AMD Making a 5 GHz 8-Core Processor At 220 Watts

Vigile writes "It looks like the rumors were true; AMD is going to be selling an FX-9590 processor this month that will hit frequencies as high as 5 GHz. Though originally thought to be an 8-module/16-core part, it turns out that the new CPU will have the same 4-module/8-core design that is found on the current lineup of FX-series processors including the FX-8350. But, with an increase of the maximum Turbo Core speed from 4.2 GHz to 5.0 GHz, the new parts will draw quite a bit more power. You can expect the the FX-9590 to need 220 watts or so to run at those speeds and a pretty hefty cooling solution as well. Performance should closely match the recently released Intel Core i7-4770K Haswell processor so AMD users that can handle the 2.5x increase in power consumption can finally claim performance parity."

Comments

Awesome

[redmid17]

I always wanted to have a computer running my freezer

Re:Awesome

[redmid17]

No I meant running my freezer. Hence the reason I typed: "I always wanted to have a computer running my freezer" instead of "I always wanted to have a computer running IN my freezer"

Re:Awesome

[ArcherB]

No I meant running my freezer. Hence the reason I typed:

"I always wanted to have a computer running my freezer"

instead of

"I always wanted to have a computer running IN my freezer"

Oh. Then I don't get it.

As a side note, I've always wanted to take an old mini fridge and turn it into a computer case.

Re:Awesome

[trum4n]

Done it. It was fun and functional, but you have to do everything you can to keep the condensation out. Fast a hell tho!

Re:Awesome

[hairyfeet]

I would urge those that wonder WTF AMD is doing copying all the old mistakes Intel did with netburst to read this post by a former employee who lays out exactly why this is happening, the former CEO did the usual Wall street move of slash and burn, get a stock bounce, and cash out.

They are stuck with the Netburst that is Bulldozer/Piledriver/Suckavator or whatever other names they want to give it because the former CEO FIRED everybody that knew how to make a chip over there and replaced them with computer layouts which as you can see blow through power like shit through a goose while giving worse performance on a per watt basis than the previous Stars arch.

This isn't coming from some Intel fanboy, I own and sell nothing but AMD at the shop, but when I can no longer get Stars and Liano chips I'm gonna have to seriously look at Intel because these new designs just suuuuck. There is a good reason why you don't see Thuban chips in most benchmarks against the new chips, its because if you matched clock for clock the Thubans and Denebs will win. That is pretty damned sad, when your old chips are actually better while using less power but the CEO they had closed down production of all the Stars cores (again to get a stock bounce and cash out) so there really is no plan B here.

I just hope the game console chips can give them enough operating capital to keep them afloat while hopefully the new chip designer they hired, the same one that did the Athlon64 and the Apple A6, can come up with a new design to make AMD at least kinda competitive. Until then I'll hang onto to AM3+ and Stars as long as I can and then start looking at the i3s and i5s.

Re:Awesome

[Tough Love]

You got that one wrong. Netburst was about deepening the pipeline to ridiculous extremes in order to ramp the clock. The new AMD story is pure clock ramp via process technology and power management. Big difference there.

Re:Awesome

[gman003]

No, this particular story is analogous to a 2004-era story about Intel releasing a new Pentium IV at yet-higher clocks. The current story is about a clock ramp, but the overarching narrative is the same.

The Bulldozer architecture is fundamentally broken, this time due to simple negligence (mainly in management) rather than a faulty assumption. The only way to get reasonable performance from it is to clock it to high speeds, which gives very diminishing returns. Power consumption scales with the *cube* of the clock speed, so you pretty quickly run into a power/heat wall. They clocked the early ones pretty aggressively already, but at the cost of power and heat (and thus, noise). But it's the same story as the Pentium IV - the smart people are on something else.

AMD seems to be trying to put itself back together. Hopefully the PS4/Xb1 wins will give them enough of a cash flow to keep them solvent until they can get a new architecture out, or at least hammer out the IPC problems with Bulldozer. On the bright side, Intel's been distracted by ARM - they threw away a year's lead on performance to chase idle power draw, which should give AMD a bit of time to catch up on performance on the desktop.

Re:Awesome

[steelfood]

On the bright side, Intel's been distracted by ARM - they threw away a year's lead on performance to chase idle power draw, which should give AMD a bit of time to catch up on performance on the desktop.

In the short term, this appears to be a good thing. In the long term, this is very bad for AMD.

The world is moving to low-powered portables. The future of consumer computing will not be on the desk or lap, but in the hand. Workstations will still use desktop chips, but Intel pretty much has that market cornered.

The low-powered, RISC space is where AMD needs to go. It doesn't necessarily have to be ARM. Instead, there's a market for low-powered x86, which is where Intel is going with Haswell. AMD needs to get ahead of the game and create something that is capable of power sipping (which obviously won't be x86), but is also capable of running legacy x86 code at reasonable speeds.

