AMD Confirms Double sourcing Athlon II X4s Processors

[Apoptosis]

AMD sent us an e-mail confirming that they are building AMD Athlon II X4 processors that are based on both the new 'Propus' 169mm die and the older Deneb 258mm die size. It seems they have totally disabled the L3 cache on any Deneb die that makes it into an Athlon II X4 processor though.

I’ve recently been made aware that AMD chose to manufacture some Athlon II X4 processors on the “Deneb” processor die as well. (“Deneb” is the die Phenom II is manufactured on) In that case, of course, “Deneb’s” L3 is disabled so that the defining processor specifications remain unchanged for Athlon II X4 models. Just wanted you to be aware of that fact.

[geokilla]

And what's the point of this when AMD products are doing pretty well in their respective markets? They're just going to make the Athlon II X4s compete with their own Phenom II lineup. However either way, I hope we see some price cuts soon. Intel's going to force AMD go bankrupt soon at this rate. As much as I like AMD, Intel's pretty much knocked them out of the $150 CPU and up category.

On a side note, I wonder if the L3 cache can be unlocked, and what the performance impact would be like.

[Apoptosis]

companies going bankrupt don't do this in their 6 months charts usually:

amd_stock_chart.jpg (26.24 KiB) Viewed 1535 times

[FunkZ]

It's starting to get a bit confusing trying to sort out all the different CPU models, especially when it comes to performance comparisons. Some have disabled L3 but 1MB L2 per core, some have disabled cores, some have reduced L3 and now we have a completely new die. I realize that disabling some parts of cores that don't pass testing allows them to sell chips that otherwise end up in the trashbin. It's a wonder we haven't seen any chips with disabled DDR2 or DDR3 IMC's and sold as either AM2+ or AM3 only.

[spitter]

And what's the point of this when AMD products are doing pretty well in their respective markets? They're just going to make the Athlon II X4s compete with their own Phenom II lineup. However either way, I hope we see some price cuts soon. Intel's going to force AMD go bankrupt soon at this rate. As much as I like AMD, Intel's pretty much knocked them out of the $150 CPU and up category.

On a side note, I wonder if the L3 cache can be unlocked, and what the performance impact would be like.

The internet rumor is that they can be unlocked with the 710/750 soutbridge in the acc setting in the bios. And they are just following in intel's footsteps with their producing one core and changing it to suit all their markets.

[spitter]

The internet rumor appears to be false on these, no L3 to unlock.

[goodguy]

Check youtube, so many ways to unlock cores. I saw a guy turn a dual core phenom II 550 into a 4 core in just a few minutes.

[Switchfoot]

There is L3 cache to unlock on some chips. I know people have unlocked the 6mb of cache on some quads, but some of them either have defective cache or they are not a deneb core. I personally unlocked the 6mb of cache on my Athlon II X3 425. I also unlocked the 4th core but it is not bench stable, so I locked it and kept the cache.

You can tell if the chips's are Denebs or Propus by reading the code on top of the CPU. It doesn't matter what CPU-Z says because it will tell you whatever they have the chip locked to. Whether your chip is a Deneb or not it will say Propus/Heka/whatever you have until you unlock it.

Edit: I just saw the date on this thread... usually old threads aren't on the front page..