Thoughts on AMD's Stars Family
AMD fans, myself included, have been waiting for AMD to come out with their "true quad core" chips for a while now, while our Intel Core 2 Duo "brethren" keep reminding us over how much faster, and cooler running their current chips are. Well, today we got a glimpse into what AMD is cooking up for the next generation of silicon.
The top end chips will be dubbed Phenom FX, continuing the FX moniker. Expect a few chips, probably three, with speeds around 2.2 GHz, 2.4 GHz, and 2.6 GHz built on a 65 nm process. Supporting this will be 512 kb of L2 cache for each of the four cores, and then an additional 2 megs of L3 cache. No word on what the L1 cache will be sporting. While the clock speeds will be nothing revolutionary, the bus speed of 3200 or 3600 MHz is quite fast. The top chips of the series are expected to fit into a new Socket 1207+, and be available in the fall. No word yet on pricing, but if this thing has the goods, I wouldn't be surprised if it retailed in the neighborhood of a grand.
Moving down the line is the Phenom X4. This quad core should be more along the lines of something that most of us can afford. It is expected to fit into the AM2+ socket, and there is speculation that it may be a way of upgrading current AM2 motherboards to four core processing power, although possibly with some handicap- the jury is still out. Anticipated for the fall are chips with clock speeds of 2.2 GHz, and 2.4 GHz, with the same L2/L3 cache configuration of the FX chips. As the FSB speeds are also the same, I'm not sure how different the performance will be from the FX line, but clearly there should be one, or why would anyone pay for the FX?
Perhaps the "bang for the buck" will come from the Phenom X2 dual core variants as few applications can take advantage of the quad cores anyway. These chips are expected to come in clock speeds of 2.4, 2.6, and 2.8 GHz. They'll have 512 kb of L2 cache like many of today's X2 line (some have a full meg per core like the X2 5200+), but unlike current offerings will have 2 megs of L3 memory on board. Aslo, bus speeds may go as high as 4200 MHz which should provide some oomph, even before overclocking.
Finally, also expected for the budget crowd are an updated Athlon 64 dual core, and a pair of single core Semprons, and a trio of low power Phenom X2's.
While the details are still sketchy, and not finalized, it's encouraging to get a glimpse into AMD's future processors. They haven't been able to match Intel in the high end for a while now, but this fall, I expect to see some real shootouts for the ultimate performance crown. In the meantime, we all eagerly await some benchmark tests because specs on their own aren't really that important, it's the real performance that counts. Hopefully, we'll be getting some first benchmarks later next week.
--Jonas
View the roadmap here.
The top end chips will be dubbed Phenom FX, continuing the FX moniker. Expect a few chips, probably three, with speeds around 2.2 GHz, 2.4 GHz, and 2.6 GHz built on a 65 nm process. Supporting this will be 512 kb of L2 cache for each of the four cores, and then an additional 2 megs of L3 cache. No word on what the L1 cache will be sporting. While the clock speeds will be nothing revolutionary, the bus speed of 3200 or 3600 MHz is quite fast. The top chips of the series are expected to fit into a new Socket 1207+, and be available in the fall. No word yet on pricing, but if this thing has the goods, I wouldn't be surprised if it retailed in the neighborhood of a grand.
Moving down the line is the Phenom X4. This quad core should be more along the lines of something that most of us can afford. It is expected to fit into the AM2+ socket, and there is speculation that it may be a way of upgrading current AM2 motherboards to four core processing power, although possibly with some handicap- the jury is still out. Anticipated for the fall are chips with clock speeds of 2.2 GHz, and 2.4 GHz, with the same L2/L3 cache configuration of the FX chips. As the FSB speeds are also the same, I'm not sure how different the performance will be from the FX line, but clearly there should be one, or why would anyone pay for the FX?
Perhaps the "bang for the buck" will come from the Phenom X2 dual core variants as few applications can take advantage of the quad cores anyway. These chips are expected to come in clock speeds of 2.4, 2.6, and 2.8 GHz. They'll have 512 kb of L2 cache like many of today's X2 line (some have a full meg per core like the X2 5200+), but unlike current offerings will have 2 megs of L3 memory on board. Aslo, bus speeds may go as high as 4200 MHz which should provide some oomph, even before overclocking.
Finally, also expected for the budget crowd are an updated Athlon 64 dual core, and a pair of single core Semprons, and a trio of low power Phenom X2's.
While the details are still sketchy, and not finalized, it's encouraging to get a glimpse into AMD's future processors. They haven't been able to match Intel in the high end for a while now, but this fall, I expect to see some real shootouts for the ultimate performance crown. In the meantime, we all eagerly await some benchmark tests because specs on their own aren't really that important, it's the real performance that counts. Hopefully, we'll be getting some first benchmarks later next week.
--Jonas
View the roadmap here.
Labels: AMD, processors
posted by digitaldoc at 1:36 PM
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