Phenom II X6: First Details Of ‘Thuban’ Design Emerge

[hamiac]

[citation][nom]gkay09[/nom]If the X6 can beat the i7 920/ 930 and remain in the same price range, then AMD will have a winner in the enthusiast segment IMO...[/citation]
Well as much as I like AMD, knowing them, it will all be too late and intel will have something outrageously more awesome and a price to match

 

[hamiac]

[citation][nom]noob2222[/nom]Thats called bulldozer, possible samples q4, production q1-q2 2011. That is unless GF transition to 32 and 22nm goes really well, or really bad.[/citation]
Sorry, meant to quote this post 🙁

 

[RazberyBandit]

Both 700- and 800-series chipsets, is my understanding As far as what determines support, I'll try to get confirmation from AMD for the launch!

Thanks man. I really appreciate it when you take the time to actually reply to questions and concerns like this. One of the reasons I rarely miss anything you publish here at Tom's.

And no, I'm not brown-nosing here - just speakin' the truth.

 

[eddieroolz]

Another month, another exciting product launch. This keeps getting better!

Of course, by the tone of this article, it seems that Tom's has already gotten a few of these engineering samples, I presume?

/Offtopic/
I would've called the Turbo feature "Supercharge" just to differentiate from Intel's implementatation xD

 

[marsman]

Considering the different maufacturing Proccess i wonder if they overclock better i hope so

 

[guanyu210379]

6 cores? When will it be on the market and how much it will be?
If I can afford it, perhaps it is time to throw my 2 years old Q6600 into the trash can.

 

[nforce4max]

I can't wait for the energy efficient models to come out even if they are low clocked. I prefer AMD's chip binning compared to Intel which grants a few samples that use less power per clock than normal binned samples. 65w is typically my preferred area how ever getting any thing with more than two cores at that wattage isn't that easy to track down at a fair price some times but that is what it is. Just got my self a 8250e for every day use $30 below what newegg is charging.

 

[The Lady Slayer]

e-tailer is a bad word and you should feel bad for using it

 

[Marco925]

I think I see my new gaming computer

 

[Onus]

On the CPU front, I'm not sure if this will give AMD a big performance boost. It will be interesting to see how it helps their efficiency, which has also lagged Intel somewhat. I just hope I can justify getting one of these 😗 . On the GPU front however, nVidia must not have this process technology, which may explain why Fermi is so hot and hungry.

 

[zoemayne]

So is this entire series gonna stick with the AM3 socket?

 

[gazukull]

Here is the real question: Will a AMD 6-core beat an OC'd i7 930? Cinebench specifically. I bet on no... so I just picked up my i7 930 from Microcenter yesterday... I probably should have waited until the benches.

 

[zoemayne]

Eventually AMD will pass Intel. I'm sure with the billion they received from the lawsuit won they will succeed. I'm pretty sure ($1000 million reasons) that AMD processors are slower b/c of intels "practices". Since they cant use those "practices" any more AMD will get better. But I doubt that AMD was able to apply that 1 billion to improve this processor line up(especially since its not a lump sum payment) in such a short amount of time.

 

[joe gamer]

Hrm... I've been holding out for a 32nm quad-core from Intel but perhaps I could go with a 45nm sext(?)-core from AMD. I wonder if the 5870 would perform better with AMD's platform or if it would matter at all? We need more benchmarks lol.

 

[deltatux]

[citation][nom]daniel266[/nom]if just AMD put The "Hyper threading" feature on this cpus im sure it will beat some of the i7 with a price we can afford ..forget 980 ..$1099 price....[/citation]

Hyperthreading's just Intel's implementation of simultaneous multithreading (SMT). Issue with SMT on x86 architecture is that it trades more throughput for more latencies. In some cases it will degrade performance, there's no free lunch as you're also going to cause other side effects on the CPU due to SMT.

For me, generally I'd either suggest people to turn it off or don't even have it on the CPU at all as it doesn't provide much of a speed gain and in some cases, it will slow things down. That's why I'm still questioning why Intel bothered with Hyperthreading in Nehalem.

 

[werfu]

I can't wait for AMD to switch to 32nm! These will be killer CPUs. If they can hit 3.2Ghz on a 6-core at 45nm, they will easily hit 4Ghz on 32nm! I really hope that AMD also find a way to increase performance per clock on their newer design.

 

[flyinfinni]

Ok- this is sounding more and more like it will be a worthwhile upgrade from a quad!

 

[jimmysmitty]

I think Thubans price tells a story. If the pricing is true, it is priced right near a Core i7 920 which means thats probably where its performance will be. If it did beat Gulftown easily I would expect it to be priced much like Gulftown, just like Athlon FX was priced like Pentium 4/D.

 

[JohnnyLucky]

It's too early and too expensive to migrate to 6 core cpu's.

 

[Onus]

It's too early and too expensive to migrate to 6 core cpu's.

If this chip is more energy-efficient, those running server farms or clusters may still find it worthwhile, even if apps can't yet use those extra cores and performance is no better than an existing triple- or quad-core. The price doesn't look like it will be outrageous, especially compared to Intel's offerings.

 

[saint19]

Well, let's see and the end of this month how this X6 works in the 890F chipset.

 

[soliloquist]

So for these new hex cores will there be 3 "power states"?
1 Normal (all cores at 3.2Ghz)
2 Turbo (3 cores +500Mhz and 3 cores at 800Mhz)
3 CoolnQuiet (all cores 800Mhz)
Or will you have to turn on either CnQ or Turbo?

 

[Stardude82]

I'm pretty sure if you look at the 980x-975 benchmarks, you'd get a good idea how the scaling will work. However, the Turbo mode will turn your chip into an 720 with a pretty standard overclock... The $300 price tag will still only make it competitive with the i7-930.

 

[Guest]

6 cores on 45nm.....
does that mean 8-10 cores on 35nm...

 

[hundredislandsboy]

Cool with me. After a few months when the have more than they can sell and news comes out that C4 stepping quadcores come out withunlockable two extra cores for 6 cores total - I'm buying and unleashing!