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AMD Announces Expansions to Phenom, Athlon Processor Lines

Paul Lilly — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 09:07:03 -0500

We're still waiting for AMD to go gunning after Core i7, but in the meantime, the No. 2 chip maker announced plans to expand its Athlon and Phenom processor lines. The new chips include the Athlon II X2 250 and Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition.

Zipping along at 3.0GHz, the Athlon II X2 250 will take its place as the fastest Athlon processor in AMD's lineup. Other vitals include a 45nm manufacturing processor, 65W TDP, and an AM3 package allowing it to support both DDR2 and DDR3 memory. Perhaps best of all, the new chip is being priced at a budget-friendly $87.

As for the other processor, the Phenom II X2 550 BE will rank as the company's "fastest ever dual-core processor" clocked at 3.1GHz. It will come with an HT Link of 2.0GHz, a 7MB cache, and the same AM3 package as the aforementioned Athlon II. And it won't cost much more, either - look for a $103 price tag.

No word yet on a release date.

Rumor: AMD Shifting to 45nm in Q3, Launching New CPUs

Paul Lilly — Fri, 22 May 2009 15:55:47 -0500

AMD already offers a handful of chips built on a 45nm manufacturing process, but if what motherboard makers are telling news and rumor site DigiTimes turns out to be true, the No. 2 chip maker will fully embrace 45nm for its desktop parts next quarter. These include dual-core Phenom II X2 500 series and Athlon II X2 200 series in June, followed by quad-core Athlon II X4 600 series and triple-core Athlon II X3 400 series in September.

In addition, AMD has a few new CPUs on tap for an end of Q2 / beginning of Q3 release. DigiTimes says we'll see the Phenom X2 550 and 545 both launch by the end of the second quarter, and the quad-core Phenom II X4 945 (95W) and 8xx (95W), triple-core Phenom II X3 7xx (95W), quad-core Athlon II X4 630 and 620, triple-core Athlon II X3 435 and 425, and dual-core Ahtlon II X2 250, 245, and 240 all in the third quarter. This in addition to 10 low-power CPUs.

Image Credit: AMD

A Brief History of CPUs: 31 Awesome Years of x86

Paul Lilly — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 12:00:00 -0500

Believe it or not, your terrifically fast Core i7 fresh off Intel's assembly line contains DNA that dates back over three decades. The same is true if you roll with AMD's latest silicon, the Phenom II X4. We're of course referring to the longstanding x86 microprocessor architecture that has dominated the desktop and mobile scene since before some of you were even born, and will probably be a mainstay still yet for many more years to come.

Invented by Intel in 1978, the x86 architecture has evolved through the ages, not only getting faster, but increasingly flexible as more and more extensions and instruction sets accompany each new release. It's been a wild ride the past 30 years, and whether you lived through it all or have only recently picked up your first processor, we invite you to join as we look back at not only the most popular x86 CPUs in its history, but ones you may never even have heard of. Of course, if we've missed any of your favorite CPUs, chime in on the comments section and point out any omissions!

Intel 8086

In the beginning, Intel created the 8086 and its first 16-bit microprocessor.
And Intel said, Let there be x86: and there was x86.
And Intel saw the x86, that it was good.

No, we're not about to anoint Intel as a deity, but the gargantuan chip maker did give birth to the x86 processor. More than 30 years later, or roughly 3,000 calendar years in computer time, x86 continues to evolve (see how easy it is for creationism and evolution to co-exist?) from its modest start in 1978. That was the year Intel created the 8086, a 3-micron chip chugging along at 4.77MHz, while later versions would run at up to 10MHz. The 8086 had just 29,000 transistors, which was still nearly four times as many as the 8085 released in 1976, and was Intel's first 16-bit microprocessor and responsible for kicking off the 16-bit era (note that the 8086 wasn't the first 16-bit chip). Backwards compatibility with software written for the 8008, 8080, and 8085, and the ability to address 1MB of memory natively made the 8086 a near instant success.

(Image Credit: CPU-World.com)

Date Released: 1978
Clockspeed: 4.77MHz - 10MHz

Did you know?

Through some sneaky industrial espionage, the Soviet Union was able to reverse engineer and replicate the 8086 into their own pin-compatible K1810BM86.

Intel 286

The 8086 and later the 8088 closed out the 70s and were the opening act in the early 80s. That is, until Intel entertained the computing world with the 80286 in 1982, a 1.5-micron part with a mind-boggling 134,000 transistors and 16MB of addressable memory. The first 286 pedaled along at 6MHz and, like the original 8086, would later double in speed. However, clock for clock, the 286 boasted twice (or more) the performance of the 8086, a generational leap in the x86 architecture that has never been duplicated to this day. Throughout the decade, the 286 became synonymous with IBM PCs, and within 6 years of its release, Intel estimates there were 15 million 286-based PCs installed worldwide.

Introduced with the 286 was a feature called protected mode, which controlled how memory was accessed. This feature allowed all 16MB of memory to be addressed, but there was no easy mechanism in place for the 286 to switch from protected mode back to the backwards compatible real mode, so it was never widely used.

(Image Credit: Pipux.net)

Date Released: 1982
Clockspeed: 6MHz - 12.5MHz

Did you know?

Bill Gates famously dubbed the 286 as a "brain dead chip," since it wasn't able to run multiple MS-DOS applications under the Windows environment.

AMD Am286

Much has been made recently over the x86 licensing agreement between Intel and AMD, and we have to travel back to 1982 to see how it all began. That was the year AMD inked a deal allowing them to manufacture and sell both 8086 and 8088 processors. The very next year, AMD released the Am286, an exact clone of Intel's 286 processor, right down to the pin count, but with a higher frequency. And not just faster, but almost twice as fast at 20MHz. In some respects, the Am286 can be viewed as the first punch thrown in a fight that has been going on for almost 30 years.

(Image Credit: CPU-World.com)

Date Released: 1983
Clockspeed: 8MHz - 20MHz

Did you know?

Like the Intel 286, the Am286 was built on a 1500nm fab process. Today's CPUs are made with a process that's 33 times smaller.

Intel 386

With PC gaming starting to take hold, Intel's 386 arrived not a moment too soon. Even adventure gaming could sometimes be a chore on a 286. Every try maneuvering Leisure Suit Larry in remade VGA form across the screen on a 286? We have, and it wasn't fun.

The 386, which was later named 386DX to avoid confusion with a lower cost 386SX variant that would debut three years after launch, initially ran at 16MHz and, once again, would eventually double in speed to 33MHz. It also doubled the number of transistors from its predecessor to 275,000 and was Intel's first 32-bit processor. The 386 could address up to 4GB (not MB) of memory, could switch between protected mode and real mode, and added a third 'virtual' mode, which allowed the execution of real mode applications that were unable to run in protected mode.

(Image Credit: yjfy.com)

Date Released: 1985
Clockspeed: 16MHz - 33MHz

Did you know?

The 386 was the first widespread microprocessor to be initially single-sourced. That is, PC makers could only buy the chip from Intel, a policy which contributed to the company's success in the CPU market.

Intel i486

Starting to see a pattern? Before the greatest decade ever (1980s) came to end, Intel released one more x86 processor, the 486DX. The first CPU to include a built-in math co-processor, the 486 raced along at 25MHz (and later 50MHz) and was also the first chip to breach the 1 million transistor mark with 1.2 million transistors. Like the 386, it could address up to 4GB of memory, and with the addition of on-board cache, optimized instruction set and enhanced bus interface unit, the speedy 486 found a home in both desktop and server environments.

For gamers, the 486 picked up where the 386 left off, and most old-school gamers probably have fond memories of blowing up Tie Fighters while using a 486DX2-66. Fast as it was (at the time), the 486 couldn't keep up with the pixel pushing power required by the advent of 3D graphics.

(Image Credit: Wikimedia.org)

Date Released: 1989
Clockspeed: 25MHz - 100MHz

Did you know?

Initially launched as the i486DX, the 486 design included numerous variations, including the i486SX, i486SL, and the widely popular i486DX2.

>>Next, AMD brings the heat...

AMD Am386

If the Am286 represents AMD's first punch thrown in the x86 bout, the AM386 was the uppercut that followed. Released in 1991, the AM386 was another carbon-copy of Intel's 386 CPU, and once again it came clocked faster than Intel's own silicon. It also came with a marketing edge as the first processor to come adorned with Microsoft's "Windows Compatible" logo, a move The New York Times described as "clearly intended to add credibility to [AMD]'s clones of Intel's microprocessors."

Intel did its best to prevent AMD from selling its new processor, alleging that the x86 agreement the two signed only applied to 80286 and previous processors (sound familiar?). AMD won the ensuing court battle, and though Intel had already released its 486 CPU, the Am386 offered near the same performance for much less. The flurry of sales that followed solidified AMD as a true competitor to Intel.

(Image Credit: hattix.co.uk)

Date Released: 1991
Clockspeed: 12MHz - 40MHz

Did you know?

The Am386 was ready for release before 1991, but was tied up in court due to a dispute over AMD's x86 license, which Intel claimed over covered the 80286 design.

Cyrix Cx486

Cyrix started off by producing math coprocessors for 286 and 386 systems in 1988, and in 1992, the company released its first x86 CPUs, the 486SLC and 486DLC. While the name might suggest otherwise, both of these were pin-compatible with the 386SX/DX, offering 386 platform owners an attractive upgrade option.

Manufactured by Texas Instruments, Cyrix's 486 series didn't come with a math coprocessor, though one could be added. Throughout its lifespan, the Cx486 series would come with anywhere between 1KB and 8KB of L1 cache and ramp as high as 100MHz.

(Image Credit: cpu-museum.de)

Date Released: 1992
Clockspeed: 20MHz - 100MHz

Did you know?

Due to its low power consumption, the Cyrix Cx486 was a popular part for laptops int he early 90s.

Intel Pentium

Now in its fifth generation, Intel's Pentium processor brought the x86 architecture to new heights, as well as brought along a new naming scheme. Unable to patent numbers, Intel avoiding dubbing its newest chip the 586.

The Pentium introduced several improvements designed to address the performance bottlenecks of previous processors. Chief among them was a 64-bit wide date bus, two execution units, a much improved floating point unit (FPU), and faster clockspeeds. Intel's Pentium processor launched at 60MHz, but it didn't take long for faster chips to follow before it eventually topped out a 233MHz. During its lifespan, the Pentium also shrunk from a 0.8-micron manufacturing process to 0.35-microns and increased its transistor count from 3.1 million to 4.5 million.

In 1996, Intel began selling Pentium MMX processors. The MMX instruction set added additional registers to the architecture and were designed to give multimedia and communications applications a boost.

(Image Credit: Microprocessor.sscc.ru)

Date Released: 1993
Clockspeed: 60MHz - 233MHz

Did you know?

The name Pentium is derived from the Greek "penta" and Latin ending "-ium," meaning "five."

AMD Am486

The last clone in the true Clone Wars, AMD's Am486 debuted almost a full four years after Intel's 486 came out, and one month after the Pentium. To compete with the existing 486 chip, AMD undercut the competition by selling its version for less, while clocking it higher than Intel's 486. Some of AMD's faster 66MHz chips even gave Intel's newly released Pentium a run for its money.

(Image Credit: liafa.jusseu.fr)

Date Released: 1993
Clockspeed: 25MHz - 120MHz

Did you know?

AMD also marketed an Am486 variant with a 4x clock multiplier as an AMD 5x86 which ran at 133MHz and performed comparably to the Pentium 75MHz.

Intel Pentium Pro

Despite the minor nomenclature update, the Pentium Pro represented a pretty significant update over the original Pentium, bringing with it a new microarchitecture rather than just a set of minor enhancements. The Pro added another million transistors to its die (5.5 million), but more importantly was the addition of its L2 cache, 256KB to start and later up to 1MB. While not yet integrated into the processor core itself, the Pentium Pro's L2 cache still ran at the same clockspeed as the CPU, anywhere from 150MHz to 200MHz.

But while the Pentium Pro's L2 cache gave it an advantage, it also presented problems for the chip. Putting the cache on a separate die introduced manufacturing defects that led to lower yields, and ultimately higher prices. This might have been okay, had it not been for the fact that the Pentium Pro shined brightest on 32-bit OSes when 16-bit still reigned supreme.

(Image Credit: Tomshardware.com)

Date Released: 1995
Clockspeed: 150MHz - 200MHz

Did you know?

Intel released a 300MHz Pentium II "Overdrive" processor in 1998 that fit into the Pentium Pro's Socket 8 as an upgrade path for Pentrium Pro owners.

Cyrix Cx5x86

Still a relative newcomer to the x86 market, Cyrix proved it wasn't a one-hit wonder by following up the Cx486 series with its Cx5x86. And once again Cyrix preyed on end-users looking for a drop-in replacement to their existing setup by making the Cx5x86 compatible with 486 Socket 3 motherboards. The same couldn't be said for Intel's Pentium chip, giving Cyrix a leg up in this respect.

