# AMD Preparing ''Thuban'' Desktop Six-Core Processor



## btarunr (Sep 2, 2009)

AMD is planning to create a desktop implementation of its Opteron "Istanbul" monolithic six-core processor. Codenamed "Thuban" (named after a star in the Draco constellation, which means Dragon), the new processor will be based on the socket AM3 package for compatibility with existing and future desktop core logic. It features six cores, 9 MB of total cache (6 x 512 KB L2 + 6 MB L3). Thuban is aimed to make for AMD's high-end desktop processor, as the company prepares to face competition from a near-complete lineup of processors based on the Nehalem/Westmere architectures from Intel. It is expected to be the posterboy for AMD's "Leo" high-end consumer desktop platform that succeeds its current Dragon platform. 

Some of the key components that make up AMD Leo platform are the upcoming AMD 890FX and 890GX chipset, companion SB800 series southbridge chips, and members of AMD's Evergreen family of DirectX 11 compliant graphics processors. On the software front, AMD will give its Fusion and Overdrive utilities some big updates. The SB800 series southbridge chips will feature native support for SATA 6 Gb/s and USB 3.0; connectivity is further enhanced by integrated Broadcom MAC Ethernet interfaces. While the Leo platform is expected to launch almost simultaneously with the 8-series chipsets, the six-core Thuban processor on the other hand comes later. It is due only in Q3 2010. Thuban will have come out an year after its enterprise implementation in the form of Opteron "Istanbul". 



 



*View at TechPowerUp Main Site*


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## Zubasa (Sep 2, 2009)

Bring it on AMD!

Now, when will you bring in the Bulldozers? AMD


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## zOaib (Sep 2, 2009)

THUBAN = Dragon 

nice they r getting exotic with their naming schemes =P 

please AMD free me from Intel once n for all =)


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## Kitkat (Sep 2, 2009)

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!! DO EEt!!!!!!!!!

PLZ 9mb to 12 and Q3 to simotanious launch. one thing i dont like about amd the mix match launch. Arent the 32s coming Q2. lol id just save it all for q3 then. wtf



zOaib said:


> THUBAN = Dragon
> 
> nice they r getting exotic with their naming schemes =P
> 
> please AMD free me from Intel once n for all =)



not really, nothing any chipname hasnt been b4. And if it was in englsh wouldnt it mean thuban in arabic lol


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## human_error (Sep 2, 2009)

> It is due only in Q3 2010.



:shadedshu


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## PVTCaboose1337 (Sep 2, 2009)

The naming is getting good.  I guess they ran out of cities in Europe and decided to choose stars in the universe.  They won't run out of those!


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## A Cheese Danish (Sep 2, 2009)

Gosh! Looks like it will be a sweet build for me! Bring me the Leo setup!


Edit: 1000 post! Finally!


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## devguy (Sep 2, 2009)

Ehh... We all knew this was coming.  However, I thought we'd see an AM3 version of the Istanbul as a single socket Opteron before a Phenom Branded part.

Anyways, go AMD!  World's first native x86 quad (a lot that meant...) and now first native x86 hexacore!


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## ASharp (Sep 2, 2009)

PVTCaboose1337 said:


> The naming is getting good.  I guess they ran out of cities in Europe and decided to choose stars in the universe.  They won't run out of those!



Well, technically they've been doing that since the original Phenoms.  Agena, Kuma, Toliman, Deneb, etc.


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## [I.R.A]_FBi (Sep 2, 2009)

devguy said:


> and now first native x86 hexacore!



orally?


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## ShadowFold (Sep 2, 2009)

Oh man, I cannot wait..


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## 1Kurgan1 (Sep 2, 2009)

Very nice, but moving to a 6 core desktop proc I don't see this sneaking in under $300 and would hate to see AMD pushing out those wallet crushing priced procs again. Also leaves me wondering, when is the 890FX and GX suppose to roll out, they mention it here, but don't set a  date?


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## TheLaughingMan (Sep 2, 2009)

Shouldn't there be slightly more cache?  How must L1 cache will it have.  I am guessing the standard 128K (64+64) per core.  Bring it to 9.768 MB of cache.

I can't wait to see how this works out.  I hope we can get a nice, "We are ahead of schedule and redoing our 2010 figures.  Pushing up the release of several products....." Letter.  I can dream.


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## YinYang.ERROR (Sep 2, 2009)

hexacore... WOW!

I want one... or at least one to come out. (so prices drop on other cpus)


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## legends84 (Sep 2, 2009)

nice going


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## TheGuruStud (Sep 2, 2009)

I want die speed L3 or I'm not upgrading. Quit dickin me with these shit mem controller and L3 clocks, AMD (o/c can only get them so high).


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## Wile E (Sep 2, 2009)

btarunr said:


> *While the Leo platform is expected to launch almost simultaneously with the 8-series chipsets, the six-core Thuban processor on the other hand comes later. It is due only in Q3 2010.* Thuban will have come out an year after its enterprise implementation in the form of Opteron "Istanbul"



That is much less than impressive to me. Why would it take a year from now, if they already have the Opty hexacore dies stamped out. Doesn't seem to me it would take a whole lot of tweaking to get a desktop part out of them. They need to release their 6 core before Intel does, otherwise they'll just be stuck in Intel's shadow again. I hope that release date ends up being pushed forward.


