AMD Launches Athlon 64 FX-57 259
Kez writes "Today AMD release what could be the fastest x86 processor to date. The FX-57 is the first 90nm Athlon 64 FX from AMD, clocked to 2.8GHz, with 1MiB of L2 cache and support for SSE3. The memory controller has also been tweaked to support mismatched memory module sizes - something some enthusiasts have been crying out for. Hexus.net reviews the new processor, which, in gaming benchmarks, walks all over any of Intel's offerings." There's going to be plenty of reviews I'm sure - if you've found other links, please post them below.
AMDZone (Score:5, Informative)
http://amdzone.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Ne
Re:AMDZone (Score:2)
How is it that AMDs highest performing chip is still not as bad heat wise as most of the P4 family? Intel has fallen far...
Re:Ugh (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Ugh (Score:2)
Re:Ugh (Score:5, Interesting)
So, there are three socket types for AMD64 CPUs. The low-end stuff is Socket 754 - Sempron and Athlon64 and such. S754 is basically a dead end.
Socket 939 is a much more promising long-term socket for Athlon64 upgrades. Most new S939 boards these days are being made with PCIe, which dovetails nicely with the fact that the high-end graphics card vendors are all moving PCIe as well.
Socket 940 is for Opterons and Athlon64-FX chips. The FX chips are really expensive and really fast, but more expensive than fast when compared to their S939 brethren. Socket 940 boards come in both AGP and PCIe variants (since S940 is relatively old and predates PCIe, many AGP S940 boards exist).
As far as I know, there aren't any plans for dual-core chips on the S754 chipsets. However, the Athlon64-x2 chips are S939, and the dual-core Opterons are all S940. If you have an S939 board, it's probably smarter to forget the FX chips and go straight for an A64-x2 once they become a bit more affordable.
Re:Ugh (Score:2)
Re:Ugh (Score:5, Informative)
Not quite (Score:4, Informative)
Socket 939 is for the single CPU systems (including multiple cores).
Socket 940 is for multiple CPU systems (ie. Opteron).
Re:Not quite (Score:2)
Re:Not quite (Score:2)
Incorrect, the early FX chips were 940.
Re:Ugh (Score:2)
Speaking of proper research...
I hope to dear god nobody reads the +5 parent comment and buys a socket 940 mobo for their FX. They are a 939 part that is multiplier unlocked (no ceiling lock like other A64s) and despite what the parent says, they are currently the best desktop CPU money can buy for gaming.
Re:Ugh (Score:2)
Shows me what I get for remembering things wrong after having done *my* research a couple months ago.
Thanks for the correction. Although I still think it's kinda silly to drop a grand on a CPU, but hey, whatever works.
Re:Ugh (Score:2)
Maybe if I win the lottery some day.
Mostly correct, except for the Socket 940 (Score:2)
Other differences are in supported memory. Socket 940 systems require registered RAM and will support ECC. Socket 939 systems use "normal" RAM and will not suppor
Re:Ugh (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Ugh (Score:3, Informative)
Also, it's not just one pin removed, the actual layout is different between 939 and 940. (940 also supports smp, that being the main difference.)
The big difference between 754 and 939/940 is that 939/940 support dual-channel memory. This is important, because if they didn't, while the athlon 64 is relatively non-memory bandwidth hungry (as compared to the p4), performance would suffer wit
Re:Ugh (Score:2)
Summary:
754:
Re:Ugh (Score:3, Informative)
462: Newer Classic Athlons, Athlon MPs (server chip), Athlon XPs, Duron, Old Semprons
754: Old Athlon 64s, Semprons, Turion 64s (mobile chip)
939: Newer Athlon 64s, most Athlon 64 FX's (53, 55, 57), and in the near future, newer Semprons and 1xx (single CPU only) Opterons
940: Opterons, Athlon 64 FX-51 and some FX-53s
Explanation of engineering and economics (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Ugh (Score:2)
From the amount of research/impulse buying you seem to have done, it seems that these parts aren't really that 'expensive' to you. Others might have to be more selective and shop at a different price point, or would have been forced to return items if they discovered it needed more hardware. The industry counts on folks like you to cover early costs of bringing a product to market.