Stability issues forced Cyrix to disable some of the features it touted for its new series, including branch prediction and other performance enhancements. However,the Cx5x86's time on the market ended prematurely not because of design issues, but because Cyrix didn't want the chip cutting into sales of its 6x86 chip, which was released just six months after the 5x86.

(Image Credit: cpu-world.com)

Date Released: 1995
Clockspeed: 100MHz - 133MHz

Did you know?

Cyrix rated the speeds of its chips rather liberally, and very few of the Cx5x86 processors actually ran at 133MHz.

>>Next, how well did Intel fare against Kryptonite?

AMD Am5x86

Offering an easy upgrade path for 486 computers, AMD's Am5x86 was really a 486DX with an internal x4 multiplier. This allowed the chip to run at 133MHz and ensured compatibility with most existing 486 motherboards, while offering performance on par with ,and sometimes better than, Intel's Pentium 75.

But what really stands out about the Am5x86 is that it became the first chip to make use of AMD's Performance Rating (PR), a tactic that would play an even bigger role later on. In this case, AMD sold the processor as an Am5x86-P75, letting customers know it was AMD's equivalent of a Pentium 75.

(Image Credit: Extrahardware.cz)

Date Released: 1995
Clockspeed: 133MHz

Did you know?

AMD's Performance Rating would be used up until the Athlon 64 X2 line of processors.

AMD K5

Intel, having helped spur the competition with a licensing agreement that paved the way for faster clones, didn't make the same mistake with its Pentium line. As a result, AMD (and everyone else) could no longer simply clone Intel's silicon and sell it as their own. And thus was born the K5, AMD's first attempt at a next generation CPU developed in-house.

As might have been expected, design problems reared their ugly heads forcing AMD to delay the K5's launch. After working out the kinks, AMD released the K5 in 1996. Technically superior to Intel's Pentium, the K5 contained 4.5 million transistors, five integer units, a much larger branch prediction unit, and 16KB of cache, or twice the amount as found on the Pentium.

Unfortunately for AMD, the K5 suffered from low clock rates and failed to deliver any knockout blows to Intel's Pentium, nor was it a sales success.

(Image Credit: x86-guide.com)

Date Released: 1996
Clockspeed: 75MHz - 133MHz

Did you know?

The 'K' in K5 and subsequent AMD processors was inspired by Kryptonite of Superman lore.

Cyrix 6x86 and MII

Formerly called the M1, the Cyrix 6x86 was both pin- and voltage-compatible with Intel's Pentium processor. However, it wasn't a reverse-engineered Pentium clone and instead an original design, which made it not 100 percent Pentium compatible.

Early versions shipped with 16KB of cache and showed impressive benchmark performance, often outperforming faster clocked Pentium chips in some scenarios. This led to Cyrix adopting a Performance/Pentium Rating of its own, despite its comparatively poor FPU performance.

Later versions of the 6x86 would be renamed MII. The MII revision brought with it lower heat output, paving the way for faster clockspeeds. This sometimes came at the expense of compatibility because it required non-standard bus speeds at 75MHz or 83MHz on socket 7 boards.

(Image Credit: Recycledgoods.com)

Date Released: 1996
Clockespeed: 80Mhz - 385MHz

Did you know?

There were three different versions of the Cyrix 6x86: the original single-voltage version, a low-power version with split core, and one with an advanced MMX instruction set.

AMD K6

While AMD's K5 turned out to be a forgettable CPU, the K6 rollout went much more smoothly and to a warmer reception. This was thanks in part to co-development efforts by Vinod Dham, who is known as the "Father of the Pentium" for his work in developing the Pentium CPU. Dham left Intel in 1996 before ultimately landing at a company called NexGen, later acquired by AMD. NexGen actually designed what would be the K6, which included MMX instructions and an FPU.

Launched in April 1997, the K6 served as a drop-in replacement for Pentium's Socket 7 motherboards. The K6, along with the NexGen acquisition, once again underscored AMD's position as a major chip competitor.

Date Released: 1997
Clockspeed: 166MHz - 300MHz

Did you know?

The K6 briefly used a Pentium II-based performance rating (PR2), but this designation was eventually dropped.

Intel Pentium II and Pentium II Xeon

To improve yields, Intel moved the L2 cache to an external cache chip. Doing so meant running the cache at half the speed of the CPU, which Intel tried to negate by doubling the amount of L2 cache from 256KB to 512KB on the lowest end Pentium II. This not only eventually led to lower prices (Pentium II cost a pretty penny at launch) and sub-$1,000 PCs, but also prompted Intel to package its new processor in a Single Edged Contact Cartridge to be plugged into the new Slot1 motherboards.

From a design standpoint, the Pentium II first showed up using a 0.35-micron manufacturing process that was later reduced to 0.25-microns, contained 7.5 million transistors, and could address 64GB of memory.

Additionally, the Pentium II also gave birth to the first Xeon-brand processors, released in 1998. But unlike the regular Pentium II, the Xeon version ran its L2 cache at full speed, up to 2MB of it.

(Image Credit: isosystems.eu)

Date Released: 1997 (Xeon in 1998)
Clockspeed: 233MHz - 450MHz (Xeon 400MHz - 450MHz)

Did you know?

The Pentium II's codenames were Klamath and Deschutes for the desktop models and Tonga and Dixon for the mobile counterparts.

Cyrix Media GX (National Semiconductor)

Facing financial trouble, Cyrix found relief when it was bought out by National Semiconductor in 1997. It also found a change in philosophy, as National Semiconductor was much more interested in the value market than it was in trying to compete at the high end. The result of this new mentality was the Media GX, a processor based on the Cyrix 5x86 with integrated graphics, memory controller, and PCI controller. This would be paired with a companion chip that would contain the IDE controller, sound functions, and other tasks.

(Image Credit: ukcpu.net)

Date Released: 1997
Clockspeed: 120MHz - 300MHz

Did you know?

MediaGX processors can only run on motherboards specifically designed for the same model processor.

>>Next, the first processor with a vegetable as its nickname...

Centaur Technology WinChip

Pat yourself on the back if you remember the WinChip or, better yet, can follow the cluster**** of business acquisitions and collaborations between VIA, Cyrix, National Semiconductor, IDT, and Centaur Technology, among others who are in some way intertwined.

In this case, Centaur Technology produced and sold the WinChip, a Socket 7 processor. Deviating from traditional x86 processor design, Centaur used what it knew about RISC processors and created a chip with a smaller gate count and reduced die size. It was a simple, energy efficient design best suited for less demanding tasks. It didn't have any L2 cache, but did have 64KB of L1 cache. It also supported MMX and 3DNow!, but Intel's low-cost and faster performing Celeron ended any hopes Centaur might have had for the WinChip.

(Image Credit: watch.impress.co.jp)

Date Released: 1997
Clockspeed: 180MHz - 250MHz

Did you know?

Centaur was sold to VIA in 1999, and elements of the WinChip were used in the company's Cyrix III line.

Intel Celeron

Intel had done well serving the higher end and server markets up through the Pentium II and Pentium II Xeon, but the company lacked a true entry-level chip targeted specifically at the value PC sector. Enter the Celeron, a much lower performance part with a much lower price that first appeared in 1998.

Later in the x86 game, some specific Celeron models would make a compelling alternative for end-users looking to save a buck or three without sacrificing too much performance, particularly for those willing to overclock, but first-run Celerons based on the Pentium II core met with poor initial reaction from the general populace. This was due, in part, to the lack of L2 cache at debut, a trait which helped cripple performance. Later on, Intel would release another version with 128KB of L2 cache, and this would, in some cases, double the performance over the cacheless version. The combination of full speed L2 cache and ability to run beyond its stock speed made these second-run Celeron chips a hit among the overclocking crowd.

Throughout the years, Intel's Celeron line has accompanied Intel's mainstream processors, with the latest Celerons being built around the Allendale architecture and sporting two-cores.

Date Released: 1998
Clockspeed: 266MHz - 3.2GHz

Did you know?

The Mendocino Celeron, dubbed the 300A, was extremely popular with overclockers, who could run it reliable at 450MHz.

AMD K6-2 and K6-2+

Continuing the success of the K6, AMD's K6-2, released in 1998, brought another MMX unit to the table as well as a new SIMD instruction set famously known as 3DNow! This gave AMD a slight head start in tearing through 3D applications before Intel fired back with its SSE instruction set. The K6-2 held appeal as a cost-conscious upgrade for Super Socket 7 motherboard owners.

Later on, AMD would follow suit with the K6-2+, which added 128KB of L2 cache and a smaller manufacturing process (180nm versus 250nm).

(Image Credit: CPU-World.com)

Date Released: 1998
Clockspeed: 233MHz - 50MHz

Did you know?

SIMD, aka 3Dnow!, stands for "Single Instruction, Multiple Data." It's also known commonly as "vector instructions."

AMD K6-3

The last of the K6 line, AMD's K6-3 showed up in early 1999 and was the last Socket 7 processor ever made. K6-3 didn't have much time to bask in the the limelight, as Intel released a new processor, the Pentium III, just a few days after AMD's launch.

Essentially a K6-2 with 256KB of L2 cache and more than twice as many transistors (21.3 million versus 9.3 million), the K6-2 was initially successful, but quickly forgotten once AMD released its Athlon series.

(Image Credit: Knowplace.org)

Date Released: 1999
Clockspeed: 350MHz - 570MHz

Did you know?

The K6-3's codename was "Sharptooth."

Intel Pentium III and Pentium III Xeon

Things really started cooking for Intel with the release of the Pentium III in 1999. The addition of SSE instructions led to the ability to process up to four single-precision floating point numbers simultaneously and it was better at handling 3D, imaging, streaming content, and other multimedia tasks than the Pentium II.

Later on, Intel would release the Pentium III Coppermine. Coppermine featured 256KB of integrated full-speed L2 cache, a tweaked pipeline, and other enhancements that led to a sometimes significantly faster processor than the first Pentium III.

Yet another PIII chip -- called Tualatin -- would appear, which boasted higher clockspeeds, more cache, a die shrink, and lower temp voltage requirements leading to lower temps. Tualatin would provid the initial framework for Intel's mobile Pentium-M processor, which would later go on to inspire today's Core i7 CPUs.

As for the Pentium III Xeon, Intel's server chip didn't differ dramatically from its desktop brethren, although later run PIII Xeons would add more cache (up to 2MB) and support quad-processor configurations.

(Image Credit: Deskpicture.com)

Date Released: 1999
Clockspeed: 450MHz -1.4GHz

Did you know?

The original Xbox uses a variant of the Pentium III Celeron processor in a Micro-PGA2 form factor.

AMD Athlon (Classic and Thunderbird)

Arguably the most significant series in AMD's CPU history, and certainly the most important in the company's recent history, AMD's Athlon line hit Intel square between the eyes and was such a success, even the Intel faithful found themselves building an AMD system for the first time. Dirk Meyer, who would later rise in rank as AMD's CEO, led the design team that developed Athlon, at first a cartridge-based processor with 512KB of L2 cache. Debuting at 500MHz, AMD beat Intel to the 1GHz mark with its Athlon processor, an important (and much anticipated) milestone at the time.

Over time, AMD would tweak its Athlon processor for the better, starting with the Thunderbird. The new core revision brought with it faster cache along with a few other tweaks that made it highly desirable. It also kicked off AMD's Socket A (462), one of the most successful motherboard sockets of all time.

(Image Credit: Wikipedia)

Date Released: 1999
Clockspeed: 500MHz - 1.4GHz

Did you know?

The Athlon Thunderbird was AMD's most successful product since the Am386 ten years earlier. The name Athlon is Greek for "contest."

>>Next, a processor stranded on an island...

National Semiconductor Geode

An evolution of the Media GX processor, the Geode picked up where Cyrix left off, but not for long. In 2003, National Semiconductor sold its Geode business to AMD, who continued to tweak the system-on-a-chip processor. Earlier versions can be found in some OLPCs, however AMD's latest Geodes (Geode NX) are based on the company's Athlon XP Thoroughbred core and include 256KB of L2 cache. It can also operate at up to 1GHz with passive cooling.

As of this year, AMD has stopped working on the Geode line.

Date Released: 1999
Clockspeed: 166MHz - 1.4GHz

Did you know?

The One Laptop per Child project uses Geode LX processors.

Transmeta Crusoe and Efficeon

A newcomer to the x86 chip market, Transmeta's Crusoe debuted in 2000 amid much hype. Crusoe was designed as an energy conscious, cool-running mobile part consuming anywhere from 1W to 3W during typical usage. At first built on a 180nm manufacturing process (and later 130nm), it owed much of its power savings to a software emulation layer. This, combined with the lack of emulation for SSE instructions, led Intel's Don MacDonald to say "You should check whether the Transmeta chip is 100 percent x86-compatible."

