AMD, Intel Plotting Six-Core CPU Releases

[loomis86]

If you want a holo-deck to ever come true, you're gonna need a few more cores. I remember when I had a 486DX4, intel started making the pentium and all people could say was "what the heck do we need that for?? You gotta be a fool to buy it."

 

[mfarrukh]

Now what?
More CORES?
We need Higher clock speed not more cores

 

[tacoslave]

[citation][nom]JOSHSKORN[/nom]Can someone tell me why the HELL we need 6 cores? I'm waiting for an answer. Really.[/citation]

You need to keep moving forward and keep making progress who cares if most of us dont need it now its the future that their looking too.Remember dual cores? same argument same answer.

P.s sorry if i sounded like a dick

 

[siuol11]

[citation][nom]welshmousepk[/nom]nice, but not something i care about. i want AMD to release a faster quad (32nm?), so i can get more gaming performance. 2 more cores? pointless for me. anyone know if AMD have any new quads in the works? something to justify an upgrade from a 3.6Ghz PII?[/citation]
Yes, but that is Bulldozer and they come out next year. If AMD can actually stick with the S3 architecture, I might actually get one... I used to be an AMD man, but after 3 versions of "we're going to stick with this architecture for the next three CPU generations" and then not doing it, I got fed up and went to Intel. I still like AMD better (the CPU's don't cost an arm and a leg), but I'm going to wait to see how Bulldozer works before I change over.

 

[killerclick]

[citation][nom]aussiexboxfreak[/nom]To those asking why we need more cores, any animator who has to wait for something to render is saying thank bloody god, we'd take a million cores if we could!Unlike most programs, 3D render packages are the first to support extra cores, quite often before they are even released.[/citation]

I'd rather have GPU rendering than 6 or 12 CPU cores. Even a sub $100 GPU will blow the fastest i7 out of the water at rendering tasks... if it were supported by Mental Ray, vray, Brazil etc.

 

[Stardude82]

I hope the new AMD hex-core chip is going to have architecture improvements, the K10 still lags the Core 2 on a per clock basis. Cooling is going to be an issue if there is not.

 

[Stardude82]

I have some concerns for AMD. Given that Phenom II still lags the Core 2 Duo on a per clock basis, I hope the added l2 cache and processing improvements can give a better per what preformance. url=http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103682]Right now unless they have clocks in the mid-2ghz's,[/url] these things are going to be room heaters.

I don't see AMD getting 32 nm and a architecture overhaul for another year.

 

[The Greater Good]

I've read through most of the posts here and a lot of people are asking "What can you do with more cores?" Well, speaking only for me... I run BOINC. The more cores I have, the more tasks I can do at once. Instead of 4, I could do 6. You leave that running 24/7, that's 48 hours extra crunch time in one day over the quad core CPU.

That's not the only reason I'd like a 6 core CPU, but it's a big one.

 

[anamaniac]

[citation][nom]jrewolinski[/nom]About time. 6-core server chips have been out at least 6 months now.[/citation]
a lot longer than that.
Intel made a server chip that was three C2D's slapped together. It's insanely expensive.

 

[jfem]

Wow, I still have dual core.

 

[shravankale]

Are they planning to sell it in mainstream or for severs n all. My quad-core feels threatened

 

[shravankale]

[citation][nom]welshmousepk[/nom]nice, but not something i care about. i want AMD to release a faster quad (32nm?), so i can get more gaming performance. 2 more cores? pointless for me. anyone know if AMD have any new quads in the works? something to justify an upgrade from a 3.6Ghz PII?[/citation]

A AMD PHENOM II 975 is in rumours it's gonna be clocked at 3.6Ghz

 

[trinix]

Noone denies the fact that more cores have a use for certain people and that others can just take 2, 3 or 4 cores and be happy. It's a good thing that intel and amd are both providing different cores to the market.

But it's already been so many years since the first dual core has been released and we still only get minor advantages from more than 1 core in games, sure background programs get to use the other core or spread between the cores, but wouldn't it be great if software companies would utilize more cores. There be a reason for everyone to get 4+ cores?

I recognize the need for the cpu now, but I just think that it would also be nice to need it for things I use the computer for, not just that someone can say look at my benchmark score or I have this heavy multitreaded app I run, because I don't run those and I don't care about numbers. I'd just want PC-games especially, but also other apps that could benefit from it (I understand that Utorrent wouldn't really benefit from 6 cores support). PC-games have to take the hardware and use it.

