AMD unleashes first ever commercial “5GHz” CPU, the FX-9590

[Vesku]

What if Steamroller doesn't give as much improvements as everyone is expecting?

Then they'd be better off releasing a 220W TDP Steamroller when the time comes, instead of these. As long as it's not a step backward from Vishera it would get a better reception. Heck there might even be some moderate "yeah that's kind of interesting" praise from Intel fans if AMD released a 220W Kaveri APU with high clocks in both CPU and iGP, even more so if it had something like 768 or 1024 GCN cores instead of the expected 512 for the mainstream TDP versions.

But this particular product family as launched, just gives me flashbacks to a friend's room heating Pentium 4 EE Dell machine. "Hey it beat your AMD machine in this multimedia benchmark by 5%, totally worth having to wear just swimtrunks around my machine."

 

[Obsoleet]

Actually the I5s & I7s are faster in everything, but keep living in your dream world, where repeating the Open benchmark from Linux, and the article from developers, a dozen times per day, will actually make people believe AMD cpus are better.
In reality though, AMD is slower in 95% of the situations, consumes double the power, and has 20% market share as a consequence. Facts.

Why do you care so much? Just buy what you want.

I use Intel right now, but that "95% situations" where Intel is faster- is irrelevant. I program, use my PC as a HTPC, play games, run VMs, and AMD CPUs are fast enough for that while having the best integrated graphics. That's of more interest to me now than CPU gains that I don't need or care about. Yeah, I'd TAKE the improvements, but not with additional cost or at the expense of the overall APU.

My favorite CPU right now is the A10 6800K, and Kaveri will overtake that in my pantheon.

 

[monstercameron]

To release a new SKU with 220W(+) TDP that needs new motherboards, new validation and so on. Just to sell what, maybe 1000 chips? Its simply terrible financially. Even the FX8xxx series cant substain itself with is very low sales volume.

Then you could say it got PR value. But its rather a backfire in the quite large scale.

I dont know if it will backfire, regular users hear 5GHz want they think hghly of it, hell totalbiscuit talked about it and said he would switch if the benches show it, hes running sli titans and I dont think he knows that amd performance might not be greater than his current intel setup.

 

[sushiwarrior]

To release a new SKU with 220W(+) TDP that needs new motherboards, new validation and so on. Just to sell what, maybe 1000 chips? Its simply terrible financially. Even the FX8xxx series cant substain itself with is very low sales volume.

Then you could say it got PR value. But its rather a backfire in the quite large scale.

Maybe a thousand chips? Now, I'm no sales expert, but I guarantee you there is more than 1000 people who go to FalconNW or w/e and see "5GHZ! SWEET!" and more than 1000 AMD fanboys with money to spend... I really think you're underestimating it.

To be honest, I doubt it costs AMD much to release a product like this. Doesn't require any work from the CPU arch designers, doesn't require much work from engineering, it only keeps things like marketing and qualifications busy, who don't have anything to do at the moment because there aren't any big launches until Steamroller in several months time. It's just putting people to work who would otherwise be doing nothing, IMO.

Why does it need new motherboards? Plenty of old ones have been shown to support it.

 

[Erenhardt]

there aren't any big launches until Steamroller in several months time.

But will they be busy in September?

 

[ShintaiDK]

Maybe a thousand chips? Now, I'm no sales expert, but I guarantee you there is more than 1000 people who go to FalconNW or w/e and see "5GHZ! SWEET!" and more than 1000 AMD fanboys with money to spend... I really think you're underestimating it.

To be honest, I doubt it costs AMD much to release a product like this. Doesn't require any work from the CPU arch designers, doesn't require much work from engineering, it only keeps things like marketing and qualifications busy, who don't have anything to do at the moment because there aren't any big launches until Steamroller in several months time. It's just putting people to work who would otherwise be doing nothing, IMO.

Why does it need new motherboards? Plenty of old ones have been shown to support it.

Validation takes a really long time. Its not something you just do overnight. And Steamroller validation better have run for quite some time now.

There are no motherboards currently that supports 220W TDP with warranty in place. There will be some new releases, and sofar it seems it will be system integrators only.

FX8xxx series right now might not even sell 25000 chips a month. And AMD is losing marketshare and volume really fast. Its a niche of a niche for a soon to be niche company.

 

[SlowSpyder]

To release a new SKU with 220W(+) TDP that needs new motherboards, new validation and so on. Just to sell what, maybe 1000 chips? Its simply terrible financially. Even the FX8xxx series cant substain itself with is very low sales volume.

Then you could say it got PR value. But its rather a backfire in the quite large scale.

Given your prediction history regarding unreleased products, can we assume these CPU's will be a huge hit then?

Seriously, without knowing the price, we really cannot say anything about how this part will do in the marketplace.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Given your prediction history regarding unreleased products, can we assume these CPU's will be a huge hit then?

Seriously, without knowing the price, we really cannot say anything about how this part will do in the marketplace.

You can list how many times I have been right and wrong and see what you wanna bet on

Price is certainly a factor. But so is other factors that 220W TDP brings, including price increase for the platform.

 

[Vesku]

You can list how many times I have been right and wrong and see what you wanna bet on

Price is certainly a factor. But so is other factors that 220W TDP brings, including price increase for the platform.

Well I hope you don't expect me to double down with you on any console predictions, rofl.