Over time Transmeta would revise its Crusoe chip, but the lack of comparable performance to Intel's and AMD's offerings combined with only negligible real-world energy management led to limited success for Transmeta's x86 CPU. So in 2004, Transmeta released a second x86 chip, the Efficeon. The new Efficeon microarchitecure was based on a 256-bit VLIW (Very Long Instruction Word) processor rather 128-bit like the Crusoe. Through Morphing Software, it also added much better x86 software compatibility, including MMX, SSE, and SSE instructions.

All told, Efficeon offered significant performance gains over Crusoe, sometimes as high as 200 percent, but faced increasing competition from Intel and AMD in the mobile market. After losing hundreds of millions of dollars over several years, Transmeta stopped making chips and instead focused on selling its technology. In January 2009, Transmeta was acquired by Novafora.

(Image Credit: x86-guide.com)

Date Released: 2000
Clockspeed: 300MHz - 2GHz

Did you know?

The Crusoe processor was named after the literary character Robinson Crusoe, which Transmeta's founder claimed "denotes mobility."

VIA Cyrix III and C3

Cyrix once again passed hands, this time having been sold to VIA in 1999 who then released the Cyrix III x86 CPU in early 2000 for Socket 370 motherboards. Cyrix had already been working on the Cyrix III, but several design issues led to VIA issuing a core revision reducing the number of transistors from 22 million to 11 million. By doing so, the Cyrix III was primed to reach higher clockspeeds, which would come to label the chip in place the Performance Rating Cyrix had previously been using.

Yet another revision, codenamed Samuel 2, would add 64KB of L2 cache to the chip and switch from a 180nm to 150nm manufacturing process, again paving the way for faster clockspeeds. VIA would also later change the name of the Cyrix III to simply C3, as Cyrix technology was no longer part of the architecture.

Date Released: 2000
Clockspeed: 350MHz - 1.4GHz

Did you know?

The retail C3 chips shipped inside a colorful cylindrical metal tin. The power-saving C3's also consumed fewer than 10 watts.

AMD Duron

Making a bid for the performance crown is only half the battle, and so in 2000 AMD released its Duron processor to compete with Intel's Celeron and win over the budget market. Essentially a crippled Athlon Thunderbird, early Durons featured a slower frontside bus at 100MHz and, as is almost always the case with low-cost chips, reduced cache. Durons came with just 64KB of L2 cache at a time with 256KB and 512KB were becoming the norm. These ranged in frequency from 600MHz to 950MHz.

Second generation Durons would be based on the Athlon XP architecture and add SSE support, and a final Duron revision based on the Thoroughred Athlon XP would see a faster frontside bus (133MHz) and clockspeeds up to 1.8GHz.

(Image Credit: x86-guide.com)

Date Released: 2000
Clockspeed: 600MHz to 1.8GHz

Did you know?

Overclockers discovered that the first batch of "Applebred" class Durons could actually be turned into "Thoroughbred B" Athlon XPs with full 256KB cache.

Intel Pentium 4

Sometimes change is a good thing, and other times -- as is the case here -- change can turn out to be bad. But even worse is when everybody knows something is bad, yet nothing is done about it for a long, long time. Enter the Pentium 4 processor and Intel's new NetBurst architecture.

At the risk of oversimplifying, Intel's Pentium III processor thrived on a highly efficient design that, had Intel continued to tweak, probably would never have allowed AMD to build as big of an enthusiast following as it has done. Instead, Intel left the door open for AMD by fixating on increasingly higher clockspeeds, a goal it planned to reach by introducing an exceedingly long-staged pipeline in the Pentium 4. While this paved the path for higher clockspeeds, a longer stage pipeline meant a bigger performance penalty when a set of instructions had to be thrown out and started over from scratch. Imagine putting almost all the pieces of a car together on an assembly line, only to find out towards the end that the windshield doesn't fit. But rather than ordering a new windshield, you have to scrap the entire car and all the work that went into it.

Pentium 4 wasn't all bad, though, and it did introduce both SSE2 and SSE3 instruction sets. Combined with HyperThreading, the Pentium 4 excelled with multimedia and content creation tasks, as well as code optimized for the new core. And with 3D graphics cards continuing to increase in power, a P4 chip provided a serviceable foundation for gaming rigs. Overclockers took a keen interest in the Northwood core released in 2002. With a capable motherboard and RAM, even beginning overclockers could set their sights on 1GHz overclocks using air cooling.

Still, for a Pentium 4 to really shine, it needed to ramp up clockspeeds to unprecedented levels. Intel envisioned this happening with the much anticipated Prescott core, the first chip to be built on a 90nm manufacturing process. But Prescott ran uncomfortably hot at launch, offered negligible performance gains, failed to live up to its pre-release hype, and was getting trounched by AMD silicon in gaming benchmarks.

(Image Credit: windowsdevcenter.com)

Date Released: 2000
Clockspeed: 1.40GHz - 3.8GHz

Did you know?

Overclocking "Northwood" Pentium 4s was a nightmare, since using core voltages above 1.7V would quickly kill the CPU -- a phenomenom known as Sudden Northwood Death Syndrome.

>>The highest clocked CPU released ends the MHz war...

AMD Athlon XP

Still part of the Athlon family, AMD's XP revision would add SSE instructions and represent a more aggressive approach to marketing. XP stood for eXtreme Performance and tied in nicely with Microsoft's Windows XP operating system, but it didn't stop there. AMD also went back to using a Performance Rating (PR) system for labeling its processors. Officially, AMD's PR rating (yes, we realize that's redundant) was used to denote an XP chip's performance to that of an equivalent Thunderbird core, so an AMD Athlon XP 1800+ would, in theory, offer the same performance as a Thunderbird running at 1.8GHz (1,800MHz). However, in practice it was much more widely used as a point of reference next to Intel's Pentium processor, even if this was incorrect, leading many to refer to the abbreviation as a Pentium Rating.

Yet another revision -- the Thoroughbred, or T-Bred -- would be released and drop the manufacturing process down from 180nm to 130nm. Later models would also increase the frontside bus from 100MHz (Thunderbird) and 133MHz (XP) to 166MHz (T-Bred).

But the most popular Socket A Athlon was the one built around the Barton core. Barton chips first appeared in 2003 and represented a tremendous value for enthusiasts and overclockers alike. Of particular interest were early revision Barton 2500+ processors, which shipped with an unlocked multiplier. By upping the multiplier, most Barton 2500+ chips could easily be transformed into AMD's flagship 3200+ model. Not only were Barton CPUs affordable, but so were the high-end motherboards they ran on, namely the Asus A7N8X Deluxe and Abit NF7-S Rev2, the two top overclocking boards of the time. When AMD began locking the multiplier, these and other top-end boards allowed the 2500+ to run like a 3200+ with a quick frontside bus adjustment.

From a technical standpoint, the Barton core doubled up its L2 cache to 512KB and increased the number of transistors from around 37 million (depending on the core) to 54.3 million.

Date Released: 2001
Clockspeed: 650MHz - 2.25GHz

Did you know?

Mobile Athlon XPs were favored for their high overclocking ability (reportedly up to 3.1GHz) and stable underclocking ability, which was idea for home theater PCs.

AMD Sempron

Picking up where the Duron left off, AMD's Sempron brand replaced the Duron as the company's budget chip and Celeron competitor. And like the Duron, Semprons featured reduced L2 cache, or at least most of them did. Standing as an oddity among the rest was the Sempron 3000+ Not much more than a name change at first, early Semprons were basically Athlon XP chips with some of its cache disabled. However, the Sempron 3000+ contained 512KB of L2 cache and ran at 2.0GHz with at 166MHz frontside bus. For all intents and purposes, the Sempron 3000+ was really a Barton 2700+, if such a chip existed. It contained the same amount of L2 cache as a Barton, ran the same speed frontside bus, and was clocked between a Barton 2600+ (1.9MHz) and 2800+ (2.08GHz).

Semprons would continue to evolve alongside (and under) AMD's mainstream processor lines and still exist today.

Date Released: 2004
Clockspeed: 1.4GHz to 2.3GHz

Did you know?

While Athlon XP processors were rated relative to the Pentium 4 family, Semprons were rated relative to the budget Celerons.

AMD Athlon 64

If you're an AMD loyalist, you may want to skip this section, as it's like remembering an old friend before he was later gunned down. AMD's highest point came with with release of its Athlon 64 series, the first 64-bit processors aimed at mainstream users. While Intel was busy trying to ramp up its NetBurst-based P4 processors, AMD stole the performance crown with a much more efficient architecture and an integrated memory controller.

Not without some intial growing pains, A64 was first made available for Socket 754 motherboards, which lacked dual-channel memory support, and Socket 940, a server-oriented socket requiring buffered RAM. But like a perfect storm, Socket 939 brought with it dual-channel memory support, PCI-E, and a long-term upgrade path that helped cement AMD as the performance leader.

Even though A64 offered native 64-bit support, it was also fully backwards compatible with 32-bit code without any noticeable performance penalty. This was huge for Windows users, who were still living in a 32-bit world (the same holds true today, although 64-bit Vista is lightyears ahead of 64-bit XP).

Date Released: 2004
Clockspeed: 1.0GHz to 3.2GHz

Did you know?

The Athlon 64s have been designed for over five sockets, including the 754, 939, 940, AM2, and Socket F (featuring 1207 pins).

Intel Pentium D

The ill-fated NetBurst architecture made its last stand in Intel's Pentium D brand. Pentium D processors consisted of two single-core CPU dies fused to a multi-chip module. While not as elegant as AMD's dual-core design, the Pentium D offered decent multitasking performance, good overclocking performance, and comparatively low prices. The Pentium D provided a solid alternative to the Intel faithful who refused to invest in AMD.

Date Released: 2005
Clockspeed: 2.66GHz to 3.73GHz

Did you know?

The Pentium D branded 965 chip was Intel's highest clocked CPU at 3.73GHz (which could be overclocked to 4.26GHz), though it technically was a Pentium Extreme Edition CPU.

AMD Athlon 64 X2

Continuing its dominance on the desktop, AMD's Athlon 64 X2 series consisted of two CPU cores on a single die sharing a crossbar that connects them to the integrated memory controller. These internal data links paid huge performance dividends compared to Intel's dual-core configuration, which had each core pushing communication through a shared frontside bus. SSE3 instructions were added to the X2 series, but most importanly, AMD managed to keep the new chip on Socket 939. While not all boards were compatible, many 939 mobos could handle an X2 upgrade with nothing more than a BIOS update, which meant AMD could tap into an existing install based for its new processors.

(Image Credit: Flickr Fr3d.org)

Date Released: 2006
Clockspeed: 1.0GHz to 3.2GHz

Did you know?

The Athlon 64 4000+ was the last single core model in the Athlon 64 series, but single-core Athlons lived on in the FX line.

Intel Core 2

Waking out of its Netburst slumber, Intel took the CPU world by storm with its Core 2 architecture. Instead of remaining fixated on higher clockspeeds, Intel refocused its attention on being more efficient with its pipeline. This meant a return to lower clockspeeds, however it also meant a return to prominence as the performance king. After Prescott failed to live up to its hype, the media remained cautiously optimistic that Core 2 could live up to Intel's promised performance gains, but much to the chagrin of AMD, Core 2 lived up to its billing, and then some.

The first Core 2 Duos burst out of the gates with 167 million transistors, a 65nm manufacturing process, 2MB of L2 cache, and a 1,066MHz frontside bus. Despite debuting at just 1.86GHz and 2.13GHz (E6300 and E6400, respectively), Core 2's performance made it instantly attractive, and Intel's aggressive pricing sealed the deal.

Later on, Core 2 would move to a 45nm manufacturing process with its Penryn revision, pack up to 820 million transistors into a quad-core package, and reach as high as 3.2GHz.

(Image Credit: Flickr BodHack)

Date Released: 2006
Clockspeed: 1.8GHz - 3.2GHz

Did you know?

Intel actually made single-core Core 2 chips for its mobile line, based on the Merom and Penryn designs.

>>Next, what's the difference between a dual-core and a core 2?

Intel Pentium Dual-Core

It might seem strange to resurrect the Pentium name at this stage in the game, but that's exactly what Intel did. Somewhat confusing, the Pentium Dual-Core is based on Intel's Core technology, and not earlier Pentium chips, nor is it a derivative of the Pentium D.

The first Pentium Dual-Core processors took aim at the notebook market before later being ported over to the desktop. These were intended to fill a gap between the Celeron and Core 2 series.

(Image Credit: TomsHardware)

Date Released: 2006
Clockspeed: 1.4GHz - 2.8GHz

Did you know?