And yes, the difference between 1 and 2 cores is big, just wish we could say the same between 4 and 6 for games and normal apps.

 

[shravankale]

no instead of 2 cores not being utilized in a quad core there will be 4 cores being unutilized in a 6 core processor

 

[jeffunit]

Perhaps I was trapped in a time machine.
AMD did this in June 2009.
Anyone could buy an AMD 6 core processor for the last 7 months.
See http://www.amd.com/us/press-releases/Pages/new_six-core_amd_opteron_processor-2009jun01.aspx

Before anyone flames me for saying they aren't desktop processors, they will fit in a standard case, and start around $600.

The only thing that might be newsworthy, would be a price reduction, or some that fit in an AM3 socket.

 

[jsc]

The attitude a lot of us have is, " I don't care if I don't need it. I don't care if I can't use it. I. Want. One. Now."

Me too.

 

[Guest]

If Opencl catches on it will be the end of the cpu as we know it since powerhungry people will switch to multiple video cards gpu's to render.

This is a good reason for Intel not to let this happen by adding many cores.

Also like someone quoted there are indeed already server cpu's with 6 cores.

 

[hundredislandsboy]

A AMD PHENOM II 975 is in rumours it's gonna be clocked at 3.6Ghz

Okay. It's probably a factory overclocked Phenom II 955.

The thing is, we're finding out the later revision CPUs with higher clocks seem to have a smaller range for overclocker. Would not be surprised if this 975 becomes unstable at 3.9 Ghz and hits only 4 Ghz with 1.5v vcore.

 

[Glacier]

I hope games don't require Six-Core CPU's for a few years, I just got this Phenom II 945

 

[tsnor]

ahhh.... AMD Opteron 2400-series "Istanbul" (45 nm) has been shipping 6 cores per chip since Jun 2009. It can compete with core i7 quads in some workloads but not others.

High multi-cores (to date) are for throughput computing. Good enough thread performance, maximize throughput while meeting latency goals. Saves software fees that are priced per Socket. Assuming frequency/cache size trade-offs are required to get six instead of four cores this is NOT what I'd want in a gaming rig.

Aside: Sun UltraSPARC T2 Plus shipped in 2008 with 8 cores and 8 threads per core for 64 threads on a chip. Image the windows task manager with 64 processor graphs. Again, not what I'd want for anything but an app or web server. Compare to an IBM mainframe shipping with 64 full size cores at 4+ Ghz each. Cost is not the same, nor is performance.

 

[mlopinto2k1]

I don't care what anyone say's about anything. I am in love with Mass Effect 2.

 

[tsnor]

[citation][nom]luc vr[/nom]If Opencl catches on it will be the end of the cpu as we know it since powerhungry people will switch to multiple video cards gpu's to render.This is a good reason for Intel not to let this happen by adding many cores.Also like someone quoted there are indeed already server cpu's with 6 cores.[/citation]

I tried the GPGPU approach with a number of video cards using various "folding at home" GPU clients. Results were really mixed. Throughput was always better (Q6600 stock speed = 1/4 nvidia 8600 gts) BUT
-- nvidia 8600 gts through kernal crash over half the time even when underclocked. Maybe some error checking would be nice.
-- nvidia 9600 GT ran flawlessly (or did not report errors)
-- HD 5770 would not load client (maybe not supported yet)
-- HD 4650 loaded client, but failed every time (maybe driver/client bug?)
-- Q6600s worked perfrectly, as did E5400, I7 920s, AMD 5000+.

Net, I'm not doing work using OpenCL on a GPGPU until they fix the stability/error checking issues. Fermi claims to do this. we'll see. The goal of fast video and doing 1 trillion calculations with every one correct are conflicting.

 

[notsleep]

my next system is going to be a six core system. i can't wait until they're released. i have had single, dual, and quad core systems (real cores not counting hyperthreading induced ones). if intel's six core is going to cost upwards of $1,000, then i'll go with amd's offering as long as each core is clocked at over 2.4ghz each.

 

[JohnnyLucky]

Here we go again.

 

[lamorpa]

'plotting'? 'floating'? 'dialing'? What are you talking about here? Maybe the article could have started with, "With Dueling AMD and Intel silcos already hawking quad-core CPUs on the sales front, it's par for the course for them to rev their engines up a bit higher by adding a whole half again more cores."