
jdb2 writes "Fudzilla reports that AMD's Phenom II is already available to distributors, and will be available to sell to consumers in the week of the 29th of December. The Phenom II is AMD's consumer version of its 'Shanghai' 45 nanometer SOI process Quad-core Opteron chip and will reportedly ship in 3 and 2.8 gigahertz flavors corresponding to the model numbers '940' and '920' respectively. This first release will be packaged as a Socket AM2+ part which only supports DDR2 memory. The following month AMD is reportedly going to release a new '9x5' series of Socket AM3 versions which support DDR3 memory — these will be backward compatible with Socket AM2+ . This may be an inflection point for AMD if the Shanghai architecture lives up to the performance numbers from preliminary reports and if so it will no doubt also be a welcome belated Christmas present for the already salivating hordes of Tech Junkies."
Using new AMD processor.
Their they're doing there hair.
You can get a good AM2+ motherboard for under $100. DDR2 is cheap, and the price point for these CPUS is looking pretty good.
I doubt that they will beat an I7 but they may offer a great bang for the buck. Even before these came out AMD offered the best value in the good enough category.
You would be hard pressed to find a better value than one of the BE X2s on a 780G motherboard for an average user.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I want one :)
Please sign me up!
These folkslook like they are about to start selling them. They have been saying they are due in stock today for a week now. I have no experience with them, so caveat emptor. The guy from Newegg I asked last night couldn't tell me when they would have stock. But I do notice a distinctive downward trend in Phenom X4 9xxx processors here in the last couple of days. Might be a clue.
According to wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_future_AMD_Phenom_microprocessors It uses 125 Watts of power! The hot & noisy prescott was around 100 watts. I think I'll go with a nice 95 watt core 2 quad, or the upcoming c2q model at 65 watts.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=Shanghai&x=13&y=32 [newegg.com]
The opterons were already available at much higher prices of course.
In fact, we deal with both AMD and Intel servers, and under benchmarking conditions, we allegedly make the Intel parts exceed TDP.
The problem is that TDP became a marketing point and thus Intel abandoned the original intent. It was supposed to allow systems vendors to plan how many CFM and how good a heat sink would be needed to dissipate all the heat in a worst case scenario. To AMD's credit, they have a metric they call 'ACP' to indicate their analogous figure to Intel's TDP. I like that better in theory than just abandoning TDP.
That said, for Intel and AMD, I wonder what they consider 'typical' loads. In the end, a breakdown of what clock speeds and what percentage of time is in C1 and such would be appreciated to know what to expect. Knowing what the CPU uses at each clock, with about 0% of time in sleep states and near 100% would let me compare a bit better than a single oversimplified number.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
This may be an inflection point for AMD...
An inflection is where the 2nd derivative of a function changes sign ie the curvature is zero.
I think the summary meant minima, that's where the first derivative is zero if the curve is smooth. That would mean it changes from going down to going up.
Unless we are talking about AMD's rate of change of growth which could go from shrinking faster and faster to shrinking slower and slower at an inflection. I guess that could be seen as a good thing these days for them.
Slow day I'll go away now.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
You clearly lack reding comprehension skills.
Mod parent "+1 Ironic"
um, if you don't want integrated graphics, you can just get the 790X--it's cheaper.
you might want to get a clue first before ranting off incoherently.
Finally, someone with almost a clue!
newegg has exactly *ONE* motherboard with 790X: GIGABYTE GA-MA790X-DS4, and it's NOT actually cheaper than the boards he listed -- far from it, and it's only $10 less than the still nicer ASUS P5Q-E (more SATA, heatpipes, etc).
As of a matter of fact, I was already aware of that board. It just happens to be the *ONLY* AMD board somewhat close to "worth buying".
Nice try though. You all might start to see the light soon. AMD just DOESN'T have a nice board selection, much less a "cheap and good" one.
AMD is standing behind and embracing the AM3 socket, the main feature of which is the addition DDR 3 memory support.
It should be noted that AMD has previously stated that while Socket AM3 processors will work in Socket AM2/AM2+ motherboards, not all AM2/AM2+ processors will be supported by AM3 motherboards. By this time the price of DDR3 RAM might have fallen to a point where itâ(TM)s affordable.
With Intel changing sockets like its going out of style, AMD has done an excellent job making their products extremely compatible between generations. As such, it's kept many "budget" PC builders somewhat loyal, including myself.
If you buy one of the current AM2+ socketed Phenom II CPU's, you have a very good chance that you will be able to throw it in a new AM3 socket motherboard when they come out before March'09.
None the less, I'm a fickle fool and will wait until AM3 is out... what's 2 more months anyway?
newegg newegg newegg that's all I ever hear when people talk about buying IT gear, like they stock EVERYTHING ever made. Living in Australia I'm sick of hearing/seeing the name newegg, I checked them out a few times and the comparison products and prices were shite. Don't get me wrong they DO stock some rather nice and nifty technology BUT.
I've always used staticice, hell I've found google to be better at finding what I want rather than going through some wholesalers or retailers.
OK, Mr. Anonymous Coward, I'll bite. All the boards (they're really the same board with minor differences) I mentioned are value boards, not enthusiast boards. So counting cables and mentioning heatpipes is kindof pointless. Biostar is a second-tier brand for sure, but these motherboards seem reasonably well-engineered and reliable. My own intention is to run a linux server, so frankly I don't need much in the way of cute gamer features anyway. I just want support of Phenom II, good performance, support for lots of memory, and reliability. As to why Phenom II, it looks like the best value proposition in a long while. As to why AMD, because I prefer the alternative choice, always have. As to n00bishness, I don't think so. The first general-purpose computer I programmed ran at 1 Mhz. My first laptop ran at 0.6 Mhz. I've been at this racket a little while now.