"Dual Core" is just another way of referring to any processor package with two physical CPUs, which technically includes the Pentium D.

AMD Phenom

Having given up the performance crown to Intel's Core 2 architecture, AMD's previous success led to optimism that something special was brewing with Barcelona, the codename for what would later be called Phenom. Hype was so high that it may have been impossible to live up to even if Intel never released Core 2, but a delay in Phenom's release would only foreshadow more trouble to come.

When Phenom was finally released, it failed to win back the performance crown, even though Core 2 had been out for a year. Early Phenom revisions also contained a bug, and overclocking efforts were often met with frustration. And if that weren't enough, Intel's Nehalem architecture was just around the corner.

Lest we give the wrong impression, Phenom wasn't (and still isn't) a bad architecture when judged on its own merits. Several SIMD instruction sets were present, including MMX, Enhanced 3DNow!, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, and SSE4a, it contained four cores, and performance overall was very good. It just wasn't on the level of Intel's latest silicon, made even worse (for AMD) by Intel's aggressive pricing strategy.

Date Released: 2007
Clockseepd: 1.8GHz to 3.0GHz

Did you know?

AMD's quad-core Phenoms were the first true monolithic quad-core chips, a feature mirrored in Intel's Core i7 CPUs.

Intel Core i7

If you're an AMD fan, go ahead and cue the Evil Empire music. The Core i7's march onto the desktop has spelled nothing but trouble for AMD, who is still struggling to keep up with Intel's previous generation Core 2 architecture. Meanwhile, Core i7 (formerly known as Nehalem) stands in a league of its own.

Adding insult to injury, Intel borrowed a page from AMD and finally retired the traditional frontside bus in favor of a QuickPath Interconnect, which is Intel's equivalent of AMD's HyperTransport. This point-to-point interconnect allows for much faster communication between the CPU and various subsystems. This has also meant that overclockers have had to 'relearn' how to overclock, which includes learning several new terms.

So far there are just three Core i7 processors available -- Core i7-920, Core i7-940, and Core i7-965 -- each built on a 45nm manufacturing process with 731 million transistors and 8MB of L2 cache.

Date Released: 2008
Clockspeed: 2.66GHz - 3.2GHz

Did you know?

The Core i7 has a 263 mm-squared die size, compared to Core 2's 143 mm-squared die.

AMD Phenom II

Many feel that Phenom II is what the original Phenom should have been all along. With triple the amount of L3 cache (6MB versus 2MB), DDR3 support, and the elimination of the a 'cold bug' that was the bane of extreme overclockers, the Phenom II closed the performance gap between itself and Intel's Core 2 line. The only problem with that is Intel has since moved on to Core i7, which currently is untouchable by the best AMD has to offer.

Unable to compete for the performance crown, AMD has been forced to price its processors well below where it would like. Whereas the Athlon 64 X2 chips had a tendency to run high, AMD's flagship processor today, the Phenom II X4 940, streets for just $215, well below the $1,000 mark that flagship processors typically command.

(Image Credit: Flickr JoongDal)

Date Released: 2008
Clockspeed: 2.5GHz - 3.0Ghz

Did you know?

The tri-core 700 series Phenom IIs are just quad-core chips with one faulty core, which is disabled.

Intel Atom

You may have noticed we left a few mobile-specific processors off our x86 timeline and have instead brought them up where appropriate. But we can't ignore Intel's Atom series, which has been a driving force in the uber-popular netbook (mobile) and nettop (desktop) sectors. Why is this important? Because despite a global economic downturn, worldwide PC sales have remained on an uptick thanks in large part to the explosive growth of netbooks, the vast majority of which sport an Intel Atom processor inside.

On the hardware front, these low-power chips only boast 47 million transistors, 512KB of L2 cache, and a top clockspeed of 1.86GHz. A dual-core variant exists for the desktop, but so far not for mobile PCs.

Date Released: 2008
Clockspeed: 800MHz - 2GHz

Did you know?

Almost 15 million Atom-based netbooks were shipped in 2008, with growth expected in 2009.

VIA Nano

While Intel's Atom series appears to have a death grip on the low-power computing market, don't count VIA out. VIA's Nano line might not enjoy the same level of sales as the Atom, but clock for clock, some benchmarks show the Nano performing better, albeit while also consuming slightly more power.

Available anywhere from 1GHz to 1.8GHz on a 533MHz or 800MHz frontside bus, VIA's Nano includes up to a whopping 1MB of L2 cache. It also supports several instruction sets, including MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, and SSSE3.

Furthing adding to Nano's appeal is the promise of a dual-core variant aimed at netbooks in 2010. Should it beat Intel to the punch -- and all indications suggest it will -- the Nano could prove to be a game changer.

Date Released: 2008
Clockspeed: 1GHz - 1.8GHz

Did you know?

While Atom is built for low power and used specifically for netbooks, the Nano will eventually make its way into small form factor and green desktop PCs.

Socket AM3 Arrives -- AMD Releases Five New CPUs that Support DDR3

Gordon Mah Ung — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 12:00:00 -0600

Who says AMD moves too slowly? Just a month after releasing its well regarded Phenom II mid-range CPUs, the company is back with no fewer than five new P-II chips and its new AM3 socket that support DDR3. We give you the skinny on AMD’s latest quad and tri-cores and help you sort through AMD’s bewildering array of CPU choices.

War. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Well, except when it’s a CPU war. In that case, it’s good for consumers. Really good for us. With the unveiling of five new AMD’s latest Phenom II CPUs supporting DDR3, it’s pretty clear that the CPU war that started with the unveiling of the Phenom II in January is escalating.

AMD’s new lineup includes the 2.6GHz Phenom II X4 for $175, the 2.8GHz Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition at $145, and the 2.6GHz Phenom II X3 710 for $125. AMD’s two other new chips: the 2.6GHz Phenom II X4 910 and the 2.5GHz Phenom II X4 805. The 910 and 805 are OEM only CPUs and pricing was not released but you can expect that gray-markets will carry them and that the prices will follow the numbers. The 805, for example, should be slightly cheaper than the $175 810 and the 910 should be cheaper than the $195 Phenom II X4 920.

Lost in the numbers? So where we. AMD’s lineup is so bewildering to us today that we had build a spread sheet just to sort it out!

There are five prominent things to note with the new CPUs: They all support AM3, the HyperTransport speeds are higher, the L3 cache size is different, the tri-cores are back and the thermals are lower. We’ll address these in order.

AM3 socket

AM3 is AMD’s new socket standard that is built to support DDR3. The good news is that AM3 CPUs feature both DDR2 and DDR3 controllers. This means you can install an AM3 CPU in an AM2+ (and even some AM2) motherboards. You cannot, however, install an AM2+ CPU in an AM3 board. To prevent damage, the AM3 sockets have two fewer pins so you can’t even physically insert an AM2+ CPU in the socket. All Phenom II CPUs except for the two original launch CPUs should be AM3-based.

Can you spot the two fewer pins on the AM3 CPU on the right vs. the AM2+ CPU on the left?

Why didn’t AMD make the two original chips (the Phenom II X4 940 and 920) AM3 too? The company said it wanted to get them out as soon as possible and ditching AM3 support a cut quite a bit of engineering time off. We can understand that but it’s only been a month since the 940 and 920 were unveiled so couldn’t it have waited just a little longer so as not to confuse the hell out f people and piss off 940 and 920 owners? Apparently not. In fact, we’ve been told by AMD officials that the 940 and 920 actually had the AM3 controllers in them but they not turned on. If we ever get the time, we’ll have to snip the pins off a Socket AM2+ 920 and see what happens when it’s inserted into an AM3 motherboard.

HyperTransport Speeds

The newest Phenom II all sport 4GHz HyperTransport speeds. The original Phenom II X4 940 and 920 only ran at 3.6GHz HyperTransport speeds. Why? Again, AMD said it need to cut a few corners to get the 940 and 920 out as soon as possible and limiting the speeds to 3.6GHz help it do that. The company notes that it’s not like the CPUs are saturating the bandwidth anyway so it should have no real impact on performance. We, frankly, haven’t noticed that much of a difference either and we have to note that only the original Phenom X4 9950 and Phenom X4 8850 sported the 4GHz HyperTransport speeds. All others were lower.

If you’re really interested in how AMD’s Phenom’s look from an HT speed context here’s our chart sorted by HyperTransport speeds:

Cache

AMD is now also resorting to smaller cache versions to differentiate its models. This is an old technique long used by Intel and AMD and helps maximize the yields. If a CPU has a bit of defective cache, Intel or AMD turn off that portion and sell it as a lower model which is why these new chips often have the same die size as the larger L2/L3 chips. As the process matures and the yields get good enough that all of the cache is good, the companies have been known to actually produce smaller cache versions to even further maximize the yield. Generally, the largest cache models cost the most. For AMD’s Phenom II lineup, a 9XX denotes the larger 6MB L3, while an 8XX denotes 4MB of L3 cache.

Again, here’s the view of AMD’s Phenom CPUs from an L3 cache perspective:

Tri-cores

Like the cache, AMD is also maximizing its yields by taking quad-core procs that have one bad core and selling them as tri-cores. Initially, enthusiasts scoffed at the idea of a quad-core minus one, but they’ve gradually been accepted. AMD has also had some success by putting the tri-cores against Intel’s dual cores. For the most part, three execution cores will indeed give you better performance in multi-threaded applications and multi-tasking than dual-cores. Here’s a break down of the X3’s by clock speed.

TDP

The final difference with these new chips is the thermal or TDP ratings. The original Phenom II X4 940 and 920 both had enthusiast-class TDP ratings of 125 watts. As more mainstream parts, all five new CPUs run are rated to disperse about 95 watts of heat under full load. It appears that AMD is now pushing 125 watts as its maximum TDP for desktop parts. Only one chip, the original Phenom X4 9950, hits 140 watts. All others are 125 watts or lower. Again, here’s a view from the TDP perspective.

We can’t touch on this CPU launch without tackling the big question: DDR3.

And you can’t tackle DDR3 without openly wondering why the hell is AMD so slow in adopting new memory standards? We find this to be especially ironic because it was AMD that made DDR what it is today.

Years ago, Intel decided that a fast, serialized, memory standard would benefit PCs. The solution to this was Rambus’ Direct RDRAM memory. Intel bet it all on RDRAM and restricted the Pentium 4’s chipsets to Direct RDRAM only. The problem is the RAM maker’s didn’t want RDRAM due to the licensing fees that they would have to pay Rambus. But what could they do if Intel made the CPUs and chipsets for it?

AMD saw it’s opening and led memory makers in a mutiny against Intel by supporting DDR with Athlon. The mutiny was successful, Direct RDRAM was tossed under the bus and Intel embraced DDR with a bear hug. Although we now believe the industry and the media (including Maximum PC) made a mistake by not moving to Direct RDRAM, or at least, something similar to it, DDR was the standard.

So how the hell did AMD turn from the darling of the memory industry into a perceived drag ass? DDR2 was adopted by Intel two years before AMD introduced AM2. And Intel’s DDR3 chipset has been around since late 2007.

We’ve long had a pet theory that moving the memory controller into the CPU has taken some flexibility out of memory choices. The original Athlon 64 was hard wired to only run DDR. Likewise, AM2 Athlon 64s and Phenoms could only run DDR2. AMD’s solution to supporting both DDR2 and DDR3 is to build a memory controller that supports both types of RAM into the AM3 procs.

AMD’s official explanation for its seemingly slow memory updates is that it only adopts new memory standards when its cost effective and when people actually want it. Hence, even with AM3, the company is still pooh poohing DDR3. AMD says it still believes the vast majority would rather have the cost savings of DDR2 over DDR3.

DDR2’s cost performance over DDR3 isn’t what it once was though. A year ago, 2GB of DDR3 would fetch several hundred dollars. Today, you can buy 4GB of Crucial DDR3/1066 for $79. Change your selection to 4GB of Crucial DDR2/800 and it would cost you $38. So DDR2 does cost 100 percent more, but we’re talking 80 bucks here folks for 4GB of RAM.

Finally there’s price.

AMD’s pricing on its CPUs has been a great deal for consumers. It is a bit confusing though. At first glance, you’d think it was 22 CPUs spread out in a price band from $225 to $101. But two of those chips are OEM only. Another four are aimed at servers and media center PCs and another four are for business desktops.

Performance

How we tested

We used an MSI DKA790GX board outfitted with 4GB of Patriot DDR2/1066, a PC Power and Cooling 1200 Watt PSU, a GeForce 8800GTX and 150GB WD Raptor drive to test the three AMD procs. As a comparison, we used a 2.83GHz Core 2 Quad Q9550 in a Gigabyte GA-X48-GQ6 with 4GB of DDR3/1333 with a WD Raptor 150 and GeForce 8800GTX. For the Core i7-920, we used an Intel DX58SO with 3GB of DDR3/1066, GeForce 8800GTX and WD Raptor 150 drive. All configurations used Windows Vista Home Premium in 64-bit flavor.

