AMD Announces the Athlon 860K and FX-8300 CPUs

[btarunr]

In addition to its new A-series APUs, AMD announced two new CPUs, the Athlon 860K, and the FX-8300. Built in the FM2+ package, the Athlon 860K is a quad-core CPU based on the 28 nm "Kaveri" silicon, with its integrated graphics disabled. It features four "Steamroller" CPU cores clocked at 3.70 GHz, with an unlocked base-clock multiplier that enables overclocking. The two modules that make up the four cores feature half their normal L2 cache amounts, and so the total L2 cache is just 2 MB. The chip will run on socket FM2+ motherboards based on the A88X, A85, A75, and A55 chipsets. The FX-8300, on the other hand, is a budget eight-core processor in the AM3+ package. It's based on the 32 nm "Vishera" silicon, featuring eight CPU cores spread across four "Piledriver" modules; clocked at 3.20 GHz, with 3.50 GHz of Turbo Core frequencies. The chips feature 2 MB of L2 cache per module, and 8 MB of shared L3 cache. Its TDP is rated at 95W.



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[TRWOV]

The 8300 was launched in Q1 2013 AFAIK, what's this announcement for? For a moment I thought they had announced an 8 core FM2+ CPU

Edit: I was wrong, it launched on Q4 2012

http://www.techpowerup.com/177867/amd-fx-8300-starts-selling-lower-tdp-comes-at-a-price.html

 

[NC37]

Clearing out old inventory time.

 

[Lionheart]

I'll take that Athlon 860K for a reasonable price thank you for my up & coming mini itx LAN build

 

[damric]

I wonder why they gimped the L2 cache on the 860K

 

[RCoon]

I wonder why they gimped the L2 cache on the 860K

Kaveri chips that are severely broken during the binning process I imagine.
860K is of great interest however. Those iGPU disabled cores are usually wonderfully well priced.

 

[eidairaman1]

Kaveri chips that are severely broken during the binning process I imagine.
860K is of great interest however. Those iGPU disabled cores are usually wonderfully well priced.

And Highly Tunable.

The 8300 for else all was originally a OEM chip. Now its for consumer buyers.

 

[The Stilt]

There is no cache cut-down done on the 860K.
It has 2MB per CU just like the other four core Kaveri parts.

 

[damric]

There is no cache cut-down done on the 860K.
It has 2MB per CU just like the other four core Kaveri parts.

Great.

Stilt, I have another question that I think only you could answer. How did cherv get that 8GHz validation on the ASRock A88X Extreme 6+ without it throttling? I have that board and my Athlon 760K throttles like a little bitch when pushing towards 5GHz. Is it just because of LN2? I thought I was a descent overclocker until I saw your tools and I don't even know what do do with them but I'd love to get throttling disabled for some suicide runs.

 

[The Stilt]

The VRM on ASRock runs quite hot even at stock clocks.
Partitially because of the design and partitially because the VRM heatsink has a very small surface area to dissipate the heat from.
So if you have disabled the "ApmMaster" option in bios the throttling is definitely caused by the overheating VRM.
In that case adding some directed air flow on the VRM heatsink might help, at least a bit.

On LN2 it is completely different.
Even thou the total power consumption *might* be higher than on clocks achievable on air cooling the VRM overheating usually won't be an issue.
The VRM power components (fets in this case) are directly connected to the CPU with hundreds of highly conductive copper vias / traces.
When the CPU is cooled down to temperatures closer to -190°C the VRM temperature also drops significantly, down to -40°C at idle.
So practically the VRM temperatures won't be a issue on dry-ice or LN2 cooling. More likely the over-current (OCP) or the actual design-current (I/TDC) limits get reached.
On a properly designed board reaching any of the current limits will cause an immediate shutdown instead of throttling, thou.

 

[newtekie1]

When talking about traditional cooling on APUs, throttling is almost always caused by heat in the CPU, not the VRM on the board.

As The Stilt points out, LN2 is a completely different beast.