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AMD Launches New Processor Socket Despite Poor Economy
arcticstoat writes to tell us that despite a poor economic climate, AMD is moving forward with a new processor socket launch, although they are trying to make it as upgrade-friendly as possible. "As you probably already know from the AM3 motherboards that have already been announced, AM3 is AMD's first foray into DDR3 memory support. As Phenom CPUs have integrated memory controllers, it's more accurate to say that it's the new range of Phenom II CPUs (see below) that are DDR3-compatible. However, the new DDR3-compatible Phenom II range is also compatible with DDR2 memory. As the new CPUs and the new AM3 socket are pin-compatible with the current AM2+ socket, you can put a new AM3-compatible CPU into an existing AM2+ motherboard. This means that you can upgrade your CPU now without needing to change your motherboard or buy pricey new DDR3 memory."
Because DDR3 memory is so high latency it isn't even worth it. There's no speed increase.
If your competitor has a better marketshare and also a better line of processors, it would be a suicide to not release a competitive product when the economy is staggering. Withholding the technology while waiting for the economy to improve can make the gap between them and Intel even wider.
Face your daemons!
That's one of the last liquids I'd use in a water block.
Other than starving CIS majors, who barely earn enough money from their university's computer lab to pay for Ramen Noodles, who does that? IT professionals would just buy all the hardware together because their time is worth more than their money, and everybody else just buys entire new computers. This could only appeal to a handful of small-budget kids.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
I mean the economy in terms of releasing a product update. If the work is done & ready to go, it's too late to worry about the economy, just ship it. Not only that, product development cycles on these products are long enough that they need to continually invest in R&D regardless of the economy, by the time a just-started project is done, the economy will have rebounded and ready for new product.
If the world is switching to DDR3, that probably means having a new socket. As such, AMD needs to introduce the new socket when they are ready to.
Being fair to AMD, these processors/sockets do not just turn up in a week or so in a finished state - they go through multiple stages during months/years before we ever see them. So I doubt they planned on releasing this at an economic slump - it may have looked very unlikely such a slump would even occur when the project was launched.
This is great. I'm hurting for a new desktop and was planning on getting an AM2 CPU.
I still am, but knowing that the AM3 was just around the corner, waiting to knock all the AM2/AM2+ prices down has delayed my plans for a few weeks, and now there's finally an end in sight!
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
You may be able to put a am3 processor in a am2+ motherboard, but the Register says that am2+ processor in a am3 motherboard will not work. (http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/02/09/review_cpu_amd_phenom_ii_am3/page2.html)
To quote: ..
"makes life horribly confusing as the Phenom X4 920 and 925 and the X4 940 and 945 will be identical apart from the processor socket. This means that there is the possibility that some poor so-and-so will buy an AM2+ CPU and an AM3 motherboard when ne'er the twain shall meet."
careful what you buy out there
This is the sort of thing that gets us out of a poor economy.
Other than starving CIS majors, who barely earn enough money from their university's computer lab to pay for Ramen Noodles, who does that? IT professionals would just buy all the hardware together because their time is worth more than their money, and everybody else just buys entire new computers. This could only appeal to a handful of small-budget kids.
If you don't think in terms of upgrading the processor of the computer sitting on your desk, but instead think of HP updating the processor in their line of AM2-based computers, then you should be able to see that the appeal is basically universal. This way the OEMs can offer refreshed versions of their lines without having to incur the extra expense of DDR3. Obviously they will also make a DDR3 AM3-based line, but the DDR2-based line will be cheaper.
Backward compatibility and in-place upgrades appeals to far more than a handful of poor hobbyists.
The enemies of Democracy are
So is the socket physically different or is it just the chipset that operates with the chip? It seems to me to be the latter. The AM3 chip can't have pins that the AM2+ has or it wouldn't fit in the socket. Or does the AM3 have fewer pins?
Just sounds like a chipset upgrade to me.
Seriously, unless you're building a DB server, memory hasn't been expensive for a while - 2G is $40-50. A new processor is $200+
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
"Despite a poor economic climate, farmers still harvest crops they planted last year...." - come on....
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
DDR is double-date-rate, right? It's been around for years now, why haven't we moved past double? Shouldn't we be on triple or quadruple data rate by now?