The results were mostly what we expected. Performance against its sibling, the 3GHz Phenom II X4 940 was what you would think a CPU with 400MHz fewer clock cycles would score. We did see some unexpected results though. The AM3 Phenom II X4 810 part slightly outscored the Phenom II X4 940 in several of the memory benchmarks. We didn’t expect this given that we were running it in the same board with the same RAM and with same RAM speeds and timing set. This is either a hiccup in our test or an errant setting from our earlier test of the 940. We unfortunately didn’t have time to go back and rerun our tests with the 940. It is also possible that AMD has taken the extra few months it had with the newer AM3 parts to tweak the memory controller.

Between the Intel and AMD chips there was no comparison but that’s no surprise. AMD doesn’t expect the 810 to take on the 2.83GHz Core 2 Quad Q9550. Instead, AMD believes the CPU is better matched against the budget 2.33GHz Core 2 Quad Q8200 part. The $163 Q8200 has 2MB less L2 cache than the Q9550 and runs about 500MHz slower. We didn’t have Intel’s ultra budget part handy to test but subtract 500MHz from the Q9550’s scores and take away a small bit for the cache and both parts are likely competitive with each other.

The $284 Core i7-920, of course, is the fastest of the bunch but it’s also more expensive to buy and build a machine around.
Realistically, this comes down to Phenom II vs. Core 2. There, it’s a competitive crowd as Intel has as many or more CPUs than AMD does. There is only one advantage an AMD builder would have over an Intel machine: future upgrades.

Intel is pretty set to push the superior performing Core i7 as the platform of the future and is unlikely to spend the money and engineering to say, qualify a 3.5GHz CPU for the Core 2 platform. AMD, on the other hand, is committed to AM3 for now. That means it’s possible we’ll see a 3.4GHz or 3.6GHz Phenom II down the road. And even if that chip comes out in AM3 the backwards compatibility with AM2+ means those people won’t get left behind either.

While Core 2 Quad certainly has some legs left in it, those with an eye towards future upgrades should look to Core i7 if they want performance. And if they just want a good performing budget chip, AMD’s Phenom II is actually looking like a more stable platform over Core 2 right now. We’re not at all saying that Core 2 is dead, especially since in many ways, it still far outperforms all of AMD’s CPUs, but in six or nine months, Core 2 will feel stale as only Core i7 and Phenom II will get performance upgrades.

The Biggest Technology Flops Of 2008

Justin Kerr — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 12:33:16 -0600

Every year around late December or early January the internet is bombarded with the top “whatever and such and such” of 2008. Here at Maximum PC we stopped to reflect on our favorite gaming moments, and even cracked the lid on the best of open source; but we never took the time to focus on the hilarious technological flops of the year now past. Luckily however, Tom’s Hardware has put together a fairly comprehensive list. Some of which we can agree with, others perhaps worthy of debate. The list includes:

1.) HD DVD
2.) Nvidia’s Mobile GeForce 8400M and 8600M
3.) iPhone Killers
4.) Windows Vista
5.) Mobile Television
6.) OLED Displays
7.) Phenom X3
8.) The Microsoft Yahoo Proposed Merger
9.) GPGPU
10.) Sony Ericsson XPeria X1
11.) HybridPower: Pseudo-Green
12.) Sony Batteries
13.) Fiber Optics
14.) Non-HD DTT
15.) GTA IV For PC

I’m sure we have more then a few readers that will jump to the defense of some of these items such as Windows Vista and perhaps OLED or Fiber, but it’s hard to argue with the bulk of it.

What do you think should be added or subtracted from the list?

AMD Strikes Back with Phenom II -- Full Analysis and First Benchmarks!

Gordon Mah Ung — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 11:00:00 -0600

The production of a sequel typically implies that the original creation is worth revisiting. However, considering that the original Phenom was the hardware version of Ishtar, many enthusiasts didn’t think Phenom deserved to be revisited.

AMD certainly thinks it does—and it hopes Phenom II is Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn to Phenom’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture. And why shouldn’t AMD be able to pull off a reversal of fortune? Phenom II isn’t just Phenom joined by a Roman numeral—it’s a die shrink with a boatload of additional cache and an improved core. In short, AMD hopes to erase memories of the original Phenom and put smiles on the faces of disappointed overclockers with its reimagined Phenom II chip.

Come with us as we review, critique, and dissect Phenom II and find out how it stacks up against a stack of Intel CPUs.

Phenom Reimagined

AMD’s trip back to the drawing board

The Phenom launch certainly didn’t go as AMD had planned. Rather than christening a new line that would change the company’s fortunes, AMD CEO Hector Ruiz broke a bottle of champagne over the bow of a ship that promptly sank under the waves—but only after smashing into a nearby pier with a bait shop and a busload of tourists on it: Phenom was a year late and had a performance-crippling TLB bug, yield issues, and a performance gap with Intel’s older generation of CPUs.

Fast-forward a year and the picture looks far different for the underdog chipmaker. Phenom II is actually ahead of schedule. And doubts about overclocking were quashed months ago when the company invited elite overclockers to its headquarters to get medieval on the new chip with liquid nitrogen and other exotic toys. The result? Overclocking feats beyond 5GHz.

Not to belabor the sequel talk, but it’s clear that AMD doesn’t intend for its pair of new Phenom II chips to be cheesy follow-up. These CPUs are intended to erase all doubts that the original chip created and help quell uneasiness about the company’s ability to make good parts.

The Dynamic Duo

The Phenom II family consists of two CPUs: the 2.8GHz Phenom II X4 920 and the 3GHz Phenom X4 940 Black Edition. Both use the company’s new 45nm process and can be paired with the majority of Socket AM2+ boards (and even some AM2 boards.) Both CPUs are native quad-core designs with all four execution cores residing on a monolithic die. AMD will continue its practice of repackaging defective quad-core dies as tri-cores (denoted with X3 rather than X4).

New under the Hood

For the most part, Phenom II isn’t a radical departure from Phenom. It has the same basic core and still features an integrated memory controller and HyperTransport connections for chip-to-chip connections. The update does include a few substantial changes, however. The biggest is the move to a 45nm process, which significantly shrinks the size of the chip and results in better yields; additionally, the 45nm-based Phenom II has 758 million transistors but is only 258mm2. The original 65nm Phenom has 450 million transistors and measures 285mm2.

By shrinking the die, AMD is able to use some of the freed up real estate for more cache. While the L1 and L2 remain unchanged, the L3 goes from 2MB in Phenom to 6MB in Phenom II. This larger cache is also slightly faster than the 65nm Phenom’s.

In other good news for enthusiasts, the new chip includes both a DDR2 and a DDR3 integrated memory controller. The bad news is that the first two Phenom II chips will support only DDR2; both DDR2 and DDR3 will be supported with its AM3 revision of Phenom II, which will be released in the next few months.

So why release a version of Phenom II that is limited to DDR2? AMD didn’t want to wait the additional months it would have taken to validate the CPUs for both newer DDR3 boards and DDR2 boards. The company felt that to have a Phenom II that runs at decent clock speeds, overclocks like crazy, and drops into existing boards is just a better way to prove its back on track.

More importantly, AMD doesn’t think people are that hot for DDR3 right now due to its premium price. To some extent, AMD is right: Two 2GB modules of DDR2/800 will set you back just $28, while a pair of 2GB DDR3/1333 modules costs about $100. However, true sticker shock sets in at the highest speeds: 4GB of DDR3/1600 costs about $300 and 4GB of DDR3/2000 will set you back about $400.

We would have preferred it if AMD had introduced one CPU that would work with both types of memory, but we understand that due to its position in the market, it simply doesn’t have the luxury of waiting three months to get Phenom II to work with both new DDR3 boards and the older DDR2 infrastructure.

But all you really want to know is whether Phenom II will work with your board, right? Minus the missteps with the original Socket 940 and Socket 754 nonsense (well, and QuadFX), AMD has worked hard to ensure that CPU swapouts won’t cause havoc. Phenom II will work in almost every board that supports the original Phenom CPU, with the only caveat being boards not designed to handle CPUs hotter than 95 watts. Since both Phenom II CPUs are 125 TDP chips, they likely will not work with those boards.

Cooler than Ever

While new manufacturing doesn’t always lead to more efficient parts, this die shrink certainly seems to have helped AMD with thermals. For example, the 65nm-based 2.6GHz Phenom X4 9950 BE had a thermal design power rating of 140 watts, while the 45nm-based 3GHz Phenom II X4 940 has a TDP of 125 watts.

AMD also seems to have finally shed the “cold bug” that frustrated extreme overclockers. The original Phenom would overclock to a certain level on air, but when extreme cooling techniques were applied, it wouldn’t overclock any further. While cold temperatures aren’t a cure-all, most CPUs offer additional headroom at -150 F. But the original Phenom simply hit a wall and no amount of cooling would allow for additional overclocking. AMD set out to prove it fixed this issue in Phenom II by hosting private demos for a group of extremes overclockers. Apparently, no one left the demo unhappy.

Platform Shmatform

Every PC is essentially a CPU, a chipset, a GPU, and storage, so you may be confused when you hear the word “platform” thrown around like it’s some new type of technology. It’s not. It’s an artificial way Intel and AMD brand a set of components. For Intel, Centrino is simply the combination of the CPU, chipset, and a Wi-Fi chip. Laptops sold without those three key Intel ingredients are not allowed to use the Centrino sticker. Since Intel advertises the hell out of Centrino, not Core 2 Duo Mobile, most OEMs feel compelled to buy all three parts from Intel.

AMD is not being as Machiavellian with its platform (at least not today), but it is doing some branding around a Dragon theme. Dragon is a combination of the Phenom II, an ATI 790GX or ATI 790FX chipset, and a 4000-series Radeon HD GPU. Does this mean that you can’t use a GeForce GTX 295 with Phenom II? No. Everything is as it was before—you can probably even use the Phenom II 940 in some older AM2 boards with the original Nvidia 590 SLI chipset.

So why bother to push all this platform hooey? Today, it’s just a marketing gimmick, but tomorrow it may be far more meaningful. With the functionality of the chipset, CPU, and GPU morphing together, this collection of hardware may indeed be a platform that you buy in a few years. That’s one thing AMD likes to toot its horn about: Intel has CPUs and chipsets and Nvidia has GPUs and chipsets, but only AMD has all three ingredients.

Price Matters

CPU companies like to use mysterious model numbers that don’t tell you a damn thing about how their chips actually perform. One quick and dirty way to see what the company thinks of a particular chip is to look at its price. AMD’s pricing of Phenom II reveals where the company thinks the CPU will compete. For example, the current king of the hill, the Core i7-965 Extreme Edition, is priced at $999. AMD has priced the Phenom II X4 940 at $275, so you can see where the company expects the CPU to fall—it’s clearly not intended to take on Intel at the high end. AMD, however, thinks there’s plenty of room to compete in the midrange against Intel’s large stable of Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad parts.

We put the top-end Phenom II X4 940 against Intel’s top-end Core i7 part, the still-shipping top-end Core 2 Extreme Edition part, as well as a lineup of budget Intel and AMD CPUs. The upshot is that AMD fans can take Phenom II as a sign that the company has some magic left. While Phenom was Detroit Lions bad, Phenom II is maybe Oakland Raiders or Green Bay Packers bad. Yeah, it was an ugly season, but you can tell the team is on the right track.

Our Testing Method

For our Phenom II showdown, we used a 3GHz Phenom II X4 940 BE on an MSI DKA790GX board. AMD partisans pitched a fit when we conducted our Core i7 tests with the AMD Phenom X4 9950 BE using “just” DDR2/800 RAM—they believed it was a travesty that we didn’t run DDR2/1066. Truth is, the performance difference between DDR2/800 to DDR2/1066 is minimal. In fact, after we published our Core i7 tests we spoke with AMD representatives, who agreed that the small difference in memory bandwidth had virtually no impact on the beatdown Core i7 gave Phenom.

To keep the peanut gallery happy, we tested the Phenom II X4 940 BE with 4GB of DDR2/1066. For comparison, we used a 3.2GHz Core i7-965 Extreme Edition and a 3.2GHz Core 2 Extreme Edition QX9770. We downclocked these parts to simulate the performance of a 2.66GHz Core i7-920 and a 2.83GHz Core 2 Quad Q9550, respectively. We also included the 2.6GHz Phenom 9950 X4 BE in our tests.

For all the test runs, we used the same GeForce 8800 GTX card and Western Digital Raptor 150 hard drive. The Core 2, Phenom and Phenom II rigs featured 4GB of RAM, while the Core i7 machines had just 3GB of RAM. All tests were conducted using the 64-bit version of Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium.