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## TheGuruStud (Sep 2, 2009)

Wile E said:


> That is much less than impressive to me. Why would it take a year from now, if they already have the Opty hexacore dies stamped out. Doesn't seem to me it would take a whole lot of tweaking to get a desktop part out of them. They need to release their 6 core before Intel does, otherwise they'll just be stuck in Intel's shadow again. I hope that release date ends up being pushed forward.



2010 just sunk in, wtf? This damn thing should be out in Jan. Worthless. No one's going to buy this crap. I will just wait for bulldozer even if it's a yr later.


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## Wile E (Sep 2, 2009)

TheGuruStud said:


> 2010 just sunk in, wtf? This damn thing should be out in Jan. Worthless. No one's going to buy this crap. I will just wait for bulldozer even if it's a yr later.



That's my point exactly. 3rd quarter 2010 is much too late. Isn't Intel due out with hex desktop parts in Q1? 6 months is a long ass time to go without releasing a similar product.

Look at what happened with Phenom 1 and Core2Quad. Phenom 1 released so much later, it was pretty much dead before it even released.


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## YinYang.ERROR (Sep 2, 2009)

Wile E said:


> That's my point exactly. 3rd quarter 2010 is much too late. Isn't Intel due out with hex desktop parts in Q1? 6 months is a long ass time to go without releasing a similar product.
> 
> Look at what happened with Phenom 1 and Core2Quad. Phenom 1 released so much later, it was pretty much dead before it even released.



yup. 

AMD needs to get releasing.


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## FordGT90Concept (Sep 2, 2009)

Wile E said:


> That is much less than impressive to me. Why would it take a year from now, if they already have the Opty hexacore dies stamped out. Doesn't seem to me it would take a whole lot of tweaking to get a desktop part out of them. They need to release their 6 core before Intel does, otherwise they'll just be stuck in Intel's shadow again. I hope that release date ends up being pushed forward.


I think it's because of economics.  Hexacore processors cost 50% more to make and that should translate to a 50% increase in price.  It effectively prices itself out of market becuase most of the time, a Nehalem processor will still be faster for less.  I think it has to be built on 32nm in order to turn a profit; hence the wait.

They are selling it for servers because servers often benefit from more cores.  They can sell it to the server market on 45nm at a price point very competitive to Intel (Dunnington is helluh expensive).


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## radeon747 (Sep 2, 2009)

Does any one really know wat Thuban stand for it means satan "Shatan"


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## ShadowFold (Sep 2, 2009)

radeon747 said:


> Does any one really know wat Thuban stand for it means satan "Shatan"



Hmm, that's pretty awesome. If you're telling the truth, then I will indefinitely get this CPU because of it's name 

They've been getting their names from stars and stuff tho. Deneb is a star, and Agena is a star.. Thuban appears to be a star too.. Bleh..


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## Soparik2 (Sep 2, 2009)

im pretty sure that q3 is just a rough estimate right now and will most likely come out in q2. also im pretty sure i read that hte sb800 will not have usb3.0 native support. Even 6Gb sata is a laugh as drives dont allow such speeds yet unless in massive raid 0 configs.


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## PCpraiser100 (Sep 2, 2009)

Can't wait to see the results from Leo, it could be the circle of trust for my friends to get into PC gaming.


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## Steevo (Sep 2, 2009)

Soparik2 said:


> im pretty sure that q3 is just a rough estimate right now and will most likely come out in q2. also im pretty sure i read that hte sb800 will not have usb3.0 native support. Even 6Gb sata is a laugh as drives dont allow such speeds yet unless in massive raid 0 configs.



By the time it is out the SSD's will match. Right now we are on the threshold.


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## suraswami (Sep 2, 2009)

This is awesome.  Hopefully its under 95W and work in existing AM3/AM2+ socket boards with bios update....  hmm may be I need to wake up


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## idx (Sep 2, 2009)

I relay don't know from where did they get this name !!! Thuban means Snake not Dragon .
TEN'NEEN means Dragon in Arabic and the real word is "تنين"


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## the_wolf88 (Sep 2, 2009)

a Six Core Processor from AMD ! 

But in Arabic (Thuban) is not (Dragon)

In Arabic (Thuban) Stands for (Snake)


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## Hayder_Master (Sep 2, 2009)

my friend you know my first language is Arabic  btarunr "Thuban" mean snake in Arabic , or to be more clear we can say it is the "snake male"


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## btarunr (Sep 2, 2009)

devguy said:


> Anyways, go AMD!  World's first native x86 quad (a lot that meant...) and now first native x86 hexacore!



First native hexacore is Intel Dunnington (Xeon E7000). It's a monolithic die. 



TheLaughingMan said:


> Shouldn't there be slightly more cache?  How must L1 cache will it have.  I am guessing the standard 128K (64+64) per core.  Bring it to 9.768 MB of cache.



L1 caches are not counted in the "total cache".


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## 1Kurgan1 (Sep 2, 2009)

the_wolf88 said:


> a Six Core Processor from AMD !
> 
> But in Arabic (Thuban) is not (Dragon)
> 
> In Arabic (Thuban) Stands for (Snake)



Is that all arabic, snakes and dragons both have scales, and dragons are mythical, so back when "dragons were roaming hte land and knights were killing them"  I think that the mistake was maybe made between them and would cause a linking name. But I don't know Arabic, so just guessing here.


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## btarunr (Sep 2, 2009)

hayder.master said:


> my friend you know my first language is Arabic  btarunr "Thuban" mean snake in Arabic , or to be more clear we can say it is the "snake male"



Right, Thuban does mean snake, but it's also the name of a star in the Draco constellation. Draco = Dragon.


