E@zyVG’s Vichar::World Connected

Remember I discussed about the AMD’s Barcelona core back in March … well it has been now officially unveiled. Back then at the end of the post I mentioned - “What this architecture will bring to us, the desktop users … this remains to be seen”, seems like the performance I was expecting from this core, as a desktop user, is not there.
Last time AMD launched a new platform, its reception was lukewarm and AM2 socket/platform offered no performance advantage over S939 (which I am still using, though @2.9Ghz). There have been disappointments with Phenom release, too, such as delays, pricing factor and clock speeds, but, if AMD will come up with right price/performance combination, this time it can be a big winner … I really do believe so. Now, let’s see what we have got.

It’s finally here (horay), and it’s quite possibly the biggest launch ever. It also marks the official release of AMD’s Spider platform, and All AMD computing platform - AMD Phenom processors, ATI Radeon HD 3800 series discreet graphics and AMD 7-Series chipsets. The AMD Spider platform is a major milestone on the path to Accelerated Computing, AMD’s vision for platform-level acceleration through co-processing. AMD’s Spider platform advances enthusiast computing by delivering a sophisticated multi-GPU enthusiast platform with ATI CrossFireX technology.

The AMD 7-series chipset, which is AM2+ socket based, will be available in different variations - the high-end 790FX (RD790), the 790X (RD780), and 770 (RX780). All of the chipsets are being manufactured at 65nm and according to AMD they are twice as power efficient as the previous generation of AMD chipsets. In fact, the 790FX chipset has only a 10W TDP. All the flavours of the core-logic support HyperTransport 3.0 bus, up to 42 PCI Express 2.0 as well as a list of platform technologies by AMD. All initial motherboards based on the 7-series chipset will feature the ATI SB600 Southbridge chip. Sometime next year the SB700 is due to arrive, but initial offerings will use the mature SB600 only. Another feature common to all 7-series chipsets will be a new performance tuning application called AMD Overdrive. AMD Overdrive is similar to NVIDIA’s nTune System Utility and Intel’s Desktop Control Center in that it gives users access to numerous settings for overclocking and performance tweaking. Using Overdrive, users can alter the frequency of individual cores, memory timings, key voltages, etc. The combination of the 55nm ATI Radeon HD 3800 Series of graphics processors and the increased system bandwidth of PCI Express Generation 2.0 and HyperTransport 3.0 technology, provide optimal processing power for a scalable HD multi-GPU experience. I am not going to get into the HD 38xx graphics, as you can find a lot on this from the web, though can mention that from the reviews of HD 3870, it seems quite competitive with nVidia’s 8800GT GPU. Also, I have never been a fan of SLI and Crossfire. I don’t see any need in sticking two video cards in my case, instead preferring going for one faster card or even better a a dual GPU on one PCB.

Phenom is the brand name given to processors based on the Agena core, which is virtually identical to the Barcelona core used in the recently released AMD quad-core Opterons. At first Phenom was going to launch at either 2.8GHz or 2.6GHz (wish it was true); then we got word that it would be either 2.6GHz or 2.4GHz. At the end we got the final launch frequencies: 2.2GHz for Phenom X4 9500 and 2.3GHz for Penom X4 9600, while pricing set at 251$ and 283$ respectively. Do you see the problem with pricing … I do. Here it is why: Phenom isn’t faster than Intel’s Core 2 Quad clock for clock, i.e. a 2.3GHz Phenom 9600 will set you back at least $283 and it’s slower than a 2.4Ghz Core 2 Quad Q6600 !!! Two more quad-core Phenoms will come out in Q1′08: the 9900 and 9700, clocked at 2.6GHz and 2.4GHz respectively. The Phenom 9900 will be priced below $350 while the 9700 will be a sub-$300 part. Ok, let us forget about this for a moment and concentrate on what Phenom CPU actually is.

On the surface, AMD’s new Phenom processors look just like current Athlons. The processors use the same packaging and have the same pin configuration. Underneath that unassuming heat-spreader, however, lays a quad-core die based on the Agena core. The new AMD Phenom processors are made using 65nm process technology. Among the highlights of AMD’s new chips the manufacturer lists shared 2MB L3 cache, 128-bit floating point units (FPU), SSE4A instructions, support for dual-channel PC2-8500 (DDR2 1066MHz) memory.

