AMD Boasts 4GHz Air Overclocks on "Phenom II", 6GHz on LN2

[Rob Williams]

From our front-page news:

With Intel's Core i7 processors now available, and kicking ass through most benchmarks, one has to wonder what's up with AMD. How will they be competing anytime soon? It's true... lately all we've heard from them has been related to their business practises, but there's no need to worry... they definitely look to have some tricks up their sleeves.

Our friends at the Tech Report attended a press briefing this morning where AMD showed off their latest and greatest... 45nm "Phenom II". While benchmark results weren't revealed, raw clock frequencies were, and if you've been waiting for AMD to give people a great reason to consider them again, this might be it.

Stock speeds were not disclosed, but on an air cooling setup, one of their processors clocked to 4.0GHz with 1.55v, which is around what we've been expecting. Make no mistake, that's a lot of voltage, and it's too bad that it has to go so high, but if these CPUs are better-designed to handle such voltages (compared to Intel's offerings), it might be alright. We'll have to wait and see on that one.

While we are used to seeing massive overclocks on Intel's processors when using liquid nitrogen, we've never seen anything major on the AMD side... until now. At this event, the same CPU as mentioned above was clocked to 6.0GHz... something that's sure to excite many of the more hardcore overclockers out there. It took -185°C temperatures to accomplish it, but that's not the point!

This is a very exciting time for AMD, and enthusiasts alike. For a while, Intel has dominated the desktop space, especially where enthusiasts are concerned, but AMD is looking to improve that situation, and fast. "Phenom II" isn't a major architectural upgrade like Core i7 was to Core 2, but by moving to the 45nm node, we'll have lower power consumption and overall improved efficiency, lower temps, and as we can see, far better clocking-abilities. We should be learning more about these CPUs very soon, so stay tuned.

The slowest system-cooled with a heatsink and fan-managed to reach just under 4GHz with a 1.55V core voltage. With liquid cooling, AMD successfully pushed a 45nm Phenom II in another machine just over the 4GHz mark. That required kicking up the CPU voltage to 1.6V, however. For the other two systems, AMD took out the big guns.

Source: Tech Report
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[Relayer]

I've been hoping for the "spider" platform to live up to the hype and produce some real world benefits. Maybe with the phenom II it will?

I'd also be curious about pricing? Are they going to be better priced than Intel?

 

[Merlin]

AMD AM2 still compatible with the Phenom II ?
I might try a Phenum II if so
That's what I have in this 64 bit machine

 

[Kougar]

It's a substantial improvement, but it still isn't clock-for-clock comparable to Nehalem. If the desktop prices and clockspeeds are right, it could be a good match against Penryn chips though.

I've heard of some specs/prices, but nothing official yet. The Tech Report has the scoop on Shanghai, the server-side Phenom II parts.

 

[Rob Williams]

I'll link to the article you're referring to:

http://techreport.com/articles.x/15905

AMD's latest chips do excel in certain tests, but there's no such thing as an all-around performance boost, sadly. I do think they're making great strides with power consumption though.

I'd say judging by Scott's findings, there's still little reason to get excited over Phenom II. As it stands, the chips seem to be close to Core 2 performance, but are not spot-on. Even "close-to" is a good thing, as for most people, gaming performance is what matters, and there should be really no discernible difference between a Phenom II and Core 2, I'm imagining.

Pricing will play a major role here. It's going to be good to see AMD have a more competitive product on the market though, that's for sure.

 

[Kougar]

Well, Shanghai was the chip Barcelona should have been.. If it had launched back then It'd still be 2.7GHz verses 3.0Ghz, something AMD is competitive with especially due to those FB-DIMMs.

Instead AMD launched a year later so instead of being able to roll out 3GHz Shanghai chips against 3.4GHz Penryns... they are rolling them out just to time to meet 3,2GHz+ Nehalem parts instead.

Nobody get me wrong, I'm very happy to see AMD release something that doesn't come across as anemic against Intel's offerings... but it's not going to give them the edge back, and they are still in fact losing ground.

I did find:

Phenom II X4 945 3.0GHz 8MB Deneb AM3 Apr, 2009
Phenom II X4 940 3.0GHz 8MB Deneb AM2+ 8th, Jan
Phenom II X4 925 2.8GHz 8MB Deneb AM3 Feb, 2009
Phenom II X4 920 2.8GHz 8MB Deneb AM2+ 8th, Jan
Phenom II X4 910 2.6GHz 8MB Deneb AM3 Feb, 2009
Phenom II X4 810 2.6GHz 6MB Deneb AM3 Feb, 2009
Phenom II X4 805 2.5GHz 6MB Deneb AM3 Feb, 2009
Phenom II X3 720 2.8GHz 7.5MB Heka AM3 Feb, 2009
Phenom II X3 710 2.6GHz 7.5MB Heka AM3 Feb, 2009
Athlon X4 615 2.7GHz 2MB Propus AM3 Apr, 2009
Athlon X4 605 2.5GHz 2MB Propus AM3 Apr, 2009
Athlon X3 420 2.8GHz 1.5MB Rana AM3 Apr, 2009
Athlon X3 410 2.6GHz 1.5MB Rana AM3 Apr, 2009
Athlon X2 240 2.8GHz 2MB Regor AM3 Jun, 2009
Athlon X2 235 2.7GHz 2Mb Regor AM3 Jun, 2009

 

[Kougar]

Posting here because this thread mentioned AMD LN2 overclocking... by now quite a few teams and/or sites have been able to hit 6.4-6.5GHz on AMD's Phenom II and make some records, not to mention blow away all previous AMD processor records.