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## Binge (Sep 2, 2009)

It seems I've stumbled into reptilepowerup.com   Snakes become dragons if you add a few tons of flying, fire-breathing, muscle, and magic.

...  Yeah.  This looks cool.  It's interesting that AMD is still progressing with dual channel memory, and they probably do just fine with the bandwidth they currently provide with these setups.  Waiting for benchmarks and price point of this badboy before I start badmouthing


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## btarunr (Sep 2, 2009)

In a Q3 2010 setting, it shouldn't be priced over $300. It's highly unlikely you'll see a >$300 desktop AMD processor until Bulldozer ends up with technology leadership over everything Intel has.


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## Deleted member 67555 (Sep 2, 2009)

That's almost 2 years after the I7's, AMD has done this for some time now Hold off till it's needed, make it more efficient, make it cheaper, make it more compatible....
AMD "Unlike our competition we use LUBE"(music)dink dink dung dong.. woooo. ahh-oooo...


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## mosheen (Sep 2, 2009)

does that mean we will be getting 5 cores cpu also??


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## Hayder_Master (Sep 2, 2009)

btarunr said:


> Right, Thuban does mean snake, but it's also the name of a star in the Draco constellation. Draco = Dragon.



name of star i don't know that before nice info my brother , thanx


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## Zubasa (Sep 2, 2009)

ShadowFold said:


> Hmm, that's pretty awesome. If you're telling the truth, then I will indefinitely get this CPU because of it's name
> 
> They've been getting their names from stars and stuff tho. Deneb is a star, and Agena is a star.. Thuban appears to be a star too.. Bleh..


Thuban means Deathwing dude!


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## wolf (Sep 2, 2009)

I am concerned about these chips for a few reasons

Q3 2010
140w TDP vs Clock speeds

so weve pretty much covered its too little too late on the time front, but I think they can do very well in server/cluster applications against Intel, if they push their release a tad.

I fear these chips will never make a good gaming chip ever for my TDP vs speed argument, given a faster clocked dual core is generally better for gaming than a slower clocked quad, how would we benefit from 6 cores presumably running slower than current quads, and squeeze into 140w territory....

The way I see it this thing is going to be really hard to get to 3+ ghz (out of the box) and that's really what we need for mid-high end gaming these days, 1-2 cores @ 3 ghz or more.... I think this just won't be a gamers chip.

let's not confuse that with benchmarkers* chip 

*greater TPU community


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## wizard23 (Sep 2, 2009)

i feel so lucky i lived to see the transistor counts back in the 486 erra until the p4 erra and now is starting the core count not far from now i thing we all see core counts like transistors 30 hears from now amd / intel well have 1000 cores or more or even biocores or anything like souper computers that can do a liftoff to space seeps just wondering how it ends wat is the limit of the tecknology


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## btarunr (Sep 2, 2009)

hayder.master said:


> name of star i don't know that before nice info my brother , thanx



Yes, like ShadowFold said, the past two flagship desktop dies are named after stars: Agena (aka Beta Centauri from constellation Centaurus), and Deneb (aka Alpha Cygni from constellation Cygnus). The naming has something to do with K10 "Stars" design.


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## inferKNOX (Sep 2, 2009)

Soparik2 said:


> im pretty sure that q3 is just a rough estimate right now and will most likely come out in q2. also im pretty sure i read that hte sb800 will not have usb3.0 native support. Even 6Gb sata is a laugh as drives dont allow such speeds yet unless in massive raid 0 configs.



Hmph, I'm not impressed with this. The Motherboard Chipset to be exact.
Not only does the chipset not natively have USB 3.0, SATA 6Gb/s and PCIe 3.0, but it doesn't even support x16 all round of PCIe 2.0 in quad CrossfireX! How can they still be stuck on x8? 
Not impressive at all. Makes shifting from the 790 chipset pointless. :shadedshu


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## Troubled (Sep 2, 2009)

Just a though here...but why not have a little more L2 in there too...like say instead of 512Kb per core lets get extreme with it...put 2MB or 4MB per core...that would shut intel up for a while.  Could you imagine...a processor with a 30MB Cache??!  That my friends would be awesome.


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## btarunr (Sep 2, 2009)

Cache makes for almost half of the die area. It's not feasible. With a fast system interconnect such as HyperTransport, you don't need too much cache anyway.


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## Troubled (Sep 2, 2009)

yes, but more cache AND the faster interconnect would be better no doubt.  I know that 30mb cache is a ways off for now.  But then again, so was 1TB in a single hard disk a few years ago....it can be done...it is just a matter of time until it is.  30MB Cache may not happen until AM4 or 5 comes out but it will happen.


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## DaedalusHelios (Sep 2, 2009)

PVTCaboose1337 said:


> The naming is getting good.  I guess they ran out of cities in Europe and decided to choose stars in the universe.  They won't run out of those!



Its part of their "wish upon a star campaign" for more processor marketshare.

Is it a drop in upgrade for existing AM3 boards only? I am thinking AM3 only.


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## Wagoo (Sep 2, 2009)

PVTCaboose1337 said:


> The naming is getting good.  I guess they ran out of cities in Europe and decided to choose stars in the universe.  They won't run out of those!



All Formula 1 venues.