Thanks for doing your part! I'm gonna spend half the cash and get 80% of
Re:Overcloking ? (Score:2)
http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q2/athlon64-fx5
Toms Hardware Review... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Toms Hardware Review... (Score:5, Funny)
[Next Page]
decent reviews, there
[Next Page]
are times when the reviews
[Next Page]
are overshadowed by the
[Next Page]
advertising. Not really swayed
[Next Page]
by them but I still question it
Just in Case... (Score:5, Informative)
Printer-friendly (aka ad-unfriendly) link (Score:5, Funny)
This is filler. This is more filler. This is even more filler. This is a rant about the captcha.
-theGreater.
w00t (Score:5, Funny)
Re:w00t (Score:2)
Yay! At last my genetic spreadsheet won't hang my PC!
Why is this news? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Why is this news? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why is this news? (Score:2)
Just go down to the local hospital and buy a used pacemaker. Remove the nuclear battery, and hack it into your mouse. Problem solved.
Re:Why is this news? (Score:2)
Re:Why is this news? (Score:2)
Re:Why is this news? (Score:2)
Although it's true that it can be run on a 486 33 Mhz, but mozilla runs really slow.
Re:Why is this news? (Score:4, Funny)
All the best mice use it.
Confused (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Confused (Score:3, Insightful)
They are the best overclockers and produce the least heat. They use 90nm technology.
Venice is generally used in the lower lineup (3000+, 3200+, 3500+, etc) And San Diego is used with more expensive processors (4000+, FX-55)
Those other cores are older and should be avoided unless you want to save some money.
Re:Confused (Score:2)
Re:Confused (Score:2)
The SSE on my althlon 64 goes up to 11.
Re:Confused (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Confused (Score:4, Informative)
The venice core is the new one. It's a few unimportant percent faster than the others. It's got a few not-terribly-important new features. It's rather more than a few percent less power-hungry. AMD doggedly sticks to its 89W max figure, but Venice maxes out at more like 50W, according to measurements / approximations.
So, to recap:
Faster
Better
Lower power
Nicely overclockable
Buy from a respectable retailer and they'll tell you not only which core you're buying, but the clockspeed, cache size, etc. rather than just the model number.
Re:Confused (Score:2)
The article is a bit off though, claiming the only San Diego cored chips are the 4000+ and FX 57. I have an Athlon 64 3700+ in my system now, also based on the San Diego core, and it's at a ver good price point (around $320, great mid-high end processor).
Re:Confused (Score:2)
Yeah, but... (Score:4, Funny)
(I honestly can't tell if I'm being +5 funny or -1 troll some days...)
Men in Black? (Score:2)
Re:Men in Black? (Score:3, Informative)
It's the binary count of bytes, 2^n, instead of the decimal *10^n
Re:Men in Black? (Score:2)
Mi = Megabinary = 1024*1024
M = Mega = 1000*1000
Please, no more flamewars. Hard drive manufacturers destroyed M = 1024*1024 years ago.
Re:Men in Black? (Score:2, Informative)
SI units were changed back in the 90s to reflect base-10, the base-2 units were renamed to use the letter 'i'.
Re:Men in Black? (Score:2)
MiB = 1024*1024 bytes MB = 1.000.000 bytes
However, everybody use MB when they mean MiB. The Mi-notation is not very widespread or successful.
Re:Men in Black? (Score:2)
Once we get to terabytes, you'll care. As the units go up, the disparity between binary and metric starts to widen. With megabytes, the difference is 4.6% of your space. With gigabytes, it's 6.9%. With terabytes, it's 9.1%. With petabytes, it's 11.2%. And so on... It gets worse and worse.