Our benchmarks reflect various levels of multithread rendering, video editing, encoding, and 3D rendering. Nvidia likes to say that quad-core CPUs are unimportant, but we’re finding a very strong and fast move by application vendors to support quad core where it’s needed. We didn’t feature any dual cores in our tests because they simply can’t compete against these opponents. However, the majority of today’s games exploit two cores at best, so to eliminate graphics as a bottleneck, we ran all of the games at very low resolutions, with all the eye candy turned off. We also ran a set of synthetic memory and scientific and application workload tests to get a balanced picture of how well these quad-cores perform.

Analysis

If you’re an AMD fanboy expecting Phenom II to put its bootprint on the hind end of Core i7—any Core i7—prepare to be disappointed. The slowest 2.66GHz Core i7 920 beat the Phenom II by double digits in most of our tests. We saw differences from 11 percent to 27 percent in encoding, and in our WinRar test, the Core i7-920 was 35 percent faster. It wasn’t all bad news for Phenom II though. The chip won the ScienceMark 2.0, Quake 4, and PC Mark Vantage tests and eked out a win in the Valve map compilation test. However, we’re still calling this competition for the i7 920. Of course, the 920’s big brother, the 965 Extreme Edition, completely walked away from the Phenom II. AMD, however, isn’t concerned that its $275 chip can’t beat a $999 one—the company isn’t competing at the top end of the market. And even though the 920 is about $300, the price of a new i7 motherboard ($250) and three pieces of required DDR3 ($150) nullifies any performance benefit the i7 has, AMD claims.

AMD is far more interested in how Phenom II does against a Core 2 Quad. The Phenom II actually outscored the Core 2 Quad in our MainConcept encoding test, our ProShow Producer slideshow creation test, and Quake 4, and it just about broke even in our WinRar file compression test. The Core 2 Quad hit back in both 3DMark tests, Premiere Pro CS3, Photoshop CS3, and both of our Valve multithreading tests. Although the Phenom has a 167MHz advantage, we’d have to call this one a tie.

This again comes down to perspective. Intel fanboys can say, “Been there, done that” since AMD’s best CPU just barely pulls even with a chip family Intel introduced more than a year ago. But from AMD’s perspective, the Phenom II is a big deal. With a down economy, the company believes that people will be looking for performance on a budget, and if Phenom II supplies that without the need for a pricey new motherboard, it’s won half the battle.

Benchmarks
Model	3GHz Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition	2.6GHzPhenom X4 9950 Black Edition	2.83GHz Core 2 Quad Q9550	2.67GHz Core i7-920	2.93GHz Core i7-940	3.2GHz Core i7-965 Extreme	3.2GHz Core 2 Extreme QX9770
MainConcept (min:sec)	1,569	1,867	1,660	1,300	1,190	958	1,489
MainConcept Pro (min:sec)	942	1124	988	741	679	608	889
ProShow Producer 3.1 (min:sec)	802	1210	918	670	616	619	772
Premiere Pro CS3 (min:sec)	841	987	771	759	701	617	686
Photoshop CS3 (min:sec)	142	168	124	125	123	110	115
Cinebench 10 32-bit	99,791	8,179	10,837	12,632	13,793	15,398	12,175
Cinebench 10 64-bit	12,049	10,431	12,288	15,217	16,651	18,963	13,849
Valve Map Compilation (min:sec)	143	167	130	152	141	125	116
ScienceMark Overall	1,903	1609	1,,716	1,710	1,885	2,091	1,920
ScienceMark Membench	9,198	7,279	7,105	12,737	13,028	13,312	8,560
PCMark Vantage x64 Overall	6,447	5,724	5,945	6,616	6,767	7,510	6,423
PCMark Vantage Overall	6,085	5,299	5,460	5,347	6,043	6,705	5,961
Sisoft Sandra RAM Bandwidth (GB/s)	11.69	9.73	6.9	18.07	18.09	18.15	7.4
Sisoft Sandra RAM Latency (ns)	97	95	81	79	78	77	79
Everest Ultimate MEM Read (MB)	7,716	6,701	8,006	14,449	14,841	15,167	8,252
Everest Ultimate MEM Write (MB)	6,085	4,856	7,075	11,627	14,788	12,041	8,490
Everest Ultimate MEM Copy (MB)	9,734	7,760	7,334	15,039	15,011	15,583	8,426
Everest Ultimate MEM Latency (ns)	59	65	66	39	37	39	67
WinRAR 3.80 (min:sec) *	882	1091	888	652	645	584	837
POV-Ray 3.7 (min:sec)	570	712	548	498	462	408	488
3DMark06 overall	12,018	11,639	12,583	12,407	12,559	12,859	12,906
3DMark06 CPU	4,116	3,532	4,276	4,620	5,035	5,638	4,717
3DMark Vantage	6,928	7,301	7,459	7,450	7,453	7,516	7,588
3DMark Vantage CPU	20,207	26,709	30,615	34,909	35,548	39,725	32,446
3DMark Vantage GPU	5,524	5,877	6,034	5,902	5,868	5,917	6,044
Quake 4 (FPS)	190	152	180	145	156	228	207
Valve Particle Test (FPS)	85	69	100	131	143	161	111
Crysis 1.2 10x7 very low CPU1(FPS)	140	112	153	151	155	164	153
Crysis 1.2 10x7 very low CPU2 (FPS)	85	70	95	113	115	106	113
World In Conflict 1.09 10x7 Very Low Graphics	170	136	188	223	232	250	220

Bold denotes winner.

AMD, Intel CPUs Compared
Model	AMD Phenom II X4 940	AMD Phenom II X4 920	AMD Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition	AMD Phenom X3 8750	Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550	Intel Core 2 QX9770 Extreme Edition	Intel Core i7-965 Extreme Edition	Intel Core i7-920
Clock Speed	3GHz	2.8GHz	2.6GHz	2.4GHz	2.83GHz	3.2GHz	3.2GHz	2.66GHz
L1 Cache (total)	512KB	512KB	512KB	284KB	256KB	256KB	256KB	256KB
L2 Cache (total)	2MB	2MB	2MB	1.5MB	12MB	12MB	1MB	1MB
L3 Cache (total)	6MB	6MB	2MB	2MB	N/A	N/A	8MB	8MB
Front-Side Bus / Interconnect Speed	3.6GHz	3.6GHz	3.6GHz	3.6GHz	1,333MHz	1,600MHz	6.4GT	4.8GT
Execution Cores	4	4	4	3	4	4	8*1	8*1
Process Technology	45nm	45nm	65nm	65nm	45nm	45nm	45nm	45nm
Transistors	758	758	450	450	820	820	731	731
Die Size	258	258	285	285	214	214	263	263
Wholesale Price	$275	$235	$174	$124	$316	$1,399	$999	$284
Interface	AM2+	AM2+	AM2+/Am2	AM2+/AM2	LGA775	LGA775	LGA1366	LGA1366
TDP*2	125	125	140	140	95	136	130	130
Memory Support	Dual- Channel DDR2/ DDR3*3	Dual- Channel DDR2/ DDR3*3	Dual- Channel DDR2	Dual- Channel DDR2	Dual- Channel DDR2/ DDR3*4	Dual- Channel DDR2/ DDR3*4	Tri- Channel DDR3	Tri- Channel DDR3

*1 CPU features Hyper-Threading virtual cores.
*2 AMD and Intel TDP ratings do not directly correspond
*3 DDR3 supported in core but not in any shipping motherboards presently
*4 Dependent on chipset

How the Mobos and CPUs Match up

Anyone who has tried to use a Nikon teleconverter and lens from 30 years ago with a brand-new digital SLR will tell you that compatibility doesn’t always mean easy to understand. That is, trying to figure out which 30-year-old lens works with which camera is enough to make you want to buy a modern lens.

The same can be said of AMD’s AM2, AM2+, and upcoming AM3 sockets. Physically, the various CPUs will fit in the sockets but electrically they won’t all work. For example, the 2.8GHz Phenom II X4 920 has a DDR3 and DDR2 controller in it. However, plug the CPU into an AM3 board in a few months and it won’t work. For that, you’ll need a new AM3 CPU. That new AM3 CPU, by the way, will actually work in most DDR2-based AM2+.

Thoroughly confused yet? We are. As grateful as we are that AMD isn’t forcing its customers to buy new boards, the AM2, AM2+, and AM3 thing has thrown for a loop. Here’s how it breaks down:

AMD, Intel CPUs Compared
	AM2 MOBO	AM2+ MOBO	AM3 MOBO
AM2 CPU	Yes	Yes	No
AM2+ CPU	Maybe	Yes	No
AM3 CPU	Maybe	Yes	Yes

Intel Hopes You’re Ready for Eight Cores

AMD may be gaining ground, but that’s not holding back Intel, which will waste no time this year with a new octo-core CPU, a true budget series CPU, and major changes to the world of chipsets and graphics.

Multithread enthusiasts should be pleased with Intel’s plans for Nehalem. Although nothing is set in stone, the company is reportedly bringing out a desktop CPU with eight cores. With Hyper-Threading, 16 cores would be available to applications. This thread-monster would be confined to the LGA1366 platform though and aimed at the highest end of enthusiasts.

Later this year, Intel will also introduce its budget LGA1156 processors. Previously known as LGA1160, the chip will feature four fewer pins and one big addition. While in today’s computers the PCI Express lanes are controlled by the chipset, Intel’s budget quad-core Lynnfield and dual-core Havendale will have PCI Express built directly into the CPU package. A simple Direct Media Interface link will plumb out of the CPU to connect to the lowly SATA, audio, and other low-bandwidth I/O. Both Lynnfield and Havendale will feature dual-channel DDR3 controllers in the die, but Havendale may have the most impact. Havendale should be Intel’s first attempt at integrating graphics within the CPU package on a shipping processor. With a GPU talking to the CPU at QPI speeds and with direct access to an on-die memory controller, the impact of Havendale may have far more repercussions on the PC world than an eight-core Nehalem. We’ll be happy if it just means that Intel graphics won’t suck.

How to Tell the Difference Between the Top Procs

Intel’s quad-core Penryn Core 2 Quad is the only chip here that doesn’t use a monolithic design. Instead, these are two separate dual-core CPUs connected via the front-side bus. Note the massive chunks of L2 cache at the bottom of the chip. This L2 cache has helped lessen the advantage that AMD’s previous CPUs had in memory performance.

Intel’s Core i7 is actually lower in total transistor count than the Core 2 Quad and Phenom II but is second only to the honking-big Phenom in die size. Intel’s first monolithic quad-core has been criticized for having meager L2 cache, but it hasn’t hurt the CPU from being the fastest gun in the west.

The original Phenom’s 65nm-process made it a huge chip with just 450 million transistors occupying a full 285mm2 of die space. AMD now admits that it was a mistake to push for a monolithic quad-core design using a 65nm process as this chip ran hot and had terrible yields.

Since it’s mostly a die shrink, Phenom II is actually very similar to the Phenom die. Overlay the Phenom’s die shot with the Phenom, and you’ll see a lot of familiar structures between the two with the major difference being the size of Phenom II and the additional fields of L3 cache near the bottom of the die.

2009 Technology Watch List

The Maximum PC Staff — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 15:00:00 -0600

We know, you just got your rig right where you want it, complete with a primo CPU, a kick-ass videocard config, and seemingly limitless storage. So forgive us if we dangle the temptation of better, faster hardware in front of your face. We’re just doing our job. Over the last few weeks, we’ve been grilling our industry contacts for news of what computing delights await power users in the months and years to come. And delightful the future is: CPUs with eight cores, GPUs that run games as a pastime, mobos with both SLI and CrossFire support, and hard drives so large your data will feel puny and inadequate. And that’s just part of it.

Look at it this way: Our 2009 technology preview gives you advance warning about the hardware that will soon occupy your dreams, so you can start saving your pennies and plotting your next upgrade path today.

[ Editor's Note: This feature originally ran in our December 2008 issue. The Intel Core i7 section has been expanded and incorporated into our full review, which you can find here. ]

CPUs

Intel takes a bold approach to processor architecture, multi-core computing

As a buttoned-down company, Intel rarely likes to make sweeping changes, but its upcoming Core i7 CPU is a major break from the past. Gone is the ancient front-side bus that connects all of the current-gen CPU cores. Instead, cores will communicate via a high-speed crossbar switch, and different CPUs will communicate via a high-speed interconnect.

Also on the outs is the need for an external memory controller. Intel, which has relied on gluing two dual-core chips together under the heat spreader to make its quad-core CPUs, is now placing all four cores on a single die.

Even overclocking, which was once verboten to even talk about within 10 miles of Intel’s HQ, is now automatically supported. Intrigued? You should be. Intel’s Core i7 is the most radical new design the company has taken in decades.

