AMD Launches First 45nm Shanghai CPUs

arcticstoat writes "The wait for AMD's next-gen CPUs is finally over, as the company has now officially launched its first 45nm 'Shanghai' Opteron chips for servers and workstations. 'AMD's move to a 45nm process relies on immersion lithography, where a refractive fluid fills the gap between the lens and the wafer, which AMD says will result in 'dramatic performance and performance-per-watt gains.' It's also enabled AMD to increase the maximum clock speed of the Opterons from 2.3GHz with the Barcelona core to 2.7GHz with the Shanghai core. Shanghai chips also feature more cache than their predecessors, with 6MB of Level 3 cache bumping the total up to 8MB, and the chips share the same cache architecture as Barcelona CPUs, with a shared pool of Level 3 cache and an individual allocation of Level 2 cache for each core.'"

Unfortunate name

[FlyByPC]

"AMD Shanghai [wikipedia.org] -- the perfect CPU for your newly-acquired botnet!"

Re:Unfortunate name

[Yvan256]

I still find it funny that Apple computers now use intel Core 2 Duo processors.

Jackie Chan

[glock22ownr]

Is Jackie Chan or Owen Wilson somehow involved?

Re:Which to buy now?

[nizo]

It is always best to do your research when buying a new chip so you don't get shanghaied.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Future proofing?

[wisty]

Or you can put the $500 you saved on the stock market, and by the time you need to upgrade you can use the money you saved, along with any capital gains and dividends to buy, um, a packet of waffles.

Re:Future proofing?

[Moryath]

If you're buying "bleeding edge" you're not going to be satisfied with your purchase 2-3 years from now (about my replacement cycle for my personal box, and even then a lot of my components like hard drive / sound card / DVD drive tend to last through 3-4 iterations), unless your tastes suddenly radically change and you're no longer interested in the "bleeding edge" games you were trying to run.

Plus, consider the following two options:

#1 - "Bleeding edge" rig. Blow $900 on processor, $1200 on dual video boards, $400 on RAM, $800 or so on miscellaneous other components. Total system cost around $3000.

#2 - "Decent Gaming" rig, single $300 video board, $200 processor, etc. Total cost: $900 if you really push your luck.

I'll take my $2000, buy more games, take girlfriend to dinner, stick some in a rainy-day fund, etc. One of these years you need to run the numbers and then you'll figure out that the "savings" you claim are there from buying at bleeding edge aren't really there at all. Even if I spend $900 every 2 years upgrading my PC, it takes me 5-6 years to equal the cost of your rig, and I guarantee you're going to turn around and want to rebuild to get back to the bleeding edge because you'll be "disappointed" that your 2-3 year old "bleeding edge" machine is only getting 15 fps in the timedemo mode of CallOfUnrealCrysisDoomQuakeTournament 3: Yet Another Non-Scaling Tech Demo Masquerading As A Game.

Re:Oh please.

[billcopc]

Do you really see a difference between 2ghz and 3ghz for anything other than encoding video?

Yes, it gives you more headroom for when your PC is bogged down with spyware and viruses!

Re:Oh please.

[lawaetf1]

Hah! that's priceless about the power strip.

Everyone knows you're supposed to sit perfectly still, holding your breath, squeezing your sphincter while any BIOS update goes through. Anything less than that shows disrespect resulting in consequences like yours.