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## raptori (Sep 2, 2009)

hayder.master said:


> my friend you know my first language is Arabic  btarunr "Thuban" mean snake in Arabic , or to be more clear we can say it is the "snake male"





1Kurgan1 said:


> Is that all arabic, snakes and dragons both have scales, and dragons are mythical, so back when "dragons were roaming hte land and knights were killing them"  I think that the mistake was maybe made between them and would cause a linking name. But I don't know Arabic, so just guessing here.



or in Local Arabic too if you pronounced the first two letters in ( Thuban ) like in ( THE ) then it means : 

Thuban = fly's ................. man i don't want to buy fly's .......


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## mdm-adph (Sep 2, 2009)

btarunr said:


> Cache makes for almost half of the die area. It's not feasible. With a fast system interconnect such as HyperTransport, you don't need too much cache anyway.





Troubled said:


> yes, but more cache AND the faster interconnect would be better no doubt.  I know that 30mb cache is a ways off for now.  But then again, so was 1TB in a single hard disk a few years ago....it can be done...it is just a matter of time until it is.  30MB Cache may not happen until AM4 or 5 comes out but it will happen.



I swear some of IBM's power chips have like 30MB of cache or something ridiculous like that.  Wonder how huge they are.


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## btarunr (Sep 2, 2009)

Troubled said:


> yes, but more cache AND the faster interconnect would be better no doubt.  I know that 30mb cache is a ways off for now.  But then again, so was 1TB in a single hard disk a few years ago....it can be done...it is just a matter of time until it is.  30MB Cache may not happen until AM4 or 5 comes out but it will happen.



Interconnect is fast enough. What you're basically getting at is "build a 12-lane highway and four 100,000+ square foot supermarkets for a town with 5000 pop."


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## Troubled (Sep 2, 2009)

btarunr said:


> Interconnect is fast enough. What you're basically getting at is "build a 12-lane highway and four 100,000+ square foot supermarkets for a town with 5000 pop."



If that is the way you see it then yes.  There is no such thing as "Fast Enough" when it comes to computers.  Computers are ever-expanding in speed, and complexity.  For a time, the Pentium processor was "Fast enough"  now you wouldn't wish it on your enemy.  Using your own metaphor....Yes it would seem a little excessive...but those 5000 people will have children, then their children will have children and the population expands.  eventually, that 12 lane highway and the 4 supermarkets will not be enough.


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## Disparia (Sep 2, 2009)

Above all, I just hope that AMD works on their south bridge performance, not just the feature-list.


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## btarunr (Sep 2, 2009)

Troubled said:


> If that is the way you see it then yes.  There is no such thing as "Fast Enough" when it comes to computers.  Computers are ever-expanding in speed, and complexity.  For a time, the Pentium processor was "Fast enough"  now you wouldn't wish it on your enemy.  Using your own metaphor....Yes it would seem a little excessive...but those 5000 people will have children, then their children will have children and the population expands.  eventually, that 12 lane highway and the 4 supermarkets will not be enough.



Oh, so the transistors on the chip are going to  "have children, then their children will have children" growing in numbers too?

The point here is there's no use adding cache and broadening system interface for six K10 cores. A living example of this is AMD claiming that moving from 2 MB to 6 MB L3 cache size contributed to a mere 5% performance advantage. So you know that cache size increase from here on will be inversely proportional to the performance advantage gained in doing so (for the present architecture). 

Cache contributes to a significant chunk of the transistor count, and also power draw. Useless cache only adds to the chip's TDP, and efficiency takes a hit. 

As for system interface, again, you don't need to excess. It only adds to the power draw while being useless.


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## WarEagleAU (Sep 2, 2009)

Pretty impressive, but damn I just upgraded to the latest from AMD. I really wanted the 890FX (will settle for the 890GX for my htpc when I can build that). Damn AMD, kicking ass and making me sell good hardware


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## Deleted member 67555 (Sep 2, 2009)

Jizzler said:


> Above all, I just hope that AMD works on their south bridge performance, not just the feature-list.


Yeah exactly


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## mdm-adph (Sep 2, 2009)

btarunr said:


> The point here is there's no use adding cache and broadening system interface for six K10 cores. A living example of this is AMD claiming that moving from 2 MB to 6 MB L3 cache size contributed to a mere 5% performance advantage.



[citation needed]

I could've swore it's a bit more than that -- the Phenom II's make the first Phenom's look downright slow, from everything I've seen.


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## btarunr (Sep 2, 2009)

mdm-adph said:


> [citation needed]
> 
> I could've swore it's a bit more than that -- the Phenom II's make the first Phenom's look downright slow, from everything I've seen.


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## theeldest (Sep 2, 2009)

Headline from the Future:

AMD preparing "NGC 4725" Desktop 1024-Core Processor (named after a star in the Sextans constellation, which means Sexy Latinas),


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## swaaye (Sep 2, 2009)

I think gamers will be _much_ better off with a Core i5/i7 than this chip. You guys want really fast CPU cores and at most 4 of them probably. Phenom II cores can't hold a candle to Nehalem-based stuff and games barely care about >2 cores.


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## TheGuruStud (Sep 2, 2009)

swaaye said:


> I think gamers will be _much_ better off with a Core i5/i7 than this chip. You guys want really fast CPU cores and at most 4 of them probably. Phenom II cores can't hold a candle to Nehalem-based stuff and games barely care about >2 cores.



but I'd rather hold a candle to my hand than touch a nehalem


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## Wile E (Sep 2, 2009)

TheGuruStud said:


> but I'd rather hold a candle to my hand than touch a nehalem



Your loss then.