Everyone is also getting a new bus! But it may not stop at everyone's socket. We also get new ponies.
IIRC the AM3 has fewer pins and is able to plug into
an AM2+ socket, but AM2+ chips can't plut into an AM3 socket. So, if you buy the wrong one you'll know as soon as you try to plug your AM2+ cpu into your AM3 motherboard...
Taking as gospel the non-technical* formulation of Moore's law: processing power doubles every 24 months, then delaying your product even a few weeks puts you behind the performance curve. A 2 week delay comes in at a manageable 1.3% but delay your product 8 weeks, and you are already 5.5% behind your competitor**. In a market with margins in the low single digits, that's the difference between profit and loss.
Economy or not, you've got to release the product when the engineers say its ready or else it decays.
* Please don't flame me about transistor densities at optimal cost -- I'm simplifying!
** Yes, processors come out in discrete updates, not continuous updates. I'm only right on average.
And presumably all those auto industry and manufacturing workers getting fired were cheating when they took classes in high school right? The 500,000+ lost jobs outside the computing industry and major across-the-board corporate spending restriction measures, they're a myth too.
It's not all about you.
>92% of the population still has a job. think about that for a second. we are doing quite well. stop listening to the mass media idiots.
That's kind of logical - sure, some poor so-and-so could in fact get into some trouble this way, but there's absolutely nothing AMD could do to fix that, save for putting an appropriate notice on the box. I mean, AM3 motherboards will use DDR3 memory (which is different from DDR2 even in terms of physical dimensions and pinout, so you can't put a DDR2 module in a DDR3 slot), but AM2 processors can't talk to DDR3 memory because they were not designed to do that, and AMD can't magically fix all those AM2 processors that have been already made to be able to use DDR3. See the problem?
This is Slashdot. Common sense is futile. You will be modded down.
Uhm.... no.
You are taking that an 8% unemployment rate equals the actual rate of those who are unemployed. It does not.
First of all that figure does not include retired, children and those who for what ever reason are not interested at all in having a job.
Then you'll wanna figure the people how are willing to work but don't have a job or don't have enough of a job(sorry flipping burgers does not feed a large family).
If you take all the people who don't have a job but would like one you'll need to up that figure to at least one and a half to double or more of what it is now. (Note this is closer to how they measured in the Great Depression, though they also included all "eligible" workers and didn't include women.)
If you add in all the people who are under-employed those who has part-time work that need full time and those who have a job but not enough of one(or two or three in many cases) to fit their needs then you are looking at a figure of at least double that of the reported unemployment rate.
In short the percent of the population that has a job is closer to 60 than it is to 92.
The early tests I've seen published indicate almost no improvement for DDR3 over DDR2 in an identical system. A bit lower latency is the only real improvement, and that's tiny. So what gives? How much should DDR3 improve over DDR2, except for the estimated 30% improvement in power requirements?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
No, they were busy getting drunk and ignoring the adults who told them they'd end up with shitty jobs later on in life if they didn't take school more seriously.
I, for one, welcome our new DDR3 overlords. Every time they dump something new on the market, prices on their older product lines go down. I just bought a 9850 for $135. About $40 cheaper than late last year before the Phenom 2 line hit the streets. It's the fastest processor my motherboard officially supports and it cost less than the dual core it replaced.
I always intentionally build my gaming rigs a notch or two below bleeding edge because it's so much cheaper. But, if "they" were to stop pushing the edge forward, where would I be?
It also does not include anyone who is not eligible for unemployment, for any reason. (Such as being unemployed for longer than the unemployment period + extension.)
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Except that actual processor speed went off Moore's curve a while back ... While transistor densities have gone up (mostly) according to schedule, actual processor speed has not.
Your argument is good, and AFAIK processor makers use it to a certain extent, it's just that the percentages are a bit smaller.
The Raven
That's why YOU are not in charge of anything!!!
So, if we eliminate women from the tally, like during the great depression, will we have a -42% unemployment rate?
That's a joke, but seriously, it's folly to equate today's unemployment to the great depression's. It's like comparing a windy day to a hurricane.
(sorry flipping burgers does not feed a large family)
Do people actually think it does?