And just because disk space keeps increasing, it's not going to be infinite. There's a saying that "operating systems and files wi
Re:Men in Black? (Score:2, Insightful)
1,048,576 vs 1,000,000 is 4.8% off
GiB vs GB = 7.3% off
TiB vs TB = 9.9% off
PiB vs PB = 12.5% off
EiB vs EB = 15.2% off
Anyway, it is important. How long until someone dies because some programmer mixed the two up?
No, mebibytes (Score:3, Informative)
MiB: Mebibyte [wikipedia.org] (1024*1024=2^20 bytes)
1MiB != 1024KB (Score:5, Informative)
And here is a random review that includes the actual cache numbers -- http://www.gdhardware.com/hardware/cpus/amd/athlo
Re:1MiB != 1024KB (Score:2)
Re:1MiB != 1024KB (Score:2)
So yes, that's 1 MiB
Unlimeted Powerrrrr! ;) (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm poor, yet I want to buy a new PC.
Therefore, if new CPUs come out, I can get an old one at a greatly reduced price.
I do hope I'll be able to afford a 64-bit CPU... otherwise my new computer will be even more outdated as soon as I buy it.
To think... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:To think... (Score:5, Informative)
Intel also has big deals with huge system builders such as Dell and HP.
Re:To think... (Score:2)
Re:To think... (Score:2)
Re:Fab 36 will start volume production in 2006 (Score:2)
Could you tell me what does the numbering mean? Does AMD have already 35 other fabs, and are they anything like the one Dresden?
Re:Fab 36 will start volume production in 2006 (Score:2)
Re:To think... (Score:4, Informative)
99% of the users out there don't even need a 2ghz P4, let alone a 2.8ghz FX-57. AMD has long been catering to the enthusiast market which is a very, very small fraction of the overall market.
Re:To think... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's OK as an R&D goal - an enthusiast machine 5 years ago was a 800MHz P3, barely enough to get XP & Office running today.
If you get your performance out for the enthusiast, next year you can get it into your consumer line, then the year after figure out how to run it in a laptop. At least, traditionally that's how it's done - Intel seems to be kicking ass in the laptop line and bring it up to the desktop - wise from a watts/$/flop perspective. Of course you can argue that was just about the Intel Marketing Department getting hold of R&D for a few years and screwing things up so badly that they're back to the P3 track and Marketing didn't notice what the blokes in Israel were up to.
Re:To think... (Score:2)
All the machines I saw at Sam's Club were AMD-based. HP, mostly.
Apple has 5%.
Dell has the other 80% and they're Intel. AMD is most likely not able to supply Dell with the number of chips they need, and they're not well-served to go with an mixture of chips, for supply line reasons.
(Yeah, I know there are IBM, whitebox, and a few others left, I'm employing hyperbole to make a point.)
Re:To think... (Score:4, Insightful)
2T memory timings (Score:2)
Re:2T memory timings (Score:2, Funny)
I know, it's terrible isn't it? I just can't stand knowing that my system could potentially be running nearly 0.2% faster under certain, very specific, workloads.
Re:2T memory timings (Score:2)
Amazing translation... (Score:3, Funny)
I wonder how AMD was able to translate fanboi-talk from
Wah Wah! Make it faster! Make it faster!
to
Please tweak your memory controller to support mismatched memory module sizes...
It boggles the mind!
Athalon to the future! (Score:2)
A BOLT OF LIGHTNING!
Re:Athalon to the future! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Athalon to the future! (Score:2)
My head hurts (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not exactly an Apple Fan boi. I understand that they have their flaws etc but the move to x86 still doesn't fit right in my head and this news just crystalizes it for me.
In the past, we could all group around the fact that it was impossible to really tell if PPC was actually any good when compared to x86. We knew games sucked, but were confident in the fact that the desktop apps we owned 'felt snappier' and that we were more productive as a result. Now we're being told that actually x86 is probably about as good as PPC, and in the future it will be better. Thats fine. As long as I'm running on the best hardware for my Mac and I don't have to start waiting for the x86 version of my favourite apps to become available I don't care. But the problem is that we all know that Intel isn't the best at making x86 chips. So when I buy my 'Intel inside' Mac, I'm going to know that Joe 'AMD' Linux, with his fancy new 128bit, 1024 core, $15 AMD can, and will, actually toast my Mac, no questions asked, with verifiable benchmarks to prove it and I'm powerless to do anything about it without breaking the EULA. That sucks.
