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AMD Hardware Technology

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.
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AMD Launches Athlon 64 FX-57

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  • AMDZone (Score:5, Informative)

    by luna69 ( 529007 ) * on Monday June 27, 2005 @08:32AM (#12919691)
    • Those numbers really just reenforce why there is now a long term move towards AMD - the most important one there being the performance per watt.

      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...

  • by drumgeek ( 584256 ) on Monday June 27, 2005 @08:33AM (#12919701)
    Toms Hardware Review [tomshardware.com]
    • by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 27, 2005 @10:05AM (#12920433)
      Although Toms has
      [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
  • by theGreater ( 596196 ) on Monday June 27, 2005 @08:35AM (#12919723) Homepage
    http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review_print. php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD0xMzE3 [hexus.net]

    This is filler. This is more filler. This is even more filler. This is a rant about the captcha.

    -theGreater.
  • w00t (Score:5, Funny)

    by qw0ntum ( 831414 ) on Monday June 27, 2005 @08:38AM (#12919741) Journal
    I know I can't wait to do spreadsheets in 2.8Ghz, 64-bit glory. >_> That aside, this is still a pretty awesome development.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 27, 2005 @08:38AM (#12919746)
    I stopped caring about CPU advances when the Pentium II reached 233 MHz. I run Windows 98 on my machine wihtout a firewall and I have never had a problem with spyware or viruses. How about we focus research and development on somehting more important, like fuel cells to power my wireless mouse.
    • Re:Why is this news? (Score:3, Informative)

      by luna69 ( 529007 ) *
      Because the market for fuel cells for your mouse isn't driven by the gaming industry, while the processor industry (at the high end, as this CPU is) is. :)
    • How about we focus research and development on somehting more important, like fuel cells to power my wireless mouse.

      Just go down to the local hospital and buy a used pacemaker. Remove the nuclear battery, and hack it into your mouse. Problem solved.

    • You are the kind of people that are why ISP's like my cable company have to block outgoing ports. Get a router, don't run a zombied machine. 233 MHz is more than enough for an X terminal, but if you have a lot of users on a 233 MHz server, PHP, Apache and Postgre will not perform well. This CPU is for servers.
      • It is? I thought the Opterons were for servers. This is for gaming. This is for making punk bitches suck it down. Not XXX bitches sucking it down.
      • 233 is just barely enough for an xserver, not "more than enough". My experience.

        Although it's true that it can be run on a 486 33 Mhz, but mozilla runs really slow.
  • Confused (Score:4, Interesting)

    by setzman ( 541053 ) <stzman.stzmanple ... sandremoveit@org> on Monday June 27, 2005 @08:43AM (#12919788) Journal
    I've been looking to upgrade (just buying a new mb/cpu/ram combo), but which processor is which out of MANCHESTER, CLAWHAMMER, SAND DIEGO, VENICE, and WINCHESTER??
    • Re:Confused (Score:3, Insightful)

      Those are all the core code names. San Diego and Venice are the two newest and best.

      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.
      • Also, Venice and San Diego are the first cores to incorporate SSE3 instructions. I don't know what that means, but it's one more than SSE2! (seriously, though: SSE3 [wikipedia.org])
        • Also, Venice and San Diego are the first cores to incorporate SSE3 instructions. I don't know what that means, but it's one more than SSE2! (seriously, though: SSE3)

          The SSE on my althlon 64 goes up to 11.

    • Re:Confused (Score:3, Informative)

      by Spacelem ( 189863 )
      If you are confused, This guide [anandtech.com] is pretty good at explaining the differences between the current AMD offerings.
    • Re:Confused (Score:4, Informative)

      by ottffssent ( 18387 ) on Monday June 27, 2005 @09:17AM (#12920057)
      Venice.

      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.
      • Actually, San Diego is the new one, which is what this article is about. San Diego is essentially Venice with more cache slapped on, and with this new FX 57, faster clock speed (and strained silocon).

        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).
  • by allanc ( 25681 ) on Monday June 27, 2005 @08:44AM (#12919797) Homepage
    Will a beowulf cluster of these run OSX?