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
doh! Hit the wrong button. Forgot to add the punchline about... unless they're bringing those burgers home. =P
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
Poor fuckass can either RTFM before embarking on a system-building exercise, or if they fuck up they can exchange.
is the current problem the hurricane or the windy day?
Oh yes, nice one! Nothing pisses me off more than a menial laborer in my office who resents that I have a great job while he gets paid dick for doing some shitty boring job. Well fuck him. They spent their time screwing around, and as you say, getting drunk, and now they pay the price. In HS I busted my ass, even though my parents didn't tell me too. They would have preferred it if I was a plumber. Now they are astonished at how much I make.
You make a very good point. Why should we expect literacy from consumers? Not to fret, the techs at Fry's will hold their hand.
TITLE: AMD Launches New Processor Socket **Despite Poor Economy**
So we're not supposed to do anything because the economy is bad?! So let's never a thing again because we're ignorant of larger pictures and contexts and variableness in life. What kind of f***ed-up sh** IS THAT! Start tagging sentences with pessimistic endings and implying stuff because we're ignorant a**holes. Let's see ....
Today I drove to work in the winter despite road salt runoff will affect the lake. I bought a new dog despite the existence of puppy mills. I washed my hands after peeing despite the fact antibacterial soap kills good germs. I sat on a wooden chair despite my ginger ass getting chapped.
You know what ... I think the title actually had an effect on me despite the fact I found it totally ignorant. What do you think?
Citation required
Wonder when Slashdot will stop letting this customPC hacks in on the main
page. It's just a fluff article. There are a number of real reviews of the
actual product out there on the web as of today's launch.
http://hothardware.com/Articles/AMD-Phenom-II-X3-720-BE-and-X4-810-AM3-Processors/
http://hothardware.com/Articles/AMD-Phenom-II-X3-720-BE-and-X4-810-AM3-Processors/
Yeah, it is not at 25%+ yet
The Not-so-governmental Guide To The Unemployment Rate
Which is why "motherboard bundles" were invented. Go to some place like MWave.com, go to their motherboard bundle section. Pick a CPU, motherboard and RAM, then pay about $10 to have the vendor assemble and test it before shipping.
For $10, I'm guaranteed that those 3 components will work together and won't be DoA. I don't have to keep up with the various socket types, or memory types, or figure out that socket X fits CPUs Q and W.
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
Information may be slightly outdated but all of it is probably true, Intel may have catched up in memory bandwidth performance with their latest CPUs since they have put the memory controller within the CPU themself to.
AMD's Hypertransport has interesting extensions to help cache coherency and currently scales very well with lots of cores and lots of physical CPUs.
(Opteron can be used in motherboard with 4 or 8 slots).
Intel's Quickpath is currently more a generation 1 interconnect. That's probably why they have only announced platforms with lots of cores and cpu packages only for later on.
(The first CPUs announced, as far as I've read, are only to be used in 2 socket configurations).
Thus if you want to run a server which needs a lot cores (a node in a cluster, or a server that has to answer lots of requests in parallel), it's currently better to go with an 8 socketed-opteron.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I will give them one positive push, the new AM3 processors are backwards compatible to the older AM2+ sockets, but this is what the AM2+ sockets were created for. But if they overdesign the socket with unused pins, they can grow for new features. But that is just me. Though I will give VIA one thumbs up the new NANO is pin compatible with the C7, but the problem with them, is that they are soldered on, so for us end users it's pointless.
Or people who quit their job of their own volition.
Maybe he just resents your obvious superiority complex.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Yes, because economic downturn on an international level is measured by how well you are doing. Anecdotal evidence is useless, moreso on this large of a scale.
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
'All signs point to yes'
I think blue collar jobs do need respect though ... many of us here may be IT professionals but there is so much to be done on this planet ... roads do need paving, pretty well everything we use needs to be manufactured, and plumbing and wiring needs to be installed and maintained. Even the coffee you are served at the drive-thru on your way to the server room is made by someone working and paying their way through life. Absolutely someone ambitious to do more can get educated and get initiative to make it happen, but this comment is to note the hard-working crews that are losing their jobs. I'm sure many of the individuals were lazy or with poor direction, but certainly not all, and I don't even think it's the majority!