Advanced Micro Devices has introduced a six-core desktop processor about six weeks after Intel launched a more powerful competitor, but at a much higher price.
The AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition, released Tuesday, is a 45-nanometer processor that works with existing AM3 and AM2+ socket motherboards running older AMD products. Swapping chips requires only a bios upgrade, AMD said.
The trend among chip vendors is to release new processors with more cores, faster clock speeds, and larger internal caches to boost performance over previous generations. However, most software makers haven’t kept up with the trend, with the exception of some game makers and vendors such as Adobe, which makes professional graphics tools and video-editing products.
The Phenom II X6 includes AMD OverDrive technology which enables computer enthusiasts to tune system performance, customize settings, and tune memory. AMD says its 890FX chipset is the “premier complement” to the Phenom II X6, featuring the company’s ATI CrossFireX graphics technology. The chipset also can support up to four ATI Radeon HD graphics cards.
Key architectural features of the Phenom II X6 include 6 MB of shared L3 cache and 512KB L2 cache per core. The processor includes AMD’s HyperTransport technology that delivers up to 8 GB per second of input/output bandwidth.
Other features include an integrated memory controller that delivers up to 21 GB per second of memory bandwidth when working with the DDR3 system memory. Finally, AMD’s CoolCore technology reduces energy consumption by turning off unused parts of the processor.
Why?
Kinda like using a Ferrari to commute to work at 35mph? The bottleneck in my current system is hard drive tramsfer speed. Makes investment in SSD more effective?
Like your moronic names implies, it’s where the cutting edge is at, much like your suggestion of going to SSD.
Until more apps take advantage of multi-core CPU I think my quad is quite satisfactory for the time being. And as our retard Bobbo stated, other resources in the system are more of a bottleneck than the CPU now, even in games. But then again, with 16gigs one has to wonder that Marc is actually using his PC more than just blogging eh? So maybe, just maybe, Marc needs those extra Hz.
There’s some good reviews up already which I doubt you, Marc, haven’t read yet. If I were to build another PC I think I would definitely go for X6, but just because I haven’t built an AMD system for quite some time now 😀
This is a very nice second fastest 6-core CPU!!
Bobbo: Agree that I/O is a huge bottleneck but there are many applications that can use CPU horsepower, not to mention threads that run concurrently.
Adobe lightroom (photography) crawls on my dual core machine when processing RAW files. I will certainly benefit from 6-core (Intel) when I start doing video and running Adobe Premier or similar.
Dallas–yep, I was talking about “just” my system. I notice slow downs when transfering large video files from one computer to another over my lan.
Absent software to run 6 cores, is there “any” horsepower added by 6 slower cores compared to 1-2 faster cores? I’m not certain, but I think the answer is “no” from when I researched building my first dual core. It gets confused because multi-cores can help with multi-tasking but net, net, net==I think most often in transcoding tasks, a fast single processor will out speed a dual/quad/six core machine.
Is this a “general” rule or does it vary greatly by other factors?
On a related matter, the brain-computer analogy is a common one. Good thing we have billions of “cores” in our brains==but still no good software to take advantage of it.
Why do I suspect our brains are maxed out by our daily activities as opposed to the fanciful “we only use 10% of our potential?” What kind of Tony Robbins biology do we imagine?
http://newscientist.com/article/mg20627571.100-the-secrets-of-intelligence-lie-within-a-single-cell.html?page=2
#4 You raise a good question about 6 slow cores or 2 fast cores.
A simple answer to why more cores is a preferred path to faster, fewer cores comes down to :
– lower power and heat benefits with core scaling versus frequency scaling
– Moores Law is employed (ironically) to use more transistors in smart configurations to reduce average power.
I think we are agreeing: if computing performance/number crunching/floating point calculations is the key criteria==multi cores are a waste of money. So who buys them and why? === People interested in something other than actual performance.
Like a Ferrari used in Daily Commutes. My neighbor down the street did this. If I got up and went to work early, I often would see him enough to wave to him. I loved having my trash car next to his at the light and race my engine. Always made me laugh.
