It's Official: AMD Confirms Hexa-Core Thuban CPU

Its_Me · 23 Sep 2009 at 12:59

paininlife said:
^y m i not convinced with dat answer
infact i lyk AMD a lot, becuz its bcuz of AMD compettetiveness ,Intel hav to lower its CPU prices, if today AMD closes thn see the sky high prices by Intel, not evry1 in this world can buy hi end extreme editon cpus by Intel, but by buying cheaper CPUs by AMD ,thy try to stand close to Intels perfomance

What language is this?
Can someone translate for me, please.

pastymuncher · 23 Sep 2009 at 13:23

paininlife said:
^y m i not convinced with dat answer
infact i lyk AMD a lot, becuz its bcuz of AMD compettetiveness ,Intel hav to lower its CPU prices, if today AMD closes thn see the sky high prices by Intel, not evry1 in this world can buy hi end extreme editon cpus by Intel, but by buying cheaper CPUs by AMD ,thy try to stand close to Intels perfomance

For god's sake write properly so that everyone can understand you.

gillywibble · 23 Sep 2009 at 13:31

Hades said:
I have to say that it worries me slightly that only a DDR3 memory controller is mentioned. But if it is indeed AM2+/DDR2 compatible then the AM2+ socket looks like it will be one of the best sockets ever. You can pair it with oodles of cheap memory and keep dropping in newer and newer processors

But for how long?

Samione · 23 Sep 2009 at 14:32

Anyone know anything about this?

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=234105

engineering sample of a 2x12 core running in dual socket. 24 cores, yikes.

HighlandeR · 23 Sep 2009 at 22:04

Look forward to AMDs 6 core cpus but something tells me they gotta do a redesign and come out with a totaly new cpu to compete with Core i7/i9 range.

theforce · 23 Sep 2009 at 22:23

HighlandeR said:
Look forward to AMDs 6 core cpus but something tells me they gotta do a redesign and come out with a totaly new cpu to compete with Core i7/i9 range.

Unfortunately that is with Bulldozer coming in H1 of 2011. Until then the only new thing AMD can look forward to, is their 32nm process that will allow them to either add more existing cores or do some minor changes to the core to bring them closer to Intel's performance.

Dolph · 23 Sep 2009 at 22:31

alexhull24 said:
It might not match the intel performance for it's closest rival, but you can be darn sure it'll be cheaper.

No you can't, look at current pricing, the Phenom 965 is the same price as the i5 750... and the intel chip is faster.

The choice to keep the AM2 socket will reduce the total upgrade or new build cost, but the actual chips aren't significantly cheaper any more apart from at the real budget end.

deusexlumina · 23 Sep 2009 at 22:35

theforce said:
Unfortunately that is with Bulldozer coming in H1 of 2011. Until then the only new thing AMD can look forward to, is their 32nm process that will allow them to either add more existing cores or do some minor changes to the core to bring them closer to Intel's performance.

hmm i dont know, its certainly the roadmap but thats quite a long gap with very little happening. Given the rapid movement by the ATi section over the past few months i wouldn't be surprised if they had something more than that planned.

Nocky24 · 24 Sep 2009 at 00:50

Any ideas on clock speed though for this chip? Forgive me if someones mentioned it.

milkinc13 · 24 Sep 2009 at 18:40

sounding good, rendering times decreasing esp good for HD movies.

Audigex · 27 Sep 2009 at 02:06

Just to clear something up which has come up a couple of times in this thread

AM3-compatable/native chips have a DDR3 controller ONLY
AM3 boards have NO memory controller

AM2+ boards have a DDR2 controller
AM2+ chips have NO memory controller.

So basically
AM3 chip & AM3 motherboard uses the MoBo DDR3 controller
AM2+ chip & AM2+ motherboard uses the MoBo DDR2 controller
AM3 chip & AM2+ motherboard uses the MoBo DDR2 controller
AM2+ chip & AM3 motherboard doesn't work (neither have a memory controller)

Hope that clears things up

Its_Me · 27 Sep 2009 at 09:09

Audigex said:
Just to clear something up which has come up a couple of times in this thread

AM3-compatable/native chips have a DDR3 controller ONLY
AM3 boards have NO memory controller

AM2+ boards have a DDR2 controller
AM2+ chips have NO memory controller.

So basically
AM3 chip & AM3 motherboard uses the MoBo DDR3 controller
AM2+ chip & AM2+ motherboard uses the MoBo DDR2 controller
AM3 chip & AM2+ motherboard uses the MoBo DDR2 controller
AM2+ chip & AM3 motherboard doesn't work (neither have a memory controller)

Hope that clears things up

Sorry your info is wrong.

The DDR2 or DDR3 memory controller is actualy integrated into the CPU.

AM3 only have DDR3 & DDR2 controller.
AM2+ have DDR2 only.