Each quad-core die is comprised of approximately 463M transistors (about 357M less than Intel’s quad-core Yorkfield) and is about 285mm2 in size. In a quad-core Phenom processor, each of the four cores is outfitted with 64K of L1 instruction and 64K of L1 data cache, for a total of 512K of L1 cache per CPU. The L2 cache compliment of each core is 512K, for a total of 2MB. New to the Barcelona and Agena cores is 2MB of dynamically shared L3 cache. Unlike L1 and L2 caches, which are exclusive to each execution core (data in Core 1’s L2 cache cannot be accessed by Core 3, for example), the L3 cache is shared among all the cores. Also new to Barcelona and Agena is a 128-bit wide memory controller that can be configured as dual independent 64-bit channels to allow for simultaneous read and write memory operations. Phenom processors support dynamic clock gating on a per-core basis. Though core voltages won’t be managed independently, the clock speed of each core can throttle back when idle, which could in turn provide significant power savings. And AMD’s “CoolCore” technology allows for functional blocks of each core to be shut off when not in use, further improving power efficiency. Apart from revamped considerably for efficiency and performance, here are a few of the key salient points of Phenom’s new core micro-engines:

• A new floating point scheduler now supports 36 128-bit operations
• Support for 128-bit SSE operations, an upgrade from the previous 64-bit architecture
• Two SSE operations and one SSE move can be processed per cycle
• Processor instruction fetch has been increased from 16 to 32 bytes
• Advanced branch prediction with built in a 512-entry indirect branch predictor
• Data cache bandwidth has increased from 1 x 64-bit loads per cycle to 1 x 128-bit loads per cycle
• L2 cache / memory controller bandwidth has been increased from 64-bits per clock to 128-bits per clock
• HyperTransport 3.0 Support for up to 20.8GB/s of raw bandwidth

From what I understand, the new Phenoms will not have the SSE4, those 47 new instructions, that Intel’s upcoming 45nm Wolfdale (such as E8400) will feature …. I mean now that there’s more and more companies promise that will publish applications that supports SSE4. Programs including DivX, TMPGEnc, Adobe Premiere already support the new instructions set and Sony Vegas, Pinnacle Studio Plus and MainConcept H.264 encoder will add SSE 4 support in 2008. So why not implementing them …. licensing issue … or future revisions will have them !!!

So far from what I have read, I mean reviews of Phenom X4 9700/9900 and those o/ced to 3.0Ghz, as well the Spider platform, I am quite satisfied with the performance, and believe that once more driver optimizations occur the performance will probably increase by even a bit more.

At this juncture AMD is in a tough spot. Their Radeon HD 3800 series graphics cards are looking very strong and also think that the 7-series chipset is in good shape. But the company badly needs to ramp up frequencies with their Phenom processors. Looking back at the performance, it’s clear that the architecture performs relatively well and is an improvement over the previous generation clock for clock. I really would like to see “my” Phenom X4 hitting an overclock of 3.0-3.4Ghz (preferably a X4 9700 or the Black Edition), by the time I decide to get one, as from what I have read, they are able to hit only 2.7-3.0Ghz speeds, not competitive to Core 2 Quads which can hit 3.4-3.6Ghz. For me this is going to play a major part in whether I will get myself a Phenom or will go for Core 2 Quad. Also, as stated previously, price/performance factor will play a crucial role. And then there is another factor - you don’t know where will Intel’s offering be at that point? Looking into the future with the Spider platform, AMD seems to be the less expensive than Intel, since the chip giant has already announced that its current high-end platform X38 will be incompatible to the next generation of high-end CPUs at the beginning of next year. Overall, I am all GOGOGO for AMD platform (well perhaps with the exception of the Radeon HD cards, unless I’ll start seeing some really good drivers with AIGLX support for Linux).

Apart from this, AMD has also announced a lineup of Triple-Core Phenom X3 processors, and the estimated launch date is around March’08, which I am interested in and will follow the news.

Being frank to my new readers, considering older ones are quite aware, I’ve been a huge AMD fan, especially since the Athlon days (first AMD CPU being the 486DX), and I totally want to see them get back to where they were in the Clawhammer days.

BTW, you heard about the recent investments made in AMD for 8.1% ……..

Here are links to some reviews:

• AnandTech
• ExtremeTech
• FiringSquad
• [H]ard|OCP (Phenom X4 vs. Intel C2E QX9770)
• Hardware Canucks (9600 only)
• Hardware.fr (French/Français, 9600 only)
• Hexus (9600 only)
• Legit Reviews (9900 only)
• OCWorkbench
• PC Perspective (9600 and 9900 only)
• Real World Labs
• The Tech Report (790FX only)
• Tom’s Hardware (9700 only)

UPDATE on Pricing: According to sources close to AMD distribution channels, there is information on new volume pricing for these processors:

• Phenom X4 9700 / 2400MHz / 4MB Cache / 2000MHz HT / 125W - $279
• Phenom X4 9600 / 2300MHz / 4MB Cache / 1800MHz HT / 95W - $269
• Phenom X4 9500 / 2200MHz / 4MB Cache / 1800MHz HT / 95W - $239

If such pricing scheme is indeed implemented, the Phenom would be undercutting similar Intel “Penryn” quad core processors. Earlier this month a different report pointed to prices that were a bit steeper, hopefully they will go with this one. Here are few comparisons of Phenom processors:

Is your next brand new system going to run Phenom X4 … or X2 …. or maybe even X3?

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 24th, 2007 at 10:06 pm and is filed under Hardware, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.