Tricycle of a Chip

We'll all waited with great anticipation for AMD's latest Phenom processor. In all likelihood, the very future of the company depends on it being a hit. While it really is intended as a quad core processor, there will also be dual core, and even tricore versions available. It has been postulated that perhaps the yields on this complicated piece of silicon are pretty poor, and this is a way to sell a chip with three of the cores functioning well, and not have to toss it into the bin. I've even seen forum postings about users planning to do the "new overclock:" reenabling a disabled core.

We've been talking about this new type of quad core, which connects all of the cores with each other for over a year now. The first benchmarks have been coming in, and well, they're less than impressive on the quad core. How might a tricore perform?

AMD hasn't sent any of these tricore chips out to anyone, but that's not stopping some clever Germans. It's always a little presumptive to try and simulate performance, but I think it does give a useful glimpse into what might be. Recall that for a chip that doesn't exist, I'm sure the motherboard, nor the benchmarks are quite optimized to take advantage of a three core processor. That said, here's their test setup. They clocked an AMD Phenom chip at 2.3 GHz, the fastest clock speed of introduction. They benchmarked it using all four cores, then with three cores, and finally with only two cores active. They threw in an Athlon X2 4400+ (which runs at the same 2.3 GHz speed), also clocked at 2.3 GHz, and Intel's cheapest quad core, the Q6600 for good measure. (Realize that the Intel quad's native clock speed is 2.4 GHz giving it a small speed advantage. The purist in me thinks they should have underclocked it to the identical clock speed, but it's still pretty close.)

Anyway, the results of their three benchmarks can be seen here. There's a nice performance progression between the Phenom running two cores, three cores and four cores, which is not too surprising. What is disappointing is that the Phenom on two cores is only marginally faster than an Athlon X2 which is hardly a cutting edge chip. What's also even more disappointing is that Intels' Quad, the Q6600 clearly leads the pack all around.

So, what's to make of all of this? I think that AMD will have to continue to sell their chips on the cheap in order to remain competitive. The Q6600 is selling for $280 today, so they'll have to slash, er, I mean, price accordingly. The Phenom X2 hardly seems like a major architectural advantage over the current Athlon X2's, and they can be had for a bargain, and should continue to provide plenty of power for bargain seekers. Unfortunately, the performance crowd, with their higher profit margins, will turn to Intel for their needs.

Unless this tricore Phenom X3 is priced very aggressively, I don't see users flocking to it as they'll just buy a quad core if they know anything about chips, or a dual core if they don't. I think it's intended to fill a niche so small that it may not exist.

--Jonas