You knew it was coming, but here's the "but": http://arstechnica.com/hardware/reviews/2009/02/phenom-ii-scaling.ars

Something is wrong when a 3.2Ghz Core i7 chip can still outperform a 4.2GHz Phenom II in the majority of the tests run. That's all I am going to say about it.

 

[Rob Williams]

Kudos to Ars for taking "stable" overclocks so seriously. Glad to see we aren't the only ones. Good read overall though, especially from a site that's not known to post hardware articles. It's a sad truth though, and I don't think it was entirely unexpected. AMD's goal is to keep prices competitive, but at least Phenom II is close to on par with Core 2. Given their financial situation lately, we're probably fortunate that they managed to pull even that off.

 

[Kougar]

Well, I guess I just was thinking the performance gap was more narrow.

It is simply wrong a 2.67GHz Core i7 920 beat the 4.2GHz Phenom II in some of thsoe tests, and that surprised me the most. It just shows the underlying architecture is still more important than pure clockspeeds even if AMD and Intel's CPU designs are the most similar they have ever been. Considering the platform cost is only ~$100 more now for a matching Intel Core i7 platform I think the performance justifies it, but that only makes AMD's position all the more precarious.

AMD at least won the gaming benchmarks so that should keep them in favor, but I worry about how things will be looking for them inside two years. AMD's hex-core Istanbul with it's HT-assist technology should really help them in the HPC server market where AMD makes their bread&butter, but what else do they have? Sandy Bridge isn't exactly a bridge to nowhere...

 

[Rob Williams]

Those are some great points, and the same points I'll be posting about in our news soon. It's a sad situation for AMD... everything is working against them, financials and design. It's tough. It's not impossible to crawl out of their hole and strike-back, but it's going to be incredibly difficult to do so soon, especially with the economy how it is. I do not envy their management team right now (well I kind of do, since I know they make a lot more than I do ;-)).

 

[Kougar]

Yeah. I hate to always appear to be negative about AMD, but that's because I'm concerned about them staying around. And I was all for AMD when they were showing Intel how it was done!

As you say the current economy is only making a bad situation for them worse, but once the foundry company and AMD fully divest maybe they'll have some new directions to take, both in fabbing technology and architecture designs. AMD really is fighting tooth and nail to stay alive, so I guess that is a promising start as any.

 

[Doomsday]

"AMD has unveiled a new six-core Opteron CPU code-named “Istanbul”. It will be released later this year. This CPU will be an easy upgrade as you just need to drop it into your socket-F motherboard. It features 6MB of L3 cache, and is built using the 45nm manufacturing process."


http://razetheworld.com/blog/2009/02/23/amd-six-core-opteron-fcking-fast/#more-3271

promising no! but is this like those Intel Xeon ones or can it be used for a home PC?

 

[Kougar]

Socket F is only found on AMD server boards.

As I mentioned above, I do think this is promising. It's a surgical strike to hold the line in the HPC and high-end server market which is where AMD has always made the largest slice of their revenue. And the HT-assist technology gives it a nice performance boost beyond just the additional cores.

 

[Rob Williams]

Like Kougar said... no desktop PC love here. But despite that, these six-core CPUs have me quite excited. As I mentioned in another post, this is something that might just help AMD thrive a bit more. They already do quite well in the server market, so a chip that offers more cores that can be plugged into existing systems is sure to please many. I'd love to get my hands on one of these... just so much power on one machine... even with just one CPU.

Intel is giving us a Hexa-Core in early 2010, so hopefully AMD won't be too far behind. The sad thing though, is that Socket F is quite different than Socket AM2+/AM3 (it's older), so we might not see it such a chip that quickly. Either way though, none of us really needs a Hexa-Core chip. The idea is nice though ;-)

 

[Kougar]

Intel's Dunnington has been on the market for awhile and is a modified hex-core chip. Ya probably meant octi-core, which is very true. Beckton-EX should be out in 2010, which will most likely nullify any sort of AMD hex-core performace advantages.

Beckton uses new "DDR3" FB-DIMMs though, so it's only making a super-expensive CPU and expensive platform all the more expensive. AMD could then try the value approach to counter, but then there goes the butter for their toast...

Socket F isn't that old, I think it launched around the same month as Conroe? Although you have a good point, I thought it had 1500+ pins but apparently it only uses LGA 1207 "pins". That's less than Nehalem! Beckton must've been the ~ LGA1500 "pin" monster socket I was thinking of...

 

[Rob Williams]

Intel's Dunnington has been on the market for awhile and is a modified hex-core chip. Ya probably meant octi-core, which is very true.

I should have been more clear... I was referring to the desktop side of things, not servers.

Beckton uses new "DDR3" FB-DIMMs though

Ugh, heh. I can understand their purpose, but I hope the DDR3 variants run far cooler than the DDR2 models. I don't much care for my RAM hitting 80°C.

Socket F isn't that old, I think it launched around the same month as Conroe?

Right, I didn't mean it was old, just that it was older than AM2+/AM3. The pin count is a huge issue as well though. AM2/AM3 have ~940 contacts, so I don't see it being very likely that we'd see this Hexa-Core chips in our AM3 motherboards anytime soon. I could be wrong though. I can't see AMD bringing Socket F to the enthusiast market, but stranger things have happened (did you know they bought ATI?!).