An Inside Job

One of Core i7’s most significant changes is the inclusion of an integrated memory controller. Instead of memory accesses going from the CPU across a relatively slow front-side bus to the motherboard chipset and finally to the RAM, an IMC will eliminate the need for a front-side bus and external memory controller. The result is dramatically lower latency than was found in the Core 2 and Pentium 4 CPUs.

Why can’t the memory controller on the motherboard simply be pushed to higher speeds to match an IMC? Remember, when you’re talking about a memory controller residing directly in the core, the signals have to travel mere millimeters across silicon that’s running at several gigahertz. With an external design, the signals have to travel out of the CPU to a memory controller in the chipset an inch or so away. It’s not just distance, either—the data is traveling across a PCB at far, far slower speeds than it would if it were within the CPU. In essence, it’s like having to go from an interstate to an unpaved, bumpy road.

Of course, if you’re an AMD loyalist, you’re probably bristling at the thought of Intel calling an IMC an innovation. After all, AMD did it first. So doesn’t that make AMD the pioneer? We asked Intel the same question. The company’s response: One: An IMC isn’t an AMD invention and, in fact, Intel had both an IMC and graphics core planned for its never-released Timna CPU years before the Athlon 64. Two: If AMD’s IMC design is so great, why does the Core 2 so thoroughly trash it with an external controller design? In short, Intel’s message to the AMD fanboys is nyah, nyah!

Naturally, you’re probably wondering why Intel thinks it needs an IMC now. Intel says the more efficient, faster execution engine of the Core i7 chip benefits from the internal controller more than previous designs. The new design demands boatloads of bandwidth and low latency to keep it from starving as it waits for data.

Memory A Trois

The Core i7 CPU is designed to be a very wide chip capable of executing instructions with far more parallelism than previous designs. But keeping the chip fed requires tons of bandwidth. To achieve that goal, the top-end Core i7 CPUs will feature an integrated tri-channel DDR3 controller. Just as you had to populate both independent channels in a dual-channel motherboard, you’ll have to run three sticks of memory to give the chip the most bandwidth possible. This does present some problems for board vendors though, as standard consumer mobos have limited real estate. Most performance boards will feature six memory slots jammed onto the PCB, but some will feature only four. On these four-slot boards, you’ll plug in three sticks of RAM and use the fourth only if you absolutely have to, as populating the last slot will actually reduce the bandwidth of the system. Intel, in fact, recommends the fourth slot only for people who need more RAM than bandwidth. With three 2GB DIMMs, though, most enthusiast systems will feature 6GB of RAM as standard.

Although it may change, Core i7 will support DDR3/1066, with higher unofficial speeds supported through overclocking. Folks hoping to reuse DDR2 RAM with Intel’s budget chips next year can forget about it. Intel has no plans to support DDR2 with a Core i7 chip at this point, and with DDR3 prices getting far friendlier to the wallet, we don’t expect the company to change its mind.

Hyper-Threading Revisited

A CPU core can execute only one instruction thread at a time. Since that thread will touch on only some portions of the CPU, resources that are not used sit idle. To address that, Intel introduced consumers to Hyper-Threading with its 3.06GHz Pentium 4 chip. Hyper-Threading, more commonly called simultaneous multi-threading, partitioned the CPU’s resources so that multiple threads could be executed simultaneously. In essence, a single-core Pentium 4 appeared as two CPUs to the OS. Because it was actually just one core dividing its resources, you didn’t get the same performance boost you would receive from adding a second core, but Hyper-Threading did generally smooth out multitasking, and in applications that were optimized for multi-threading, you would see a modest performance advantage. The problem was that very few applications were coded for Hyper-Threading when it was released and performance could actually be hindered. Hyper-Threading went away with the Core 2 series of CPUs, but Intel has dusted off the concept for the new Core i7 series because the transistor cost is minimal and the performance benefits stand to be far better than what the Pentium 4 could ever achieve.

Intel toyed with the idea of redubbing the feature Hyper-Threading 2 but decided against it, as the essential technology is unchanged. So why should we expect Hyper-Threading to be more successful this go around? Intel says it’s due to Core i7’s huge advantage over the Pentium 4 in bandwidth, parallelism, cache sizes, and performance. Depending on the application, the company says you can expect from 10 to 30 percent more performance with Hyper-Threading enabled. Still, Intel doesn’t force it down your throat because it knows many people still have mixed feelings about the feature. The company recommends that you give it a spin with your apps. If you don’t like it, you can just switch it off in the BIOS. Intel’s pretty confident, however, that you’ll leave it on.

Tomorrow's Performance Today

You can’t recompile the world. That’s the lesson Intel learned with the Pentium 4, which kicked ass with optimized code but ran like a Yugo with legacy apps. And even with Intel’s nearly limitless resources, it couldn’t get every developer to update software for the P4.

Intel took those lessons to heart with the stellar Core 2 and continues in that vein with Core i7, which is designed to run even existing code faster. That’s largely due to the Hyper-Threading, massive bandwidth, and low latency in the new chip, but other touches also help.

Loop conditions are common programming techniques that repeat the same task in a CPU. With Core i7, an improved loop detector routine will save power and boost performance by detecting larger loops and caching what the program asks for. Intel also polished its branch prediction algorithms. Branch predictions are those yes/no questions a CPU faces. If the CPU guesses wrong on what the program wants, the assembly-line-like pipeline inside the CPU must be cleared and the process started anew. New SSE4.2 instructions also make their way into Core i7, but they will be of little benefit to desktop users. Since Intel is designing the chip for server use as well, the new instructions are mainly to help speed up supercomputing and server-oriented workloads.

The main takeaway is that while some of the changes are radical, Intel is being pragmatic with its chip design—you won’t have to go out and buy new software to experience the CPU’s performance potential.

Making Better Connections

With a Hyper-Threaded quad core, even enthusiasts are unlikely to see the need for a multi-processor machine; nevertheless, one of the new features in Core i7 directly addresses a weakness in Intel’s current lineup when it comes to multi-CPU machines. As you know, Intel currently uses a front-side-bus technology to tie its multiprocessor machines together. As you might imagine, problems arise when a single front-side bus is sharing two quad-core CPUs. With so many cores churning so much data, the front-side bus can become gridlocked. Intel “fixed” this issue by building chipsets with two front-side buses. But what happens when you have a machine with four or eight CPUs? Since Intel couldn’t keep adding front-side buses, it took another page from AMD’s playbook by building in direct point-to-point connections over what it calls a Quick Path Interconnect. Server versions of Core i7 feature two QPI connections (desktop versions get just one), which can each talk at about 25GB/s, or double what a 1,600MHz front-side bus can achieve. AMD fans, of course, will point out that the fastest iteration of AMD’s chip-to-chip conduit, dubbed HyperTransport 3.1, is twice as fast as the current QPI.

QPI combined with the on-die memory controller will also make an Intel server or workstation a NUMA, or non-uniform memory access, design. Since each CPU has a direct link to its own individual memory DIMM, what happens if CPU 1 needs to access something that’s stored in the RAM being controlled by CPU 2? In this case, it must use the QPI link to access the second CPU’s memory controller to the RAM to get the data. This will slow things down a bit, but Intel says its tests indicate that even given this scenario, the memory access is still faster than what is possible with the current front-side-bus multiprocessor design.

The Power Within

It’s a known fact that overclocking can decrease the life of your CPU; thus, Intel has always discouraged end-users from overclocking its CPUs. With Core i7, Intel reverses its stance and actually overclocks the CPU for you! Of course, Intel would not describe its Turbo mode as overclocking, and, technically, it isn’t. While pushing your 2.66GHz Core 2 Quad to 3.2GHz would likely strain its thermal and voltage specs, the new Core i7 CPUs feature an internal power control unit that closely monitors the power and thermals of the individual cores.

This wouldn’t help by itself, though. Intel designed the Core i7 to be very aggressive in power management. With the previous Core 2, power to the CPU could be lowered only so far before the chip would crash. That’s because while you can cut power to large sections of the execution core, the cache can tolerate only so much decrease in power before blowing up. With Core i7, Intel separates the power circuit, so the cache can be run independently. This lets Intel cut power consumption and thermal output even further than before. Furthermore, while the Core 2 CPUs required that all the cores were idle to reduce voltage, with Core i7, individual cores can be turned off if they’re not in use.

Turbo mode exploits the power savings by letting an individual core run at increased frequencies if needed. This again follows Intel’s mantra of improving performance on today’s applications. Since a majority of today’s applications are not threaded to take full advantage of a quad core with Hyper-Threading, Turbo mode’s “overclocking” will make these applications run faster. For more information on how you’ll set up Turbo mode, read our sidebar below.

New Socket On The Block

So all this CPU goodness and performance will drop right into that $450 LGA775 board you just bought, right? Of course not. Ung’s Law dictates that the minute you buy expensive hardware, something better will arrive that makes what you just bought obsolete.

Intel isn’t doing this just to piss people off (although a history of such behavior has had that result). Since Core i7 moves the memory controller directly into the CPU, Intel added a load of pins that go directly to the memory modules. The new standard bearer for performance boxes is the LGA1366 socket. It looks functionally similar to the LGA775, with the obvious addition of more pins. More pins also means a bigger socket, which means your fancy heatsink is also likely headed to the recycle bin. LGA1366 boards space the heatsink mounts just a tad bit wider, just enough to make your current heatsink incompatible. There’s a chance that some third-party heatsink makers will offer updated mounts to make your current heatsink work, but that’s not known yet.

What will be interesting to heatsink aficionados is Intel’s encouragement that vendors rate the heatsinks using a unified thermal rating that will be tied to the Turbo mode settings. For more information, see the Turbo mode sidebar below.

The Second Coming

Intel is adopting more than just AMD’s integrated memory controller with its new Core i7 chips; it’s also adopting AMD’s abandoned Socket 940/754 two-socket philosophy. For the high end, the LGA1366 socket will offer tri-channel RAM and a high-performance QPI interface. For mainstream users, Intel will offer a dual-channel DDR3 design built around a new LGA1066 socket late next year. LGA1066 isn’t just about shedding one channel of DDR3 though; LGA1066-based CPUs will also bring direct-attach PCI Express to the table.

Instead of PCI Express running through the chipset, as it does with existing Core 2 and the new performance Core i7, PCI-E will reside on the die of LGA1066 CPUs. With the PCI-E in the CPU itself, Intel will reuse its fairly slow DMI interface to connect the CPU to a single-chip south bridge. The two chips Intel will introduce are the quad-core Lynnfield and the dual-core Havendale. Havendale CPUs will actually feature a newly designed graphics core inside the heat spreader that will talk to the CPU core via a high-speed QPI interface. Both chips will feature Hyper-Threading on all cores.

Many AMD users got a royal screwing when the company abandoned both Socket 940 and Socket 754 for a unified Socket 939; could Intel do something similar? We asked Intel point blank whether LGA1366 would eventually be abandoned for LGA1066; the company told us it fully intends to support both platforms.

Intel’s Turbo Mode Technology

Turbo mode might sound like a feature left over from the TV series Knight Rider, but it’s more neat than cheesy. You already know that Core i7 CPUs closely monitor the power and thermals of the chip and use any leftover headroom to overclock the individual cores as needed. But just how does it work?

From what we’ve surmised by examining an early BIOS, you will be able to set each type of core scenario based on how far you want to overclock, given the load. For example, with applications that push one thread, you could set the BIOS to overclock, or rather, turbo that single core by perhaps three multipliers over stock. You would do the same for two-, three-, and four-core scenarios.

The BIOS will also take into account the thermal rating, or TDP, of the cooling system you’re using. If you’re using, say, a heatsink rated for 150 TDP, the BIOS will overclock to higher levels than it would with a 130 TDP unit. You would manually set the heatsink’s rating in the BIOS, as there’s no way for the heatsink to communicate with the motherboard directly.

AMD: The Road Ahead

Company Says 45nm Process Is Ahead Of Schedule

It’s been a long two years for AMD. After a ton of trash-talking, its Phenom CPUs failed to impress anyone. The integrated memory controller, the chip-to-chip interconnects, and the native quad-core design all added up to a high-end CPU that was maybe on par with Intel’s slowest quad-core chip. It didn’t help that an esoteric bug plagued Phenom’s launch and left lingering doubts about the CPU.

Next year will be different, the company pledges.

AMD has long acknowledged that one of its mistakes was trying to make a native quad-core design using a 65nm process. The chips proved to be too big and the yields too low. The yields were initially poor enough that the company began taking defective quad-core dies and selling them as tri cores.

With that in mind, AMD has been feverishly working to get its 45nm process online. The good news is that it’s ahead of schedule. AMD says it expects to have 45nm-based CPUs by the end of this year, not well into next year as expected. All indications are that AMD will release 45nm-based Phenoms by late this year with clock speeds finally ramping up to the 3GHz range—a speed Intel pierced more than a year ago.

