AMD Launches New FX CPUs, Cuts Prices On Existing Processors

[xeekei]

Yeah, I won't expect much from AMD until 2016. Jim Keller (the Athlon 64 designer) is back on the team to design a new architecture.

[cutterjohn]

Yeah, I won't expect much from AMD until 2016. Jim Keller (the Athlon 64 designer) is back on the team to design a new architecture.

I for one would be happy(ecstatic?) to see them actually competing(or even coming a helluvalot closer in IPC) with Intel again.

I just built an fx-9590(thanks to ucenter same price as 8350 which was OOS anyways) complete with an ATI GPU for purely nostalgic reasons. (Still sluggish compared to even a 4800MQ mobile though... those 8 "cores" are more realistically like 4 or a crappy hw version of hyperthreading... I hope that they make the newer FXes into hybrid APUs assuming kaveri eventually pans out... it shows promise still, but...)

I'm guessing that they're doing this just to keep the "brand" out there until they have something worthwhile again... (freaking mobo chipset is pretty ancient as well...)

Admittedly ATM I'm drooling over an 8 core haswell-e, and I did decide a while ago to update the 4930k once they came out, but man even c. $800 from ucenter, 6 core is c. $500 plus req all new ram/mobo again...

[mcirsta]

lol

We need more Dilthium Scotty, we're using AMD CPUs.

This one was a killer, really funny I must say, too bad you can't rate these posts.

As for these CPUs I'd say they're OK if they come out at the right prices. AMD is not doing well as far as performance goes right now, their whole architecture was is a mess and a bad decision no matter how you look at it. I bought a Phenom II X6 @ 3.2 GHz quite a while ago and guess what, I've seem benchmarks where it scores pretty close to the top end FX processors of today. Maybe AMD should have just worked on improving the K10 cores rather than waster their time and money on Bulldozer but I guess someone actually thought the new core would be good and after that they didn't have the guts to revert back to old one.
Anyway we keep complaining and progress is always good but let's not forget that for most tasks even the cheapest FX CPU is good enough. There's few people that actually need all that CPU power and GPUs seem to be getting more important each day as far as computing power is concerned.
I for one am still pleased by the CPU power of my Phenom II X6 and I do some serious compiling as I'm the maintainer for a distro ( Frugalware ). The top end Intel CPUs of today might be twice when compiling something but at around $1000 no thanks.
We do need AMD back in the game though as Intel has always had these ridiculous prices when they had the performance advantage.

[bakgwailo]

I try to present the argument in as neutral a way as possible, so that I can't possibly be accused of fanboyism and biased logic.

I don't ever plan to buy Intel parts.

Heh, well, I mean, I am not advocating one or the other, just saying that the facts in question are pretty irrefutable (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_v._Intel) of what Intel did, fanboyism aside. All of that said, for my personal desktop I generally only buy AMD chips, and work laptops generally Intel i7s. AMD really doesn't have a high performance mobile option. I am currently stuck on my FX-8350, which I upgraded to from a Phenom II x4 965, and the entire reason I did so was because at the time AMD was promising Steamroller on the AM3+ socket, which appears to have been a bit of a lie. I figure I can get a some more time out of the FX-8350, but, I really don't know what I am going to do in a year or two if AMD no longer has any highend chips. Like you, on principal, I try to only buy AMD CPUs, but I am also kind of torn as Intel now does a ton of support for Linux including the kernel, and basically owning Mesa/X at this point. Why can't companies just be entirely evil or good

[Michael_S]

Heh, well, I mean, I am not advocating one or the other, just saying that the facts in question are pretty irrefutable (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_v._Intel) of what Intel did, fanboyism aside. All of that said, for my personal desktop I generally only buy AMD chips, and work laptops generally Intel i7s. AMD really doesn't have a high performance mobile option.

My employer picks the work laptop, so I don't have to make a choice there. I've been contemplating an APU for a personal laptop - I know there's a big performance hit, but how often will I really notice it? I don't plan to do anything especially resource intensive on the laptop.

I am currently stuck on my FX-8350, which I upgraded to from a Phenom II x4 965, and the entire reason I did so was because at the time AMD was promising Steamroller on the AM3+ socket, which appears to have been a bit of a lie. I figure I can get a some more time out of the FX-8350, but, I really don't know what I am going to do in a year or two if AMD no longer has any highend chips. Like you, on principal, I try to only buy AMD CPUs, but I am also kind of torn as Intel now does a ton of support for Linux including the kernel, and basically owning Mesa/X at this point. Why can't companies just be entirely evil or good

I have one of the low end Phenom X6s... 1045T, maybe? And the only time it even fully utilizes a single core is when I rip a DVD to disk... and then I'm guessing I am suffering from picking AMD over Intel, and if I had purchased a Core i5 instead I would get the rips done faster and save a few dollars a month in electricity in the bargain. I don't do intensive gaming, though. (If anybody cares, I own the DVDs I rip and I don't share the ripped files. I just don't feel like hunting through three hundred cases and then sitting through an FBI warning when my preschooler wants to watch Spongebob or an older kid is in the mood for Harry Potter 5.)

