AMD Launches Five AM3-based Processors

[Rob Williams]

From our front-page news:

AMD has today announced five new AM3-based processors that we've been expecting to see for a few months now. These new chips perfectly follow-up to the company's Phenom II launch last month, which featured two Quad-Cores, the X4 940 and X920. Today's releases feature three more Quad's, and two Tri's, all of which are priced very competitively to Intel's offerings.

The top model of the new releases is the X4 910, which at 2.6GHz, settles right below the X2 920 at 2.8GHz. Like its bigger brothers, the 910 features 6MB of L3 Cache. Also introduced today are the 800 series, including the X4 810 and X4 805. Both models are Quad-Cores, but feature slightly less cache than the 900 series, with 4MB L3 Cache. These models are clocked at 2.6GHz and 2.5GHz, respectively.

On the Tri-Core side of things, we have the X3 720 Black Edition, which AMD promises to be one heck of an overclocker (they expect people will have even better luck overclocking this chip than they do with the X4 940). Given this chip clocks in at 2.8GHz, it's going to be plenty fast even without overclocking. The X3 710 becomes AMD's current lowest-end AM3 offering, at 2.6GHz. Despite the missing core, these Tri's still include 6MB of L3 Cache like the 900 series, so in some regards, they may even out-perform the 800-series Quad's in certain scenarios.

One of the biggest new features of the AM3 platform is DDR3 support, and although it really wasn't that needed (the differences are mostly moot for most people), it's nice to now have the option. The best part of AM3 is that it still natively supports DDR2 as well, and can also be used in all AM2+ motherboards. So, if you don't want to upgrade to an AM3 motherboard right now (and it seems like you shouldn't), you can still pick up a new chip and use it in your current motherboard. AM2 boards might work in some cases, but you'd want to do some reading up on it first to make sure.

We're running a little behind here, but you can expect our review of the X4 810 and X3 720 BE later this week. Stay tuned...

AMD (NYSE: AMD) extended the value and lifespan of its heralded Dragon platform technology today with five new additions to its AMD Phenom II processor family, including the industry's only 45nm triple-core processors and three new AMD Phenom II quad-core processors. These AMD Phenom II processors deliver choice and lay the foundation for memory transition; they fit in either AM2+ or AM3 sockets and support DDR2 or next generation DDR3 memory technology. AMD continues to enhance the Dragon platform technology value to OEM and channel partners as well as Do-It-Yourself (DIY) consumers who build and customize their own PCs.

Source: AMD Press Release​

 

[Tech-Daddy]

I am happy about this....
The ability to have a proc that will support DDR2 now as a drop in replacement on many AM2 boards, and then when you are looking to replace/upgrade, you can move to a AM3 and utilize DDR3 on the same proc!!!

I like those options!

 

[Krazy K]

I never figured out why so many people are against AMD. They hate them and curse them and then spit on them when they're down. Why? What are Intel users afraid of? Sure, you can get move performance from a single Intel chip than an AMD chip. But what does 90% of the market look at, performance per dollar. AMD has excelled in this as far back as I can remember and when Intel boosted their clock speeds to fool everyone into believing their chips were faster, they succeeded with most of the users stayed on the bandwagon. I'll stick with AMD since I never buy the highest offering (save the Athlon 3200+, X2 6400+ and the X4 9950 I have). But this is revolutionary, to release a new architecture chip that is backwards compatible. How brilliant is that, stick with your current DDR2 board for now and when DDR3 goes mainstream, all you need is a new board and memory.

Now you must take this with a grain of salt, this is all my opinion and most of it is probably inaccurate, but being confident and telling the supreme court you never had sex worked for Slick Willy.

 

[Kougar]

Yes, the backwards/forewards compatibility was an extremely smart decision for AMD. They were talking about doing it with AM2/AM3 since the Socket 939 era though, so they have been planning it for awhile.

Things like this are why I am cautious of AMD. Give this a read: http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white_papers_and_tech_docs/41322_PUB_Rev3_40v2.pdf

Remember that TLB errata bug? Sure almost no average (or even enthusiast) user would ever be likely to experience it. I think the news was blown way out of proportion. But then AMD's software "fix" and BIOS patch caused as much as 55% performance hits in some applications and serious performance hits in most others. So for that reason I stopped recommending AMD completely until they started selling Revision B3 chips that had a hardware fix.

Now I'm going to be watching closely how they "fix" this DDR3 problem. If they release another performance impacting "patch", its going to leave a pretty nasty impression on my already affected opinion of AMD.

Edit: I guess it would help if I remember to mention the bug & details are listed on page 80. Basically it affects anyone using four modules of RAM...

 

[Rob Williams]

The TLB bug was a rather significant one, but I agree, it was blown out of proportion. Chances are someone would be more likely to have their CPU just up and die on them than experience this bug. That said, it was a rather major issue regardless, and one that AMD should have caught earlier on (though this could have happened to anyone, including Intel).

Kougar: That URL doesn't work.

I am concerned about RAM in AMD, though. I'm not sure if the issue is universal, but I've been having a difficult time with fast DDR2 in two different motherboards with AM3. It's not the modules, because they work just fine in the Intel machine. They're DDR2-1066 2x2GB, but running them at those speeds is impossible. On our ASUS M3A78-T, it just doesn't boot. On the Gigabyte MA790GP-UD3P, it runs, but the OS will eventually BSOD within a half-hour. I'm not sure whether this is the fault of the CPUs or the motherboards, but since we don't have any AM2 Phenom IIs here to test, that issue is up in the air.

 

[Kougar]

Okay, here is the URL: Link

Here is a screenie someone else made anyway:

Regarding your problems with the memory, could it be Intel specific memory? Some modules have their subtimings adjusted specifically for Intel platforms and require lax timings to work in AMD rigs... otherwise I'm not sure. The memory bug in question here is for DDR3 and only if four modules are in use... but I suppose it is possible there are other issues.

Please correct me if I am wrong but last I heard AMD CPUs still can't "make use" of any kind of memory above DDR2-800 speeds. Sure some AMD CPUs can run the memory that fast, but I don't remember it ever being certified by AMD to do so?

 

[Doomsday]

i'll go for AMD next time wen my current system cant run games on high settings!

 

[Rob Williams]

Regarding your problems with the memory, could it be Intel specific memory?

I'm not sure if it's Intel-specific, but I did find out a solution. I'm not sure if this is typical of many AMD motherboards, but the Gigabyte board I'm using for testing uses a 1100 (DIMMs in slots 1 & 2) dual-channel configuration, rather than 0101 (DIMMs in slots 2 & 4), like every single other motherboard I've ever used. I didn't realize that they had a different configuration, and I ended up realizing the mistake after I fully benchmarked one of the new CPUs. Talk about a waste of time!

With the "proper" configuration in place, I was able to clock the RAM to DDR2-1066 with no issue, so all is well. I still couldn't run DDR2-1066 on the ASUS motherboard though, so I'm just going to blame that board, because I double-checked and it does indeed use a 0101 configuration as well, which is what I used.

As for the DDR3-1333 problem, that doesn't surprise me too much. From what I recall, Core 2 had a similar issue, with RAM not wanting to work to well in a four-DIMM configuration with high speeds (although it could do DDR3-1333, I'm not sure if DDR3-1600 was possible on most motherboards). It's too bad regardless, and hopefully it gets fixed. 8GB of RAM is becoming far too common to have a roadblock issue like this.