The bad news is that even a 3GHz die-shrunk Phenom may not be enough to go head-to-head with Intel’s Core i7 in performance. For that, it’ll likely take the company’s Shanghai core, which is on tap for 2009. AMD is playing it much closer to the vest, but the quad-core Shanghai will be followed by a six-core Istanbul CPU at the end of next year. By 2010, AMD expects to have its Magny-Cours chip out with 12 cores in the CPU. Right now, AMD is mainly concentrating on the one bright spot on its roadmap: multi-CPU systems, where its chip-to-chip design makes these configs competitive with Intel’s CPUs.

One thing is clear, with rumors continuing to swirl that AMD is short on cash and may sell off its fabs, the company—which has already seen its fair share of adversity—is facing one of its most trying times.

Graphics

Larrabee will loom but not make an impact in ’09

It’s been a long time since a new vendor entered the 3D graphics market, but that’s exactly what Intel plans to do late in

2009 with Larrabee. Unlike previous videocards from Intel, which used traditional 3D pipelines, fairly standard x86 cores will power Larrabee.

Larrabee will include many x86 cores, but the cores in Larrabee processors will be greatly simplified compared to a modern Core 2 proc. Larrabee CPUs will be based on the Pentium P54C design, updated to include modern features, such as 64-bit support and the inclusion of traditional GPU hardware in the form of texture filtering units. Additionally, Larrabee will feature cache coherency between the many x86 cores, which means that all of the cores will have access to the same high-speed cache, and thus, memory. This is a common feature in monolithic CPU cores, like the AMD Phenom and upcoming Intel Core i7, but it isn’t typically a GPU feature. Cache coherency should give Larrabee a significant advantage over more traditional architectures when it comes to running general-purpose computing applications on the GPU.

So should you start saving your pennies for a Larrabee-powered GPU in 2009? Not yet. We expect that Larrabee will launch in late ’09 with parts targeted at the server community for render farms and scientific applications, followed by mainstream parts designed to upgrade low-end machines that would typically sport integrated graphics. For 2009, at least, Nvidia’s GT 200 and ATI’s RV770 cores (which power the existing GeForce GTX 280 and Radeon 4870 HD, respectively) will remain the top dogs in graphics.

So what exactly is upcoming from ATI and Nvidia? ATI will roll out a slew of parts across all prices based on modified versions of the RV770. The current rumor is that Nvidia will launch a modified version of the GT 200 sometime next year, tweaked to reduce power consumption and die size, that’s more suitable for lower-end parts, as well as dual-GPU cards similar to ATI’s Radeon 4870 X2 boards.

GPUs For General-Purpose Computing

We’ve heard a lot of buzz from Nvidia and ATI about GPUs being used for general-purpose computing, but to date, only a small number of applications actually harness this power: a couple of Folding@Home clients, a video encoder or two, and a whole host of scientific and video-rendering apps that don’t really apply to normal users. Right now, GPU-based computing is essentially a promising science fair project—at least as far as Maximum PC readers are concerned.

In 2009, we expect that to start to change. A host of mainstream apps, including Photoshop CS4, are slated to launch that will impact the scene in a big way. By treating the photos you’re editing as 3D textures, Photoshop is able to take advantage of the astounding performance packed into a modern GPU. What’s the end-user benefit? Lightning-fast zooms, resizes, and scrolling, and that’s just the beginning. And although the first round of video encoders failed to deliver acceptable visual quality at better-than-CPU speeds, we expect to see rapid improvement in visual quality as the GPU-powered encoders mature.

However, we don’t expect to see any massive increase in these GPU-accelerated apps until there’s a common API that lets software vendors write GPU-accelerated programs for Nvidia, ATI, and Intel GPUs. (Right now, apps must be specifically coded for either ATI or Nvidia GPUs.) Both Microsoft and Apple have APIs in the works that will compete to become the final unified standard, but today there’s no way of knowing which will win.

Next up: Motherboard Chipsets, Hard Drives, USB 3.0, and the next PCI-E

Motherboard Chipsets

Bye Bye, North Bridge

It used to be that the CPU north bridge was the star of the core-logic chipset world. With its jurisdiction over RAM, the north bridge’s speed had a significant impact on performance.

But with AMD and now Intel integrating the memory controller into the CPU, the north bridge’s importance just got a whole lot smaller. That’s not to say it doesn’t still have some use. The north bridge contains the circuitry connecting the motherboard to the graphics cards, and the south bridge as well; in integrated graphics boards, the north bridge also contains a GPU core.

Next year, however, the north bridge’s role will be further diminished. AMD is expected to integrate a GPU into the core of its CPUs due next year, and Intel will move graphics and direct-attach PCI-E into the CPU. That pretty much means the end of the north bridge as we’ve known it all these years.

SLI For All

Next year, we’ll get something we’ve long pined for: the ability to run both CrossFire and SLI on a motherboard without the need for extra hardware. The change comes from Nvidia’s flip-flop regarding SLI support on motherboards that use Intel’s X58 chipset. Originally, Nvidia said it would allow SLI only if motherboard vendors integrated a pricey and hot nForce 200 chip into the PCB to “enable” SLI. When board vendors balked, Nvidia decided to enable SLI on X58 boards the company has “certified” for SLI use. The company says that an nForce 200 chip is still recommended for best performance in configs consisting of more than two cards, but not required.

End Of nForce?

With VIA officially calling it quits, Nvidia is the only third-party chipset vendor still shooting live rounds. But what about in 2009? On Intel, it’s open for debate. Nvidia has said it believes it has a license to build chipsets for Core i7, but Intel has said that’s not quite true. One thing is certain: Nvidia will not have a chipset for the LGA1366-based Core i7 CPU at all, but the company is planning one for LGA1066 CPUs when they’re released later next year. Unfortunately, it’s not clear whether Nvidia can do this without a lawsuit from Intel—and with graphics and PCI-E integration slated for Intel’s LGA1066 CPUs, what would even be the point?

Hard Drives

Perpendicular And Patterned-Recording Technologies Will Face Off

Perpendicular recording has allowed industry giants to push the bounds of drive capacities, with Seagate now leading the pack at 1.5 terabytes. But that trend won’t last forever. Hitachi officials believe they can take perpendicular recording all the way up to an areal density of one terabit per square inch—modern drives hover around 300 to 400Gb per square inch. But by 2010, new storage technologies could take hold.

Most promising is patterned media recording. It allows drive makers to overcome the thermal stability issues that plague perpendicular recording. When a manufacturer wants to increase the areal density of a drive, it shrinks the small bits of magnetic material, or grains, on the drive’s platter. The smaller these grains get in a perpendicular-recording format, the more likely they are to become thermally unstable—switching their magnetization spontaneously and, thus, scrambling the data they store.

Patterned media recording carves actual grooves onto the platter in the form of tracks or individual bits. The latter can be thought of as a swarm of magnetic islands. Each island stores a single bit of information that’s represented by a number of grains magnetized in a particular direction. The size of these grains can be reduced, and the overall areal density of the drive increased, because the magnetic noise from each island of grains is unable to affect others.

Hard drive manufacturers are considering two other storage technologies that would similarly reduce the thermal instabilities between grains. Thermally assisted recording, or heat-assisted magnetic recording, increases the stiffness of the grains to prevent unintended magnetization. The drive head uses a miniscule near-field aperture laser to heat the grains. This allows their magnetization to be switched, representing a change in the data bit. The same goes for the second storage technology: microwave-assisted magnetic recording. Only in this case, the laser is replaced by a small device that can emit a radio frequency magnetic field.

USB 3.0

New Spec Promises A Speed Boost

USB 2.0 increased the original data rate of USB from 12Mb/s to 480Mb/s, and now USB 3.0 is set to multiply that bandwidth tenfold. The new 3.0 connectors and cables will be physically and functionally compatible with older hardware—of course, you won’t get maximum bandwidth unless you’re using a USB 3.0 cable with Superspeed devices and ports.

USB 3.0 will use nine lines; five new lines will sit parallel to the original four lines on a different plane, making it easy to differentiate between USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 cables. Two of the new lanes will transmit data while another pair will receive data; the fifth cable provides an additional ground.

A new interrupt-driven protocol keeps nonactive or idle devices (which aren’t being charged by the USB port) from having their power drained by the host controller as it looks for active data traffic. Active devices will send the host a signal to begin data transfer. This feature will also be backward compatible with USB 2.0 certified devices. Hardware partners should have USB 3.0 controllers designed by mid 2009, but consumers won’t see products until early 2010.

PCI-E 3.0

Pleasantly Predictable

Given the choice between pre-pre-draft specs, a political standards war, or a boring, uneventful rollout, we’ll take option C any day. It doesn’t get any more boring than PCI Express, which launched and axed AGP almost overnight with very little drama. For the most part, it worked and worked well. The rollout to PCI-E 2.0 went even better than the original’s launch.

PCI-E 3.0 is just around the corner, and we’re confident in its abilities. PCI-E 1.0 spit out 2.5 gigatransfers a second and PCI-E 2.0 doubled that to 5GT/s. PCI-E goes to just 8GT/s yet actually doubles the data rate by improving the encoding efficiency by 25 percent.

The PCI Special Interest Group said it took this route to save power. The PCI-E 3.0 spec is expected to be fully backward-compatible when it’s introduced in 2010. A final spec is expected late next year with testing to take place soon after. If it’s anything like PCI-E 1.0 and 2.0, it’ll just work.

Yaaaaawn

These once-promising technologies have yet to make an impact

DisplayPort

While numerous sources (us included) have pegged DisplayPort as the next logical progression in PC-to-monitor connectivity, the connection has yet to make a dent in the marketplace. It’s a chicken-and-egg story: Monitor manufacturers need to support DisplayPort every bit as much as a vendors, and each seems to be waiting for the other to make a big move.

Blu-ray

OK, the format war is over. Blu-ray is the optical storage king. Still, how many people do you know that have a Blu-ray burner? And of those, how many use it for that purpose regularly? High hardware and media prices, along with perfectly acceptable alternatives, keep this tech firmly planted on the fringe.

10 Gigabit Ethernet

10GbE might make Richie Rich happy, but hopes that the superfast interface standard will trickle down to regular-Joe consumers anytime soon seem fanciful. 10GbE over copper is considered to be the poor man’s fiber, but it’s still a mighty pricey commodity. How pricey? An add-in NIC will set you back more than $1,000, so you can imagine how much a four-port switch will cost you.

UEFI

Universal Extensible Firmware Interface, the ballyhooed replacement for the BIOS, was supposed to have made its big splash this year. Instead, its debut has been more of dribble. Of the mobo vendors, only MSI seems remotely interested in incorporating UEFI—and the boards aren’t even out yet. Most others seem to think it’s just not worth the time and effort when the current BIOS works just fine.

OLED Monitors

For years now we’ve been hearing that organic-light-emitting-diode displays are coming to the desktop, but we’ve given up on waiting. While the screen technology, which requires no backlight to produce its vibrant colors, can be found in small devices, we just don’t see manufacturers ramping up large-scale production at prices that can compete with LCDs anytime soon.

WiMAX

When we first heard of WiMAX back in 2002, we hoped that one day it would empower users with cheap, high-speed wireless broadband. While it’s not quite right to call WiMAX a failure—there are hundreds of networks deployed around the world—it’s not ubiquitous enough to compete with cellular providers. We fear that by the time it is, the tech will be irrelevant.

802.11n

As we near the end of 2008, we’re entering what seems like the second eon of 802.11n development, and unfortunately, there’s no end in sight. The involved parties are deadlocked, so it’s entirely possible that the draft N 2.0 version is the last update we’ll see to 802.11n.

AMD Updates Business Class Processor Lineup

Paul Lilly — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 09:24:07 -0600

If AMD continues to falter in 2009, it won't be from a lack of processors. Less than two weeks ago, DigiTimes reported that the Santa Clara chip maker would churn out no less than half a dozen 45nm Athlon CPUs by June of 2009 in addition to the upcoming Phenom II release, all of which are aimed at the consumer desktop sector. But that's just the beginning; AMD also plans to flesh out its business CPU lineup with several 45nm silicon as well, DigiTimes says.

Six new business classes processors divided evenly between dual-, triple-, and quad-core parts are slated for Q3 2009. These include:

Athlon X2 B21 (2.7GHz, 2MB cache)
Athlon X2 B23 (2.9GHz, 2MB cache)
Phenom II X3 B71 (2.6GHz, 7.5MB cache)
Phenom II X3 B73 (2.8GHz, 7.5MB cache)
Phenom II X4 B91 (2.6GHz, 8MB cache)
Phenom II X4 B93 (2.8GHz, 8MB cache)

Several new Phenom II, Athlon X2, and Athlon processors will also receive last order notices in Q4 2009.

Image Credit: AMD