You are right that Intel is a big open source contributor, of course, but I see Intel only doing this because they have cash to spare, and they have cash to spare because of the illegal (and more importantly, unethical) things they did.

[mcirsta]

I have one of the low end Phenom X6s... 1045T, maybe? And the only time it even fully utilizes a single core is when I rip a DVD to disk... and then I'm guessing I am suffering from picking AMD over Intel, and if I had purchased a Core i5 instead I would get the rips done faster and save a few dollars a month in electricity in the bargain. I don't do intensive gaming, though. (If anybody cares, I own the DVDs I rip and I don't share the ripped files. I just don't feel like hunting through three hundred cases and then sitting through an FBI warning when my preschooler wants to watch Spongebob or an older kid is in the mood for Harry Potter 5.)

You are right that Intel is a big open source contributor, of course, but I see Intel only doing this because they have cash to spare, and they have cash to spare because of the illegal (and more importantly, unethical) things they did.

Try and find a better encoding program. There should be ones out there that can use all 6 core and these will probably give you the same performance as an i5 ( or at least an i5 of the same generation as the Phenom II ). Maybe you can even find solutions to use the GPU for encoding.

[Dukenukemx]

So, thinking about price and performance, are AMD's offerings competitive with Intel's Core i5s?

Edit: I see this was mentioned in the last part of the article. IMO, $199 vs $220 is not significant. I'd go with an i5.

The thing about AMD's 8 cores is that they're terrible at single threaded performance but really good at mutlithreaded, even rivaling Intel's I7's. The problem is most applications never go multithreaded. Not even games for whatever reason go beyond dual core. Traditionally games always make good use of latest tech but not this generation, which makes the situation favor Intel.

AMD really needs to get developers to work on specifically their CPUs. Singled threaded applications and Intel's ICC just isn't working in their favor. HSA will probably help them but they need the tools now, and need to push them into developer hands. Valve knows this better then anyone.

[Michael_S]

Try and find a better encoding program. There should be ones out there that can use all 6 core and these will probably give you the same performance as an i5 ( or at least an i5 of the same generation as the Phenom II ). Maybe you can even find solutions to use the GPU for encoding.

Sorry, it already does use all 6 cores. I'm guessing a similar era Core i5 would do better, for all I know it would not.

I actually use the open source driver for my AMD video card. I'm pretty sure I need to use Catalyst to get any mileage out of the GPU encoding for DVDs.

[Kivada]

This one was a killer, really funny I must say, too bad you can't rate these posts.

As for these CPUs I'd say they're OK if they come out at the right prices. AMD is not doing well as far as performance goes right now, their whole architecture was is a mess and a bad decision no matter how you look at it. I bought a Phenom II X6 @ 3.2 GHz quite a while ago and guess what, I've seem benchmarks where it scores pretty close to the top end FX processors of today. Maybe AMD should have just worked on improving the K10 cores rather than waster their time and money on Bulldozer but I guess someone actually thought the new core would be good and after that they didn't have the guts to revert back to old one.
Anyway we keep complaining and progress is always good but let's not forget that for most tasks even the cheapest FX CPU is good enough. There's few people that actually need all that CPU power and GPUs seem to be getting more important each day as far as computing power is concerned.
I for one am still pleased by the CPU power of my Phenom II X6 and I do some serious compiling as I'm the maintainer for a distro ( Frugalware ). The top end Intel CPUs of today might be twice when compiling something but at around $1000 no thanks.
We do need AMD back in the game though as Intel has always had these ridiculous prices when they had the performance advantage.

FX-7600P doesn't look too bad for a mobile part http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/70...kaveri/?page=3

What I want to know though is why I can't get that in an MSI GX60 or GX70 so we can see what it can do R9-M290X. I've wanted to know how well those MSI GX series AMD laptops can handle Linux.

[mendieta]

The thing about AMD's 8 cores is that they're terrible at single threaded performance but really good at mutlithreaded, even rivaling Intel's I7's.

So I take it as meaning that the scaling is mostly linear, for a properly written application that should, theoretically, be linear in number of processors. Clearly, HT can't do that, so i7 would be at a disadvantage, really.

But then the problem is, how is each of these cores doing their job, and Intel smokes AMD in IPC these days.

You are right that it would be nice to have more code be more parallel. On the hardware side, it's all in the power requirements. If I can have 64 CPU's with a collective TDP of ~ 100W or less, and the software is able to use them all, I might get much better performance using, say, ARM, that Intel's best. But as you noted, it will take time on the software side. However, AMD seems to be chasing the high power, low IPC game, which doesn't seem to be a good game to play ...