It’s going to be great for the prosumer CGI porn people ;3
“if computing performance/number crunching/floating point calculations is the key criteria==multi cores are a waste of money. ”
More cores does generally mean – more ‘computing performance/number crunching/floating point calculations’. Its just it requires software that uses the extra codes to get that extra performance.
That software is slowly coming. Parallel computing has been around for many years. But its not easy – and far more prone to bugs, and those bugs are much harder to find and fix.
People are buying them with the assumption that the capability will be exploited. It may take a while – to exploit 6 cores well for sure. But if many machines have it, it will happen.
As an aside – if it was all about ‘computing performance/number crunching/floating point calculations’ you would expect lots of code (other than graphics) to be running on GPUs – but that has similar (if not harder) issues, in that it is yet another programming model.
#9–freddybob==I assume and rely on you expertise==are multicores presently faster than faster single cores, or only potentially and not yet so?
Unless you are running your own cryptography service like the NSA or using a multiple core rendering engine for 3-d graphic production, this product is pointless other than to feed your ego and impress people of small intellectual abilities.
Its like Kellogg’s Raisin Bran – its better cause its got 2 scoops of raisins – couldn’t they have just used 1 large scoop? Meaningless marketing hype for most folks who don’t use all the performance of their current computer.
By the way if you notice a slowdown when transferring large files over your network – I’d check your network starting with your network card and switch/router. You could also try running multiple hard drives or arrays and make sure your operating system is on a different drive/array separate from your data storage.
Typically the bottleneck is your network – run some tools and see what your bandwidth contention looks like.
Six cores, you know that means in 6 months you can buy 12 cores, why the skies the limit.
You should use them to run this site. That was the slowest loading 3X4 pic I’ve seen since dial up.
#10 bobbo
With the first generation of multi-cores what you generally got was two slightly slower cores. But its not so hard to get two cores to do something useful – say in a game one core runs the main game logic, and the other the graphics. In fact that style split is in the graphics driver so the game programmer doesn’t have to do anything.
The later multicores such as i7, and the new amd chip have technology, such that if only one or two processors are being used the others will be switched off and those used will be clocked up. So you get the best of both worlds – if you have well written parallel code – it will use all the processors (even if slightly slower individually) and get a big speed up. If the code is not very parallel other cores will be switched off and the cores will be clocked up. Intels tech is called turbo boost if you want to read up about it.
Is it worth it? Right now hard to say – in terms for dollar per amount of performance in used applications. From the HW perspective it seems to be the only answer to getting more performance – so chips will have more and more cores, and software will have to use them to get the most out of the machine. So buying such a chip now its just a form of future proofing – unless you know you have some software (say such as video encoding) that is going to use it.
I like to think getting more cores allows me to wait faster 🙂
I might upgrade to this CPU soon. I’m still using a Q6550 and I am already hitting 100% CPU usage in Cubase 5.
Have any of you people dissing multi-core CPU’s actually used a system with 4+ cores? Yes, if you use a computer like an iPad you wont see any difference, but it does improve heavy multi-tasking performance and god it’s amazing if you do any video editing or work with virtual machines.
I’m thinking about grabbing one of these and putting together a new workstation. I paid more for the early Intel Quad cores when they came out…
AMD? who dat?
I’ll be using it running Linux and running it as an spam filter so it will use all the cores I can throw at it.
Unless you max out the two or four you have now? Six is not going to help you. This is one of those deals where more is not always better.
Its almost like RAM. Except for its speed. You may not see any more performance with 4 GB ram vs 16 or whatever if you do not use the 4GB.
Heck you could have 100GB RAM but who cares? The computer does not.
It only cares if it needs it. Otherwise its just sitting in a slot taking up space and power.
@19 Bullshit. Dvorak doesn’t get any spam.
I think the key words are, “computer enthusiasts”. And his point about developers dragging their feet on implementing multi-core/multi-threading technology in their products. I would add that around 80% of current commercial software that implements data set manipulation, is still running one processor at 32 bit. So yes, it’s probably a complete waste of money in most cases.