Bottom line: Apples hardware should be the best platform to run OS X. If that means using AMD, I want AMD in my Mac - and at the moment boy do I want one of those suckers in my Mac!
Pay more attention, your head will hurt less (Score:2)
On the desktop, G5 will stick around until 2007. Let's wait and see what Intel has to offer at that point before you get so stressed about it.
another review (Score:2, Informative)
tweakers.net [tweakers.net]
It's in Dutch but it has some nice benchmarkresults which should be clear to anybody, benchmarked next to an AMD dual-core 4200+ and a AMD 3800+ (and I know for a fact those results are correct cause it's all been benchmarked on my own desk
wheee (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why would one get this (Score:5, Insightful)
Interestingly though once there was only one Athlon 64FX, and if a new one came out, its predecessor would then, if remaining on sale, be renamed. This time the old Athlon 64FX (55) remains on sale with the 64FX name.
Re:Why would one get this (Score:2, Insightful)
I would think that having a dual core set up, the game can hog one processor while the rest of the OS and other threads can hog the other processor. When I play games, I leave my chat clients open and there's all the crap running in the system tray. All of that can be running on one processor, while the ga
Re:Why would one get this (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why would one get this (Score:2)
Makes you crazy to see serious people making such stupid suggestions.
Re:Why would one get this (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why would one get this (Score:2)
Re:Why would one get this (Score:3, Interesting)
Ernie
Re:Why would one get this (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why would one get this (Score:2)
Re:Why would one get this (Score:2)
Re:Why would one get this (Score:2)
If your workload requires synchronisation between CPUs, or only even has one thing that can be done at a time, you don't see *any* benefit. You may even see a reduction in performance. Typically, dual-core is not quite twice as fast even with all else being equal and even with each CPU having its own local memory.
Re:Why would one get this (Score:2)
Re:Why would one get this (Score:2)
Re:Why would one get this (Score:2)
Not upcoming. They're here [newegg.com] and here [mwave.com] and here [monarchcomputer.com] and elsewhere. Yeah, I want one too.
Re:Remember when Apple/IBM did this...last year? (Score:2)
I don't know. My 486 has never even seen Mavis Beacon. Probably can't type worth old stinky beans.
Re:Whats Up With Hexus.Net? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not sure whether hexus.net aliases to somewhere else in your DNS or something, but our reviews are never 'pretty bad', even though I do say so myself. Maybe you're reading another site instead of ours?
Feel free to point out what you think we suck at though, incase we're missing something and you can help us fix it. Feedback is always welcome, even from Slashdotters.
Re:Apple's "Intel-Macs" will shortly go AMD (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Apple's "Intel-Macs" will shortly go AMD (Score:2)
Re:Apple's "Intel-Macs" will shortly go AMD (Score:2)
1) This is a high-end CPU. Other CPUs in the same line have TDPs of ~50 watts. This is more than a P-M, and might be an issue on laptops, but is well within the power dissipation that can be quietly handled on a desktop.
2) AMD reports TDP_max, while Intel reports TDP_avg. A dual-core Prescott is rated at something like 130 watts TDP, but its TDP_max is over 180 watts. While the P-M uses much less power, its TDP_max is going to still be higher than the TDP_avg that Intel reports.
Re:Apple's "Intel-Macs" will shortly go AMD (Score:2)
Re:Apple's "Intel-Macs" will shortly go AMD (Score:2)
If it is, however, vaporware, you might be right.
Re:Apple's "Intel-Macs" will shortly go AMD (Score:2)
Re:Apple's "Intel-Macs" will shortly go AMD (Score:2)
Re:But... the price. (Score:3, Funny)
Well... you've got yourself a good start on a great book collection [amazon.com].