Basically, they need to create a migration path away from x86, which will never be as efficient as ARM and thus has no chance in the portable space. Yes, Intel tried that with Itanic, but they were aiming in the wrong direction (servers).

Re: Awesome

[DigiShaman]

IANAP. I don't think we will ever see CPUs clocked to 10Ghz unless there's some asynchronous timing voodoo used. I'm of the understanding that the speed of light and signal propagation is the real limitation here with regards to higher frequencies.

Re:Awesome

[slashdot_commentator]

I suggest that it is about time programmers started getting used to coding in assembly once again.

You can give up right there. The days of humans getting 100x more efficiency out of a CPU using assembler rather than a higher level language are over. Optimizing compilers are able to devise efficiencies at large scale/detail that a human can at this point. Enterprise level software requiring millions of lines of code are just too large to be optimizable by one human writing in assembler. Speed efficiencies with out of order execution, deep pipelines consumer CPUs will be better utilized by compilers able to make better predictive arrangement of code.

Don't get me wrong. You'll always be able to find ONE "John Henry" that will be able to outcode the "stream compiler". But you can't build a world economy on one programmer. And forget about finding COMPETENT assembler programmers. The people you need to extract these kind of efficiencies are like finding prima ballerinas. Sadly, the world's economy needs more mediocre programmers to generate more working code, and more higher-level, software engineers to implement new solutions for problems addressable by a computer.

2013 AMD has a message for 2005 AMD

[CajunArson]

The message is: You got the Megahertz myth wrong! The only myth is that Megahertz isn't important!

Oh, and all that performance-per-watt stuff? You might want to walk that back. Oh and, pull those Youtube videos where you accuse Nvidia users of being fake-pot farmers because their cards pull so much power. Sure it was funny at the time, but we'd rather not have to live that one down now.

Big deal

[Anonymous Coward]

Power 6 was running at 5.0ghz 5-6 years ago.

"Performance should closely match"

[somarilnos]

The summary suggests that the "performance should closely match the recently released Intel Core i7-4770K Haswell processor", but nothing in the article, or anything released about this chip so far, supports that. It's all just guesswork until we see some actual benchmarks from the chip.

I don't honestly expect we're going to be seeing performance parity from this chip (although I'd love it to be true). But that hasn't been AMD's selling point for me for a long time. Chances are, we're going to see a chip that breaks the 5.0 GHz barrier, under-performs relative to Intel's top end chip, but costs about half as much. That's been their game for a long time now, and I haven't seen anything that leads me to believe that this chip is changing that.

AMD slower / MHz

[SpaceManFlip]

you're probably right - I was slightly shocked recently when I compared the performance benchmarks of an 8-core AMD to a 4-core Intel. I saw the 8-core on sale for about $179 and thought "wow!" but then I was more like "wow...." after seeing the benches.

basically, the 8-core AMD was slower performance-wise the 4-core Intel with the AMD running a few MHz faster

Re:AMD slower / MHz

[hairyfeet]

Yeah but how much was the 4 core Intel? And you can probably buy that 8 core for $150 or less now if you watch the sales. I'm running the Thuban X6 and what did 6 cores cost me? $105 shipped, if you compare like to like the only chip I could get from Intel at $105 was the Pentium Dual core which the X6 outperforms so in that case the bang for the buck squarely landed in the AMD camp.

The problem with the X8s (well other than the arch, see my previous post with a link on why the BD/PD/EX platform is AMD's netburst) is they simply cost too much to make, for every X8 that comes out with all functioning core they probably get 2 dozen X4s or X6s thanks to bad cores so THAT is where the bang for the buck is, although if given a choice I'd take a Deneb or Thuban over Bulldozer any day of the week.

But if you are strictly wanting the most bang for your bucks and like most of us don't have unlimited budgets the best bets would probably be the Athlon X4 for $67 although for an extra $8 I'd probably go for the Phenom II X4 for $75 and for more than 4 cores the best bang is probably the FX6100 for $99 or the Phenom II 1035T X6 for $106. I think in the benches the Thuban beats the FX6100 but both are good deals. Nice thing about the 1035T is I have one and have sold several and with a low end gaming board like the Asrock boards they have a hell of a lot of OCing room, before deciding I didn't want to deal with the temps I had mine up to nearly 3GHz with a turbocore of nearly 3.5GHz. I probably could have gone higher with a better cooler but my apt gets hot enough as it is without adding a major OC to my system.

As you can see though you can still get crazy cheap deals on the AMD side if you just know where to look. These chips have more than enough power to do anything your average person is gonna want to do with a PC, heck my youngest is gaming on a 3.4Ghz Athlon X3 and is quite happy with the performance and with my 1035T I can game AND do a transcode AND burn a DVD at the same time with no slow downs so I would say I'm getting my $105 out of it.