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According to The Inq, AMD is readying three-core processors, which immediately prompts the question of.. why? The Inq insists this is not a rumor but solid "fact", but three-core CPUs just doesn't seem to make much sense. What I could see resulting from this is bad yields and poor efficiency. Quad-Cores have four cores that are interconnected... in a square pattern, obviously. This allows fast information sharing and cache swapping, but how do you accomplish this with three cores instead of four? Start a pyramid?
I'll hold all of my thoughts back until the performance of these are actually seen, but the reason behind this cannot be that great. AMD should have skipped right to Quin-Cores and actually had a chance to beat Intel's own processors. If these actually see the light of day, I will be amazed. Somehow, I am still quite curious to see how these would overclock...
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On the technical side, this is pretty trivial to do: three to core four is just a fuse to blow. What it gets you is a whole lot of choices. Remember the smooth run of SKUs, that was the beginning. If your clocks are thermally constrained, having three instead of four cores gives you a bin or two of speed. Given how few games use a second core fully, this might be a real win.
Source: The Inquirer
I'll hold all of my thoughts back until the performance of these are actually seen, but the reason behind this cannot be that great. AMD should have skipped right to Quin-Cores and actually had a chance to beat Intel's own processors. If these actually see the light of day, I will be amazed. Somehow, I am still quite curious to see how these would overclock...
<table align="center"><tbody><tr><td>
On the technical side, this is pretty trivial to do: three to core four is just a fuse to blow. What it gets you is a whole lot of choices. Remember the smooth run of SKUs, that was the beginning. If your clocks are thermally constrained, having three instead of four cores gives you a bin or two of speed. Given how few games use a second core fully, this might be a real win.
Source: The Inquirer