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## TheLaughingMan (Sep 3, 2009)

swaaye said:


> I think gamers will be _much_ better off with a Core i5/i7 than this chip. You guys want really fast CPU cores and at most 4 of them probably. Phenom II cores can't hold a candle to Nehalem-based stuff and games barely care about >2 cores.



I am confused, doesn't the AMD Phenom II's do slightly better in gaming tham the Nehalem....wait it does.

For my gaming friends with i7.  Great processor.  I got a 955BE on sale (at the time) for $225.00.  I spent the ~$100 I save not going i7 on new games to play.


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## Wile E (Sep 3, 2009)

TheLaughingMan said:


> *I am confused, doesn't the AMD Phenom II's do slightly better in gaming tham the Nehalem....wait it does.*
> 
> For my gaming friends with i7.  Great processor.  I got a 955BE on sale (at the time) for $225.00.  I spent the ~$100 I save not going i7 on new games to play.



No, not really. Neither are better. Most games are GPU limited, so the cpu means little.

But the i7 spanks PII in everything else. Guess it depends on what's important to you. Gaming, or everything else. lol.


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## TheGuruStud (Sep 3, 2009)

Wile E said:


> Your loss then.



It's a joke on their power consumption. 

But I flat out will never purchase an intel product b/c of their business practices and ethics (none). I'm stuck with their shit like embedded flash chips and such, but I buy all of those products used.


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## Wile E (Sep 3, 2009)

TheGuruStud said:


> It's a joke on their power consumption.
> 
> But I flat out will never purchase an intel product b/c of their business practices and ethics (none). I'm stuck with their shit like embedded flash chips and such, but I buy all of those products used.



They just have the ethics and practices than any other major corporation. AMD is no different.


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## TheGuruStud (Sep 3, 2009)

Wile E said:


> They just have the ethics and practices than any other major corporation. AMD is no different.



Riiiight. AMD is cheating right and left, economically enslaving people (chinese style), strong arming anyone against them and bribing some media sources.

Yeah, totally, AMD does exactly that.

I don't shop at walmart, etc. I'm not adhering to the "well everyone else does it" bullshit. It doesn't make it acceptable nor okay. That's being complicit and is morally wrong (to me).


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## Wile E (Sep 3, 2009)

TheGuruStud said:


> Riiiight. AMD is cheating right and left, economically enslaving people (chinese style), strong arming anyone against them and bribing some media sources.
> 
> Yeah, totally, AMD does exactly that.
> 
> I don't shop at walmart, etc. I'm not adhering to the "well everyone else does it" bullshit. It doesn't make it acceptable nor okay. That's being complicit and is morally wrong (to me).



Except that AMD does attempt those things when possible, and most certainly would if they had the same market share as Intel. Sorry, but all corporations are the same. They just want your money.


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## TheGuruStud (Sep 3, 2009)

Wile E said:


> Except that AMD does attempt those things when possible, and most certainly would if they had the same market share as Intel. Sorry, but all corporations are the same. They just want your money.



And those are ifs, not real life. Until AMD does it, saying they will is not a valid defense. If they ever become like that, then I won't buy their shit either. 

I never said they weren't in it for the money. I'm saying I'm not paying some assholes that care about nothing else except that dollar. They (intel, etc) would trample over your body (dead or alive) to get that dollar. That's not someone I want to give my money to.


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## Troubled (Sep 3, 2009)

btarunr said:


> http://img.techpowerup.org/090902/bta112.jpg




Ok...so a 5% increase with the 4mb Larger L3...but note...i did not say L3...i said L2.  L3 runs at the speed of the NB...unlike the L2 which runs at HT Link Speed.  What i am saying...is we have been at 512kb per core for a long time...it is time to bump that up a little bit.  I am sure that you would see yet another boost in performance.


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## Wile E (Sep 3, 2009)

TheGuruStud said:


> And those are ifs, not real life. Until AMD does it, saying they will is not a valid defense. If they ever become like that, then I won't buy their shit either.
> 
> *I never said they weren't in it for the money. I'm saying I'm not paying some assholes that care about nothing else except that dollar. They (intel, etc) would trample over your body (dead or alive) to get that dollar. That's not someone I want to give my money to.*



Again, all AMD cares about is your dollar as well. They don't care about you at all. To think otherwise is just silly.


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## wolf (Sep 3, 2009)

TheGuruStud said:


> ...I'm not paying some assholes that care about nothing else except that dollar. They (intel, etc) would trample over your body (dead or alive) to get that dollar...



Neither company is more or less evil Sheesh! this isn't the time and place to start this argument either.


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## Troubled (Sep 3, 2009)

Wile E said:


> No, not really. Neither are better. Most games are GPU limited, so the cpu means little.
> 
> But the i7 spanks PII in everything else. Guess it depends on what's important to you. Gaming, or everything else. lol.



When it comes down to it...you are not going to notice a difference in word processing, web surfing, or anything else because the software won't push the hardware enough.  So...Gaming, or Everything else...i still choose a Phenom II.  My wallet isnt deep enough for a Core i7...


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## Wile E (Sep 3, 2009)

Troubled said:


> When it comes down to it...you are not going to notice a difference in word processing, web surfing, or anything else because the software won't push the hardware enough.  So...Gaming, or Everything else...i still choose a Phenom II.  My wallet isnt deep enough for a Core i7...



Hmmm, what about encoding home movies, or photoshopping large groups of pictures, or any of the other myriad of things computers are used for?

