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Picture us on the other end of your monitor waving a hand in front of your face as we say, "These are not the Bulldozer chips you're looking for." And we mean it. What you're waiting for is codenamed Zambezi, AMD's upcoming FX-series desktop processors rumored to ship in October. Nevertheless, AMD just announced it's begun revenue shipments of its first Bulldozer processors, only these are codenamed Interlagos. Know the difference?
For starters, these are the world's first 16-core x86 processors with two 8-core dies squeezed into a single package. These are server-based chips compatible with existing AMD Opteron 6100 Series platforms, which means they won't end up in your desktop (that's what Zambezi is for). AMD says it's been producing Interlagos chips since August, and the fact that they're now shipping is a good sign for Bulldozer in general, even if you can't stick one of the CPUs into your desktop tower.
"This is a monumental moment for the industry as this first 'Bulldozer' core represents the beginning of unprecedented performance scaling for x86 CPUs," said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager, AMD Products Group. "The flexible new ‘Bulldozer’ architecture will give Web and datacenter customers the scalability they need to handle emerging cloud and virtualization workloads."
So there you have it: Bulldozer is officially here, only it really isn't, but it will be. Make sense? The big takeaway from this is that Bulldozer, on the desktop, is close. Very close.
Image Credit: AMD
Comments are closed on this article
hookem123
September 08, 2011 at 8:56am
Sure if your game is an MMO and you are hosting the server that it is running on.
LatiosXT
September 08, 2011 at 9:10am
People need to understand that server procs are pretty much built off the same ISA as the desktops (if not using the same exact ISA), just with a little more features suited for servers. A server processor could run your games just as fine as a desktop. And the only reason why nobody builds off a server processor anymore is because it's too expensive to do so for what amounts to the same performance.
Like the old Core i7? That's pretty much a freagin' server processor without FB-DIMM support because desktops don't need that much capability.
Nimrod
September 08, 2011 at 1:23pm
i think you mean because it would kill performance, not because they dont need the capability.
thetechchild
September 08, 2011 at 5:20pm
For what reason would it kill performance? And if it would, why would people stuff it into a server when it's more expensive?
I haven't seen a single reason or source yet that specifically claims that a server and desktop chip from the same generation and of relatively similar clock speed (& core count, etc.), are found to be significantly different performance-wise. Until somebody speaks up with an actual benchmark, I back the claim that server chips are just as able as desktop chips in running games.
Jasker
September 08, 2011 at 5:32pm
Server chips at least in the past haven't suffered any handicap on desktop applications that I've ever heard of. I currently own a desktop with an 185 Opteron running in it. Plays games just fine!