AM3 will drop into AM2/AM2+ boards.
AM2+ will drop into an AN2 board.

feeddagoat · 27 Sep 2009 at 16:24

Great news that theres still an upgrade option for AM2+. Hopefully the 955 will drop below £100. since I only game Im holding off as long as possible on that upgrade. Only problem I can see tho, because of my upgrade plan AM4 could well be out before hexa-core becomes desirable for me.

Rofflay · 28 Sep 2009 at 20:13

from a purely gaming perspective i cant help but wonder if the i9 will trounce the thuban.

i wouldnt mind an upgrade as my 2.8 core 2 has about had it and i really wanna play gta iv maxed with 8xAA 16xAF with 60fps constant all the time.i7 at 4gig with a 5870 would still not do 60fps i dont think.

the intels have hyperthreading which when used is going to pull ahead of the thuban so really isnt it the phenomx4 v i7 all over again?

pound v performance with intel on top.i hope im wrong as the 2500M barton clocked to 3.2 was the best chip ive ever had i think at £50.

i wonder how long until patches could come out for gta or source games to use more than 4 cores and make thuban worthwhile.

PermaBanned · 28 Sep 2009 at 20:28

Rofflay said:
from a purely gaming perspective i cant help but wonder if the i9 will trounce the thuban.

i wouldnt mind an upgrade as my 2.8 core 2 has about had it and i really wanna play gta iv maxed with 8xAA 16xAF with 60fps constant all the time.i7 at 4gig with a 5870 would still not do 60fps i dont think.

the intels have hyperthreading which when used is going to pull ahead of the thuban so really isnt it the phenomx4 v i7 all over again?

pound v performance with intel on top.i hope im wrong as the 2500M barton clocked to 3.2 was the best chip ive ever had i think at £50.

i wonder how long until patches could come out for gta or source games to use more than 4 cores and make thuban worthwhile.

Graphics card has a much bigger impact on gaming performance than CPU.

Bob Wya Jnr · 28 Sep 2009 at 21:53

Rofflay said:
from a purely gaming perspective i cant help but wonder if the i9 will trounce the thuban.

AMD are still playing catch up with Core 2!! They have yet to best the i7 on the Desktop or Server space... The reviews I have seen of a 6-core AMD CPU were not good. They had to drop the clock speed down to stay within the socket thermal envelope. The benchmarks suffered as a result. Especially since work on explicit parallel processing is still getting off the ground...

Intel just have a better/more advanced process and more R&D money to spend on refining the microarchitecture of their CPUs. Sad to say because everyone benefits when AMD and Intel are neck-and-neck. I still love my dual socket 940 (285) CPUs :cool:

Bob

Sylver123 · 28 Sep 2009 at 23:05

Personally, I can`t see either Intel's or AMD's six core being that much faster in gaming than the processors we already have out, unless more games are coded better to use multi-core, but things like multitasking, encoding and graphics rendering, stuff like that should benefit greatly from these chips.

Bob Wya Jnr · 29 Sep 2009 at 00:21

Sylver123 said:
Personally, I can`t see either Intel's or AMD's six core being that much faster in gaming than the processors we already have out, unless more games are coded better to use multi-core, but things like multitasking, encoding and graphics rendering, stuff like that should benefit greatly from these chips.

The AMD offerings will definitely be slower until they can sort out the power consumption/TDP of their CPUs... The 6-core CPU review I looked at reminded me the initial Phenom launchflop... Far too slow to even consider for gaming (I think the 6-core chip ran at something like 2.2-2.4Ghz from memory). Even for multi-core rendering you gotta question whether a Core i7 920@4Ghz isn't going to walk all over it...

Bob

Sylver123 · 29 Sep 2009 at 01:17

Bob Wya Jnr said:
The AMD offerings will definitely be slower until they can sort out the power consumption/TDP of their CPUs... The 6-core CPU review I looked at reminded me the initial Phenom launchflop... Far too slow to even consider for gaming (I think the 6-core chip ran at something like 2.2-2.4Ghz from memory). Even for multi-core rendering you gotta question whether a Core i7 920@4Ghz isn't going to walk all over it...

Bob

Yes, but you can`t say just because you saw a review of there 6-core server chip and it wasn`t very fast, so there desktop version will also be slow as well.

Bob Wya Jnr · 29 Sep 2009 at 01:38

Sylver123 said:
Yes, but you can`t say just because you saw a review of there 6-core server chip and it wasn`t very fast, so there desktop version will also be slow as well.

No I know that. But my understanding is that it is not a question of binning or quality control, etc. Rather AMD simply can't make CPUs with 6-cores @45nm in the current SOI process with ~3.0Ghz stock speeds without exceeding the AM3 socket TDP spec. I guess CPU revisions would help with this eventually or a process shrink to 32nm...??

AMDs Global Foundries output has been fairly predictable recently (high TDP and lagging a bit behind Intel). Although it was good to see the Phenom II finally closing the gap with the Core 2 - AMD really need to update their K10 (aka K8 on steroids) architecture ASAP. They still need better single core performance to compete with Intel.

Bob