And fair enough, If you can't afford i7, you can't afford it. And if gaming is all you care about, then yeah, the majority of your money is best spent on your video card.


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## Troubled (Sep 3, 2009)

Wile E said:


> Hmmm, what about encoding home movies, or photoshopping large groups of pictures, or any of the other myriad of things computers are used for?
> 
> And fair enough, If you can't afford i7, you can't afford it. And if gaming is all you care about, then yeah, the majority of your money is best spent on your video card.



What is kinda funny is i do all of that stuff with ease too...and i dont have a Core i7.  Go figure.  You make it sound like you need a Core i7 to do all of the many things that a computer can do....when you don't really.  I didnt really spend all that much on my video cards either. The Radeon 4670 isn't considered top of the line...but good enough to play the games that i play...Crysis, Far Cry 2, Need For Speed, and all the many other games that i play...along with the Zipping and Unzipping of files, dvd encoding and the many other things I do.


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## Wile E (Sep 3, 2009)

Troubled said:


> What is kinda funny is i do all of that stuff with ease too...and i dont have a Core i7.  Go figure.  You make it sound like you need a Core i7 to do all of the many things that a computer can do....when you don't really.  I didnt really spend all that much on my video cards either. The Radeon 4670 isn't considered top of the line...but good enough to play the games that i play...Crysis, Far Cry 2, Need For Speed, and all the many other games that i play...along with the Zipping and Unzipping of files, dvd encoding and the many other things I do.



I didn't say it was needed. You balanced your needs according to you budget. That's fine, and there is nothing wrong with it. But the fact of the matter is, the Core i7 would be faster at those things. Whether it's worth it, is up to the person buying.


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## Deleted member 67555 (Sep 3, 2009)

Troubled said:


> What is kinda funny is i do all of that stuff with ease too...and i dont have a Core i7.  Go figure.  You make it sound like you need a Core i7 to do all of the many things that a computer can do....when you don't really.  I didnt really spend all that much on my video cards either. The Radeon 4670 isn't considered top of the line...but good enough to play the games that i play...Crysis, Far Cry 2, Need For Speed, and all the many other games that i play...along with the Zipping and Unzipping of files, dvd encoding and the many other things I do.


Yeah, plus you have to consider memory too, such as 8gb is going to do better than 6gb like 12gb would be better than 8gb etc...It's not just the cpu or the video card


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## Hayder_Master (Sep 3, 2009)

btarunr said:


> Yes, like ShadowFold said, the past two flagship desktop dies are named after stars: Agena (aka Beta Centauri from constellation Centaurus), and Deneb (aka Alpha Cygni from constellation Cygnus). The naming has something to do with K10 "Stars" design.



now i see AMD chose nice names for them cpu's , thanx for this cool info btarunr and ShadowFold


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## eidairaman1 (Sep 3, 2009)

This should be the Last of the K10 Arch AMD CPUs before they release their CPU built from the ground up. Since Shanghai is out in the Servers this is a derivative of that class.


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## btarunr (Sep 3, 2009)

Troubled said:


> Ok...so a 5% increase with the 4mb Larger L3...but note...i did not say L3...i said L2.  L3 runs at the speed of the NB...unlike the L2 which runs at HT Link Speed.  What i am saying...is we have been at 512kb per core for a long time...it is time to bump that up a little bit.  I am sure that you would see yet another boost in performance.



Well then look back and compare Athlon X2 Windosor-2M (1 MB L2 cache / core) to Windsor-1M (512 KB L2 /core). You'll find that the difference isn't much, and that with a mere 100 MHz increase in clock speed, whatever extra performance the additional cache provides is made up for. The boost in performance is not the cache's job. At the end of the day, your cache isn't crunching numbers. When there's a fast interconnect between the system and the processor, beyond a point, adding cache doesn't help. I think that point has already been reached. 

And no. L2 cache is "full-speed" meaning it runs at CPU clock speed. Not "HT link speed". HT link actual clock-speed == NB clock speed.


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## Troubled (Sep 3, 2009)

btarunr said:


> Well then look back and compare Athlon X2 Windosor-2M (1 MB L2 cache / core) to Windsor-1M (512 KB L2 /core). You'll find that the difference isn't much, and that with a mere 100 MHz increase in clock speed, whatever extra performance the additional cache provides is made up for. The boost in performance is not the cache's job. At the end of the day, your cache isn't crunching numbers. When there's a fast interconnect between the system and the processor, beyond a point, adding cache doesn't help. I think that point has already been reached.
> 
> And no. L2 cache is "full-speed" meaning it runs at CPU clock speed. Not "HT link speed". HT link actual clock-speed == NB clock speed.



I think you are referring to the Athlon X2 6000+ 2mb L2 Windsor which is 90nm core, Vs the Athlon X2 6000+ 1mb L2 Brisbane which is a 65nm core.  Now...we all know that the 65nm core is a much better core and with the 100Mhz boost in not only the core speed, but also the cache speed that is what made up for the difference.  Neither one of these processors feature an L3 Cache.

Now, let's bring this up to today's processors with L3, which as you have already stated run at the speed of the Northbridge.  My Northbridge runs at 2.3ghz...this means that my L3 Cache only runs at 2.3Ghz.  My Core Speeds are at 3.6Ghz, which means that my L2 Caches are also running at 3.6Ghz which i considerably faster.  So...as I have said, having more of a faster L2 Cache would be a bit better.

