Legit Reviews

AMD Triple Core - Marketing Hype or Mainstream Killer?

AMD recently announced the addition of AMD Phenom triple-core processors to their desktop roadmap. Today, Legit Reviews takes a closer look at this move to figure out why and what this will mean for computer users. Read on to see how AMD Phenom triple-core processors are made and to see if there is a way to unlock the fourth core. With triple-core processors on the roadmap till at least 2009 you better get to know them!



Article Title: AMD Triple Core - Marketing Hype or Mainstream Killer?
Article URL: http://legitreviews.com/article/240/1/

I think this is a great idea, especialy for the fact that "what you gonna do with a core that does not work on a quad core?" I may buy one when they are released.

SepheronX wrote:I think this is a great idea, especialy for the fact that "what you gonna do with a core that does not work on a quad core?" I may buy one when they are released.

I'm hearing 2.4 - 2.8GHz on triple-core Phenom processors, which is higher than I expected.

Performance may be much greater then we expect. BUT time will tell. Right now, AMD is promising, and promising, but not delivering.

well im sure my next cpu is a phenom triple(if it comes out around march or june(b-day/grad)(unless it just plain fails miserably, which i hope is not the case) i didnt think that was how they made a triple(take a quad with three equal cores and disable the fourth) i also wonder if you could "unlock" the fourth to get a quad for the price of a triple

You can set amount of cores your CPU has in a configuration file for UE3 based games, well I know you can with BioShock. So that forth core might come in handy for that particular game.

But as far as performance, wouldn't you lose performance because there are more cores? I've read that a 2.4Ghz dual core is more like a 1.6Ghz single core, and a 2.4Ghz single is better than the dual core cpu, that is for applications that do not support multi core cpu's...

top wrote:But as far as performance, wouldn't you lose performance because there are more cores? I've read that a 2.4Ghz dual core is more like a 1.6Ghz single core, and a 2.4Ghz single is better than the dual core cpu, that is for applications that do not support multi core cpu's...

depends on if an application is threaded... a 3GHz dual-core conroe and a 3GHz quad-core kentsfield (same dies) perform the same on something like SuperPi for example. Any more cores than one is a waste on that particular application.

I think I remember reading something (this was a long time ago, when I was in the "read about computers but can't afford anything" stage) when I was doing the "read-the-magazine-while-standing-at-the-magazine-rack" routine about how three cores were problematic because some apps crashed. This was when the Socket 940 Opterons ruled the day, and dual core had just come out on that platform. The magazine placed a dual core Opteron in one socket of a dual-940 mobo, and a single core in the other (same speed, just two cores on one and only a solo core on the other). Some apps (I think PCMark and/or 3DMark) crashed.

I'm not sure if that was due to lack of dual core support, or just three cores. To me, I wonder how the tri-core thing is going to work, because I thought most applications scaled in a binary manner (2, 4, 8, 16 etc) and if a multithreaded application sees three cores, isn't it going to freak out and go "OMGWTF?"

With quadcores being cheaper then they ever have been, atleast on camp Intel, I don't if its really worth making a "tricore" CPU but atleast thats one more core for folding than a dualcore.

Waste of time for most in here. This is AMD's attempt to recover some some of the crummy yields they evidently get from what is clearly a quad core design. Users here are most likely to already be using some brand of dual core or top end single core and adding some tweener multicore implementation like this is nonsense. Maybe it will do well with those that buy unmatched pairs of memory sticks like 1.5 and 3GB..LOL

So whatever happened to the "native core" BS? Should you wait for a "native triple core"? LOL, again.

DallasTexas wrote:Waste of time for most in here. This is AMD's attempt to recover some some of the crummy yields they evidently get from what is clearly a quad core design. Users here are most likely to already be using some brand of dual core or top end single core and adding some tweener multicore implementation like this is nonsense. Maybe it will do well with those that buy unmatched pairs of memory sticks like 1.5 and 3GB..LOL

So whatever happened to the "native core" BS? Should you wait for a "native triple core"? LOL, again.

i agree seems like amd is trying to cut losses

liqnit wrote:i agree seems like amd is trying to cut losses

I don't see anything wrong with that

Can't afford quad core, but dual isn't enough for you? Then tri-core (It does sound weird) might be the thing you need.

Triple core would be ok I guess , but from the posted pic about the architecture I think the cache needs to be much larger that 512k per core to even compete with any Intel . Interesting scheme non-the-less .

DallasTexas wrote:Waste of time for most in here. This is AMD's attempt to recover some some of the crummy yields they evidently get from what is clearly a quad core design. Users here are most likely to already be using some brand of dual core or top end single core and adding some tweener multicore implementation like this is nonsense. Maybe it will do well with those that buy unmatched pairs of memory sticks like 1.5 and 3GB..LOL

So whatever happened to the "native core" BS? Should you wait for a "native triple core"? LOL, again.

Some people are just naive, do some reading and draw some conclusions.

Its already a native triple core. The reason for the native quad core is so they can cripple one core as opposed to cripple 2 in a non native environment (2x2 as opposed to 4x1). This is native quad cores saving grace and the reason we had to wait.

Their yields arent crummy just because they need to do this, Intel disables or clocks down cores based on this as well, both companies have been doing this for some time.

LOL?

rhitick wrote:Their yields arent crummy just because they need to do this, Intel disables or clocks down cores based on this as well, both companies have been doing this for some time.

A superior and more flexible process power bandwidth management technique by AMD.

Core numbers allowed for coarse power bandwidth management, clock frequency numbers allowed for smaller fine tuning touch-up. Very sound engineering for bandwidth-base processor designs. Definitely allowed the most performance for the process technology used and a lot less waste.

Intel would/will use the same technique later if not sooner, just as Intel had aped AMD's "HyperTransport" 5 years later by way of "3GIO/PCI-Express".

The AMD Tri-core CPU would be super neat if the four core was an ATI GPU too.

I'm currently looking to buy a new desktop PC. One of the things that psychologically deters me from buying an AMD Phenom triple core is that I know that the chip was manufactured with a fault, so one of the cores was "fused". Another thing that prevents me from jumping straight in and buying AMD is the well known AMD bug - board manufacturers are releasing a patch on motherboards, but apparently this dramatically hinders performance.

It's a shame, I've always purchased AMD processors in the past. Unfortunately, this time there are too many faults (and a psychological deterrent) for me to purchase AMD this time. I'm going down the Intel Quad Core route .

what bug? There is no major bug on AMD Phenom processors as the TLB issue was fixed with a new revision processor many months ago. That is the issue that caused lower performance when all the BIOS patches came out.