    (I honestly can't tell if I'm being +5 funny or -1 troll some days...)
  • What is 1 MiB of L2 cache? 1 Million Bytes?
    • What is 1 MiB of L2 cache? 1 Million Bytes?

      It's the binary count of bytes, 2^n, instead of the decimal *10^n
    • 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)

      by Anonymous Coward
      SI unit for 1 megabyte (1024) is MiB, 1 megabyte (1000) is MB.

      SI units were changed back in the 90s to reflect base-10, the base-2 units were renamed to use the letter 'i'.
    • I believe the correct technical notation is:

      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.

    • No, mebibytes (Score:3, Informative)

      by theefer ( 467185 )
      MB: Megabyte (1000*1000=10^6 bytes)
      MiB: Mebibyte [wikipedia.org] (1024*1024=2^20 bytes)
  • 1MiB != 1024KB (Score:5, Informative)

    by Stalin ( 13415 ) on Monday June 27, 2005 @08:55AM (#12919878)
    For a definition of MiB see this wikipedia article -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mebibyte [wikipedia.org]

    And here is a random review that includes the actual cache numbers -- http://www.gdhardware.com/hardware/cpus/amd/athlon 64/fx57/001.htm [gdhardware.com]
  • I like new CPUs.

    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)

    by ID000001 ( 753578 ) on Monday June 27, 2005 @08:58AM (#12919901)
    AMD only have about 15% of the market after beating Intel numerious of time tell you how smart the general public are.
    • Re:To think... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Thomas DM ( 895043 ) on Monday June 27, 2005 @09:17AM (#12920050) Homepage
      Well AMD's production capacity isn't as big as Intel's - that's one of the big issues. AMD has an agreement with Intel to use x86, but this means that AMD may only outsource a limited amount of its production to foundries. But the new fab in Dresden, Germany will soon be opened to boost AMD's production capacity.

      Intel also has big deals with huge system builders such as Dell and HP.
    • Re:To think... (Score:4, Informative)

      by dreamchaser ( 49529 ) on Monday June 27, 2005 @09:17AM (#12920058) Homepage Journal
      It has nothing to do with the smarts (or lack of) of the market. It has to do with their capacity and with marketing.

      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)

        by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Monday June 27, 2005 @09:42AM (#12920250) Homepage Journal
        AMD has long been catering to the enthusiast market which is a very, very small fraction of the overall market

        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.
    • AMD only have about 15% of the market after beating Intel numerious of time tell you how smart the general public are.

      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)

      by Flooded77 ( 730881 ) on Monday June 27, 2005 @09:42AM (#12920252)
      It is all about quantity. People seem to think that the more of something you get in a product, the better. This marketing rationale is used for other kinds of products. Just look at fastfood ('Gorge yourself on our 10lb. McGutBomb Burger!'), automobile ('Scale Mt Everest in your new 3000 horsepower Chevy Truck!') or computer ('You'll need a 3.4Ghz machine to run Word and send email!') advertising. We've become a society of 'More is always better'. I don't think efficiency and quality are not important to the general public anymore.
  • I wonder if it fixes the 2T memory timings when using 4 sticks of ram. I really want 2 gigs of ram without loosing my current 1 gig.
    • I wonder if it fixes the 2T memory timings when using 4 sticks of ram. I really want 2 gigs of ram without loosing my current 1 gig.

      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.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 27, 2005 @09:44AM (#12920267)
    The memory controller has also been tweaked to support mismatched memory module sizes - something some enthusiasts have been crying out for

    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!
  • The only problem with it is it needs 1.21 gigawatts of electrical power to generate that kind of speed, and the only thing that can generate that much electricity... is...

    A BOLT OF LIGHTNING!
  • My head hurts (Score:4, Interesting)

    by el_womble ( 779715 ) on Monday June 27, 2005 @10:53AM (#12921057) Homepage

    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!

    • Apple's transition will start the LAPTOPS, where Intel is strongest. Centrino/Pentium-M is generally equal to AMD's stuff and has lower power consumption.

      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)

    by mistermark ( 646060 )
    Well, here's another review:

    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)

    by DrMrLordX ( 559371 ) on Monday June 27, 2005 @12:20PM (#12922088)
    Check it out. Anandtech [anandtech.com] has a review as well.

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