I am not saying that Cache is going to make all the difference in the world, there are many other factors that are involved with a good processor...but every little bit helps.  5% may not seem like a lot, but when you are looking to squeeze every little ounce of power out of your processor....5% helps a lot.


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## Yukikaze (Sep 3, 2009)

This is very interesting, but this does look like it is going to be quite late, unless it is very cheap (relatively speaking).

What is the ETA on the 6-core Nehalems, currently ? That thing is my next chip, unless I lose my job until then...


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## btarunr (Sep 3, 2009)

Troubled said:


> I think you are referring to the Athlon X2 6000+ 2mb L2 Windsor which is 90nm core, Vs the Athlon X2 6000+ 1mb L2 Brisbane which is a 65nm core.  Now...we all know that the 65nm core is a much better core and with the 100Mhz boost in not only the core speed, but also the cache speed that is what made up for the difference.  Neither one of these processors feature an L3 Cache.



No, Brisbane is an optical die shrink of Windsor-1M, no changes. 



Troubled said:


> Now, let's bring this up to today's processors with L3, which as you have already stated run at the speed of the Northbridge.  My Northbridge runs at 2.3ghz...this means that my L3 Cache only runs at 2.3Ghz.  My Core Speeds are at 3.6Ghz, which means that my L2 Caches are also running at 3.6Ghz which i considerably faster.  So...as I have said, having more of a faster L2 Cache would be a bit better.
> 
> I am not saying that Cache is going to make all the difference in the world, there are many other factors that are involved with a good processor...but every little bit helps.  5% may not seem like a lot, but when you are looking to squeeze every little ounce of power out of your processor....5% helps a lot.



Once again, you're getting into the trivial "more/faster cache is better" argument. It really isn't for this architecture. Faster L3 cache would mean higher CPU/CPU-NB VID to support that speed. TDP takes a hit. Again, the impact of L3 cache is limited. AMD felt that 6 MB, 48-way cache is good enough for this architecture.


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## Troubled (Sep 3, 2009)

btarunr said:


> No, Brisbane is an optical die shrink of Windsor-1M, no changes.



The Athlon X2 6000+ came in Brisbane which was the 1M version, and the Windsor was the 2M version.  The Cores were different on these processors.





btarunr said:


> Once again, you're getting into the trivial "more/faster cache is better" argument. It really isn't for this architecture. Faster L3 cache would mean higher CPU/CPU-NB VID to support that speed. TDP takes a hit. Again, the impact of L3 cache is limited. AMD felt that 6 MB, 48-way cache is good enough for this architecture.



In case you haven't noticed, the Nahalem series is stomping the Deneb series.  Maybe AMD doesn't have it "right" yet.  As Intel prepares the 32nm Westmere AMD is still trying to perfect the 45nm Deneb.  AMD is behind in the game.  They need to do something to catch up and take the lead.  There are several points to improve on, one of which could very well be in the cache...along with many other points of improvement such as the IMC which could support triple or quad channel, Chipsets which could operate more efficiently and several other factors which go into a high performance system.


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## btarunr (Sep 3, 2009)

Troubled said:


> The Athlon X2 6000+ came in Brisbane which was the 1M version, and the Windsor was the 2M version.  The Cores were different on these processors.



Right, and the Brisbane chip was clocked a mere 100 MHz higher than the Windsor 2M. So all it took is a 100 MHz clock speed increase. Brisbane is an optical shrink of Windsor 1M. Brisbane is not one bit faster than Windsor-1M at constant clock-speed, architecturally, or in any other way.



Troubled said:


> In case you haven't noticed, the Nahalem series is stomping the Deneb series.  Maybe AMD doesn't have it "right" yet.  As Intel prepares the 32nm Westmere AMD is still trying to perfect the 45nm Deneb.  AMD is behind in the game.  They need to do something to catch up and take the lead.  There are several points to improve on, one of which could very well be in the cache...along with many other points of improvement such as the IMC which could support triple or quad channel, Chipsets which could operate more efficiently and several other factors which go into a high performance system.



And the answer to Nehalem is not bumping up cache/interconnect (your original argument). My educated guess is that turning that L3 cache into 12 MB, 1 MB L2 cache per core, and bumping HyperTransport speed isn't going to take Deneb any closer to Nehalem. It's only going to up transistor counts and die size by 2 times, and some 200W TDP.


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## Troubled (Sep 3, 2009)

btarunr said:


> Right, and the Brisbane chip was clocked a mere 100 MHz higher than the Windsor 2M. So all it took is a 100 MHz clock speed increase. Brisbane is an optical shrink of Windsor 1M. It's not one bit faster than Windsor-1M at constant clock-speed.



Based on that theory, the Kuma 7850 is slower than the Athlon X2 6000+...yet outperforms the 6000+ when overclocked to 3.0ghz (by simply bumping the CPU multiplier up by 1.)


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## btarunr (Sep 3, 2009)

Troubled said:


> Based on that theory, the Kuma 7850 is slower than the Athlon X2 6000+...yet outperforms the 6000+ when overclocked to 3.0ghz (by simply bumping the CPU multiplier up by 1.)



Right, so you see, that 2 MB L3 cache and 3600 MT/s HyperTransport (on Kuma) is all the more useless now. It's on par with Windsor 2M clock for clock.


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## Troubled (Sep 3, 2009)

btarunr said:


> Right, so you see, that 2 MB L3 cache and 3600 MT/s HyperTransport (on Kuma) is all the more useless now. It's on par with Windsor 2M clock for clock.



