AMD Triple Core Information
Had an interesting conversation with AMD yesterday about the upcoming Phenom Triple Core processors and their heritage and I wanted to pass this along to you. My first thought when I heard that AMD was going to be marketing the Triple Core was, “Damn, do they have that many Agena parts that have a broken core on them?” Then I of course we thought about AMD shutting down one working core on a new Phenom part and they create a totally new “low end” market for themselves. With AMD selling into system builders like Dell, AMD does need a deep set of SKUs in order to differentiate their desktop products while not totally destroying their Quad Core market segment. So the more I think about it, the more sense Phenom Triple Core makes. Honestly, my initial kneejerk reaction was much less favorable, but I think that could have been very wrong. Time will surely tell.
But I still have to wonder which Agena cores are getting neutered and pitched into the Triple Core bin. So I asked this of AMD several days ago, and yesterday the company came back with a pretty damn good story that does carry with it some very solid logic . While AMD will not commit to hard numbers, one thing is for sure, they are very proud of their yield rates. My initial thoughts on the Triple Core Phenom flew in the face of those yield claims. Then a point was brought up to me, “How well do Quad Core Intel CPUs overclock?” The answer to that is simply, “Not very well.” While there are exceptions to the rule, the Intel Core 2 Quad has not been sought out by the enthusiast since on average it brings with it a very low overclocking ceiling. And then I was asked, “Why do you think that is so?” Obviously it is hard to get four processing cores to scale equally when you are talking about taking the processor(s) to the bleeding edge of possible clock speed.
Light bulb. So then I asked the gentleman from AMD a question, which he had prompted. “Would AMD rather sell a 2.5GHz Phenom Triple Core or a 1.8GHz Phenom Quad Core when hardly any piece of desktop software in the marketplace can actually utilize more than two cores?” It would seem to me that Phenom Triple Core is not simply a reactionary measure by AMD in order to maximize on “bad” yields. I would suggest that a lot of planning would have to go into the process of bringing a triple core processor based on an Agena core to market. Qualifying is done on every part, but identifying a weak core and subsequently turning it off to allow the entire part to scale is something that certainly did not happen by accident. I think AMD has just managed to keep a secret for once.
Now certainly there is more to Phenom Triple Core than just this, marketing and yields play into decisions here as well. I am starting to warm up to the idea of triple core overclocking, and the reduced power draw and heat reduction, as I sit here and look at my Intel Core 2 Quad that doesn’t work hard very often. That said, when you are editing and rendering high definition video, the Intel Core 2 Quad is the bomb! Can’t wait to try out a Phenom Quad Core as well.
All of this seemed to make a better news post than a full blown editorial, so take it for what it is, just some tech junkie rambling on a Friday afternoon. Feel free to leave your thoughts and comments here.