Obviously the # of cores is going to be dependent on whether or not the software can take advantage and make use of them. I’m not even sure why this discussion is going on when several reputable sites have already provided us most of the numbers we need and are raising here. Here’s one,
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/phenom-ii-x6-1090t_8.html#sect0
“There are a number of tasks where new AMD processors do really well. These are the tasks dealing with video processing and transcoding.”
Software is behind in 64bit, thread processes and parallel programming. Games are where we’re seeing the most improvements, taking advantage of multi-cores and GPU. Games, in most cases, are what drives the software technology. I say most because Commodore Amiga comes to mind where the video/music software was pretty advance.
And with selection of these types of systems I would hope that the person spending the money would know what they need prior to setting one up. Otherwise it is like a Ferrari going 35mph.
A lot of it hangs on the OS effectively managing the cores.
there are a significant number of applications that are able to utilize dual/quad/hex cores, but still nowhere near the numbers that would make such chips worthwhile for most people.
Its the same deal with RAM, you might have 4Gb or higher, but 32bit OS limitations (in windows anyway) dictate that each application is only able to access 2Gb max, any more than this and not only does the OS need to be 64bit but the application has to be able to make use of that, and so far its just not happening.
Now with the major PC makers like Dell using x64 windows as the default install on most of their machines, the RAM side is catching up with people’s expectations, but we still see very few programs that have caught up with the multi-processor chips we now have.
A few games here and there, photoshop (which is a morass slow PoS anyway) and a few video editing apps are about it for >2 core utilization at the moment.
I already have a genetically altered Apple with 6 cores.
Some CAD and rendering software, as used in the architecture business for example, routinely allows you to assign multiple CPU cores to speed thing up. These multicore CPUs are worth their weight in gold in that industry.
It is amazing that games are driving performance improvements.
It is like a child’s mud pie creation forces engineers to build taller construction cranes!
I’m using a quad core with nine gig of ram and a dedicated video card with 1.8 gig of on board ram to write this.
There is no advantage to using a quad core over a single core to write this. For most tasks the single core XP with two gig of ram at work seems to be about as fast as anything. My net book with two gig of ram doesn’t have any problems doing most normal tasks. The screen is kind of small. I don’t like touch pads.
On the other hand I have video cameras and it is my understanding that the OS can spread the work load out if several tasks are being performed at the same time or the program is multithreaded and doing anything with video files pretty much takes all the cycles on my duel core. Every computer is running antimalware all the time or should be, etc. I think my hard drive is being scanned or indexed or something and I know I have cycles to spare.
For most home users I’d think a duel core with plenty of ram is going to be all they will need for some time to come. The single core at work could play streaming video and scan the hard drive at the same time but it didn’t have any cycles left over for anything else. It does depend on what you decide to do.
Of course one lady I talked to last summer wanting some advice about getting a replacement when her old computer died turned out to be a very low end user and she’s happy with a refurbish machine she bought off eBay. For what she uses it for it’s about as fast as anything.
I have for a couple of years now been planning my first home-built system, employing some or other Intel four-core processor. But the simple fact is I’m happy with a Sempron for this rig, a P-4 for my other rig, and an Atom for my netbook. I suppose I have multiple cores now, switched on and off as I see fit.
#28 How exactly are your getting 9gig of ram (what sticks/board are you using)? If you really are using that much you can’t even get dual channel speeds so its utterly worthless.
As for your video cared, I think you’ve been smoking too much crack.
Where did you get that die photo? That is not a Phenom II X6, but it does look similar.
For all of you who say multiple cores are no benefit, take a look at your process list. Even if you are only running one or two programs, you have so many system processes running in the background at any given time, you are going to see at least some performance benefit from multiple cores. Four cores is enough for most people, though, and I doubt if you are going to be seeing much over 6 cores in the consumer space in the future. Servers will take as many as they can get. We are effectively nearing the end of performance improvements that scaling can give us, and hitting diminishing returns in the consumer space for multiple cores, but there is still much to be gained by further architectural integration by SOC.