Which explains exactly why the 7850 @ Stock 2.8Ghz outperforms the 6000+ (even overclocked to 3.4Ghz) in every benchmark.  More important to note is the Phenom II X2 550 which is clocked at 3.1 also outperforms the 6000+ in every benchmark.  So where are you getting that Cache doesn't matter?


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## btarunr (Sep 3, 2009)

Troubled said:


> So where are you getting that Cache doesn't matter?



From AMD stating that its 200% increase in L3 cache provides 5% performance uplift. In context of X2 550, you'll also see how a 5~8% overclock for an Athlon II X2 250 (that lacks L3 cache) places it on par with Phenom II X2 550. So really, the L3 cache while helpful, isn't something that you can keep increasing to get big performance gains beyond a point.


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## Troubled (Sep 3, 2009)

btarunr said:


> From AMD stating that its 200% increase in L3 cache provides 5% performance uplift. In context of X2 550, you'll also see how a 5~8% overclock for an Athlon II X2 250 (that lacks L3 cache) places it on par with Phenom II X2 550. So really, the L3 cache while helpful, isn't something that you can keep increasing to get big performance gains beyond a point.



Not sure where you got that information. But an Athlon II 250 Overclocked to 3.9Ghz barely meets par with the Phenom II 550 @ 3.1ghz. Which last time i checked is a 30% overclock which would require a liquid cooling system.  Evened up clocks...the Phenom II 550 outperforms the Athlon II 250 with ease.  Now the Athlon II 250 is however on par with the Athlon X2 7850 at the same clock rate. 

I will give you this much.  At higher overclocks (approaching 4Ghz), the L3 cache doesn't make as much of a difference in such tasks as Video Encoding, raring and unraring, etc.  But when it comes to Gaming performance, it seems to make a rather good size difference. 10fps may not seem like a big deal...but it could be the difference in a playable game and a paperweight in a box.

Now if you will notice at my first suggestion...it was to bump up the L2 a little.  not the L3.


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## btarunr (Sep 3, 2009)

Troubled said:


> Not sure where you got that information. But an Athlon II 250 Overclocked to 3.9Ghz barely meets par with the Phenom II 550 @ 3.1ghz. Which last time i checked is a 30% overclock which would require a liquid cooling system.  Evened up clocks...the Phenom II 550 outperforms the Athlon II 250 with ease.  Now the Athlon II 250 is however on par with the Athlon X2 7850 at the same clock rate.



That's simply not true, I won't spend time on that. 



Troubled said:


> I will give you this much.  At higher overclocks (approaching 4Ghz), the L3 cache doesn't make as much of a difference in such tasks as Video Encoding, raring and unraring, etc.  But when it comes to Gaming performance, it seems to make a rather good size difference. 10fps may not seem like a big deal...but it could be the difference in a playable game and a paperweight in a box.
> 
> Now if you will notice at my first suggestion...it was to bump up the L2 a little.  not the L3.



Go back to posts revolving around the 512 KB vs. 1 MB L2 cache. Won't repeat again. 

I'll conclude saying that more cache isn't going to help AMD's cause. It doesn't provide the kind of performance that makes upping transistor counts by 100s of millions of transistors worth it, or feasible. As it stands, AMD Deneb has  758M transistors vs. a  lesser transistor count of 731M on Intel Bloomfield, and Bloomfield emerges the superior core. Development is due on different fronts than cache.


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## Wile E (Sep 4, 2009)

Troubled said:


> I think you are referring to the Athlon X2 6000+ 2mb L2 Windsor which is 90nm core, Vs the Athlon X2 6000+ 1mb L2 Brisbane which is a 65nm core.  Now...we all know that the 65nm core is a much better core and with the 100Mhz boost in not only the core speed, but also the cache speed that is what made up for the difference.


Actually, the Windsor is faster clock for clock than Brisbane. Brisbane's cache runs with a higher latency than Windsor. All you need to do is look thru the AMD OCing threads on this site from that time to see the F3 Windsors walked on ALL brisbanes at the same clocks, not to mention clocked as high as Brisbane in most cases. 65nm was a bad process all around for AMD. Leak problems not to mention the slower cache. That was true for Phenom I as well.

I went thru 4 brisbanes, all of them were ass compared to my F3 Windsors.


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## Yukikaze (Sep 4, 2009)

Cache increases have extremely diminishing returns as the cache size goes up. I can find you some slides I have on a study conducted comparing different L2 cache sizes and performance, and doubling the cache size only nets you a few scant percent of performance beyond a certain point (Somewhere around the 6-7Mb mark) while driving the cost of the chip and the TDP higher and higher due to the transistor count going up and up.

As for increasing L2: The Core 2 Quads have insane L2 cache sizes of up to 12Mb, while the i7 only has a small 4x256Kb L2 cache (And of course, the 8Mb L3 cache). The Phenom II X4 has 4x512Kb of L2 cache (And the 6Mb L3). Out of the three architectures, the i7 seems to be the best one. Based on this, I highly doubt that increasing the L2 cache on the Phenom IIs is really going to do very much, except for making the CPU more power-demanding and more expensive.

AMD isn't in the position of making their products more expensive, especially if it offers no real gain.


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## swaaye (Sep 4, 2009)

Also this CPU has the same amount of L3 cache as an X4. That means that it will be somewhat less efficient than the X4 CPUs.


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