NOOO! Anything but Biostar! Seriously.
If you get one that makes it to the end of the 90 warranty period, count yourself lucky!
This summer I needed a socket 478 (don't ask... broke college student) mobo, so I went down to the computer shop down town. I told the guy I needed a motherboard, any motherboard, cheap and before the end of the day. The guy says, "Well, we've got a few biostar for $50". There was a very awkward silence for about 10 seconds and I finally said, "Ummmm... got anything else?"
"For $90 we've got one MSI left."
"Sold."
"Good choice; those biostar boards always come back to us." (or something to that effect)
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Old Biostar boards were junk. This generation looks much better engineered. But hey, if you don't like the Biostar 790xx, get whatever vendor you like in a 780xx. It still meets your originally-stated requirements. And, as a matter of fact, yes, I have breadboarded machines from scratch. Mine weren't for a grade. You? As to my support for AMD, it is a mix of reasons. Yes, some of it is supporting the underdog. But some of it is, as the underdog, AMD has to offer better value in order to compete against chipzilla. And with the Phenom II, they are moving up into the midrange desktop market again.
I actually am using the 796GX video.* It's not a discrete solution but it works well enough. As for why having it when one will disable it? How about for when your video card's being RMAd and you need to use your machine? Another is as someone indicated, HTPCs. Last occasionally a server will need video.
*Jetway MB. ASRocks nice too. Foxconn makes AMD boards and Foxconn is the company that makes boards for Intel. So the Intel Fan boys may just want to be quiet.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
That's all I need to say. Batshit insane. 16GB of RAM? Are you kidding? Good luck finding cheap 4GB sticks that work.
Depends, if the DDR3 manufacturers ramp up, it could come down to earth. Either way, I wouldn't count on 4GB DIMMs.
On nVidia, I am using it, but my AMD system is now behaving sane (the binary drivers aren't terrible anymore, the open drivers for R500 are 'ok' for compiz and the like. The nVidia drivers on the other hand seem to have been causing me problems (compiz title bar and window corruption at scale I don't see with the ATI/AMD drivers, some weird hiccups on 3D apps).
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I've been studying advanced mathematics ( at the graduate/doctoral level now ) for over a decade.
Most graduate programs I've seen require completion of the degree for which one is a candidate within 5 years, maybe 6. The reader may reasonably infer from your claim that a) you've had enough time to earn such a degree twice over, and b) that you have not done so because having done so would give you an honest claim even greater than the one you've actually made here. I fully realize that the question of having such a degree is orthogonal to the question of possessing competence-- period--, and this illustrates in part why one should never argue from authority.
But we're talking about elementary calculus here, not topology or algebras or anything so rarefied. There's no reason to berate the claim about the [local] minim[um] value of h(t):
...for the past year or more the derivative has been negative, and growing more negative.
(Emphasis mine.)
I disagree: h(t) has units of "performance somehow compared to Intel's performance", and AMD's xx50 series have been competitive at their and profitable at their position in the mid-range market as with the X2s in the low-end market. h'(t) has been negative because overall marketshare loss driven by Intel's aggressive product releases (5200/7200/8x00), but your claim that h''(t) is negative is too strong. But this is all an aside; let's say you're right, for the sake of your argument:
If the Phenom II launch is indeed the catalyst for an AMD "turn around"...
Yes, by definition "turning around" means changing from decreasing to increasing, and not merely decreasing the rate of change of decrease. Therefore, the claim that h(t) will experience a local minimum [that h'(t) = 0 is coming] was true.
It's not very interesting to note that there will be an inflection point before h'(t) goes positive if h''(t) is negative, because even though that "if" is actually *false*, it's the slope of h(t) we're talking about in the first place! Any niggling disagreement about the present nature of h''(t) is irrelevant.
The momentum analogy is predicated on your claim that AMD's suck has been increasing locally, so 1) this is disputed, and 2) either way, the analogy is inapt because momentum changes can exhibit behavior you don't seem to allow: while it is well-understood by this late date that there is "no" [i.e. fanboys only] brand loyalty in computing, whether AMD-Intel or ATI-Nvidia. We're not guaranteed that h(t) is even differentiable for t corresponding to product launches. In your analogy, this is a perfectly elastic 1D collision of a point particle.
Human intuition about momentum is (clearly!) insufficiently general for momentum to make a good analogy for reasoning about non-physical phenomena.
Recapping:
1) the claim you were refuting was correct
2) you used a spurious and non-generalizable argument in your attempt at (1)
3) your claim of expertise in mathematics is likely false, as evidenced by (2)
4) you don't understand the aspect of the computer industry about which you are making a claim here and in the article summary
5) likely due to (3) and (4), your particular claim about the computer industry is trivial, wrong, or both
And using an emoticon-smiley doesn't absolve you of being a jerk about it all above and beyond being right or wrong. The comment to which you were responding should have been modded insightful, not funny. Don't pull punches that need to be thrown, in the first place don't throw punches that shouldn't be thrown.
Unfortunately some retarded AMD fanboy got mod points, and you were modded down throughout for speaking the truth!
AMD motherboards suck HARD, and their processors can't barely compete with old Core 2 chips. New phenoms won't change any of that.
-1, uncomfortable truth
Mod parent "-1, Gay Fucktard"
Unless you want to run Windows, there doesn't seem to be much attraction in x86 chips anymore.
I don't want to run Windows OS; I want to run Windows apps, and Wine is still not an emulator. Besides, if x86 chips were so unattractive, why did Apple switch from POWER to x86?