I do agree on the validation costs and such, that's why I've said this move seems kind of silly. Better to spend the time and money to deploy a 220W Kaveri or other Steamroller product, that is if they are still on track with their revised schedule from late 2012 early this year. Not going to take any bets on that either. =S

 

[SlowSpyder]

You can list how many times I have been right and wrong and see what you wanna bet on

Price is certainly a factor. But so is other factors that 220W TDP brings, including price increase for the platform.

Has the 220 watt TDP been confirmed or is it the prevailing rumor to this point?

 

[sushiwarrior]

Validation takes a really long time. Its not something you just do overnight. And Steamroller validation better have run for quite some time now.

Of course it isn't, but it's much different for a new product than for a reworked one. Steamroller and this are staggered, so it's not like they're both using the same resources at the same time.

There are no motherboards currently that supports 220W TDP with warranty in place. There will be some new releases, and sofar it seems it will be system integrators only.

Lol, well why would there be motherboards already out which support a product that doesn't exist yet? That's just a matter of semantics. There exist MANY motherboards which have VRMs that can supply in excess of 220W easily.

FX8xxx series right now might not even sell 25000 chips a month. And AMD is losing marketshare and volume really fast. Its a niche of a niche for a soon to be niche company.

AMD is losing marketshare and volume in the high end. You're generalizing AMDs CPU business to the FX line, which is just pathetically narrow minded at best. And "might not even sell 25,000 chips a month"? Well, my figures which I pulled out of my ass say they sell 3 billion per month. They're just as accurate as yours! Covered in shit and meaningless.

 

[Vesku]

Has the 220 watt TDP been confirmed or is it the prevailing rumor to this point?

Yes confirmed by multiple computer tech sites including Anandtech.

 

[cbn]

Has the 220 watt TDP been confirmed or is it the prevailing rumor to this point?

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7066/amd-announces-fx9590-and-fx9370-return-of-the-ghz-race

6/13/2013 Update: We have now received the most important pieces of information from AMD regarding the new parts. The base clock on the FX-9590 will be 4.7GHz and the base clock of the FX-9370 will be 4.4GHz, so in both cases it will be 300MHz below the maximum Turbo Core speed. The more critical factor is also the more alarming aspect: the rumors of a 220W TDP have proven true. That explains why these parts will target system integrators first, and the FX-9000 series also earns the distinction of having a higher TDP, but it also raises some serious concerns. With proper cooling, there's little doubt that you can run a Vishera core at 5.0GHz for extended periods of time, but 220W is a massive amount of power to draw for just a CPU.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Lol, well why would there be motherboards already out which support a product that doesn't exist yet? That's just a matter of semantics. There exist MANY motherboards which have VRMs that can supply in excess of 220W easily.

While they can supprot more. Just like with every CPU. Once you overclock, go beyond standard specs. Warranty is gone.

AMD is losing marketshare and volume in the high end. You're generalizing AMDs CPU business to the FX line, which is just pathetically narrow minded at best. And "might not even sell 25,000 chips a month"? Well, my figures which I pulled out of my ass say they sell 3 billion per month. They're just as accurate as yours! Covered in shit and meaningless.

AMD is losing marketshare in all segments. In Q3 2012 they sold roughly 42000 FX8xxx chips per month arcodring to their product mix by Mercury Research. And their revenue and volume have crashed since.

 

[sushiwarrior]

While they can supprot more. Just like with every CPU. Once you overclock, go beyond standard specs. Warranty is gone.

Warranty is relative when the product is sold by another company like Origin or FalconNW, who provide the warranty themselves.

AMD is losing marketshare in all segments. In Q3 2012 they sold roughly 42000 FX8xxx chips per month arcodring to their product mix by Mercury Research. And their revenue and volume have crashed since.

Yes, Bulldozer did sell badly. Those sales numbers are for ONLY bulldozer. But why are you applying the same generalizations to Piledriver? Again, it's just like everything is all one big blob to you.

 

[Erenhardt]

220W TDP is great thing for upcoming PS4 like APUs. Mid-range desktop CPU + mid-range GPU - I imagine those will require 200+W watts.
They are just giving more time for motherboard companies to develop and polish new designs, layouts, parts and components so everything is ready for big jump in APU performance.

 

[Abwx]

Well
I do agree on the validation costs and such, that's why I've said this move seems kind of silly. Better to spend the time and money to deploy a 220W Kaveri or other Steamroller product, that is if they are still on track with their revised schedule from late 2012 early this year. Not going to take any bets on that either. =S

There s no enginering involved , only binnings that
are automated so there s no added costs.

As for Kaveri Lisa Su expressly confirmed at Computex
that it will be launched this year :

« Les premières cartes ont été livrées aux partenaires, et le lancement interviendra bien d'ici la fin de l'année », a promis Lisa Su

Litteraly " The first cards have been delivered to our customers,
and launch will effectively occur from now to the end of the year"
did promise Lisa Su.

http://www.clubic.com/hardware/comp...re_fois_kaveri_confirme_pour_2013-563142.html

 

[galego]

Highly unlikely, at least not where it counts.

I already considered Crysis 3 in #232. Your figure is very interesting. I predicted a 1-5% performance gain for Hasfail (aka Hasbeen aka Failwell) and crysis 3 shows an incredible increase of about 1.5% over the ivy.

An entire FPS more (66->67) is going to convince me that maybe some enthusiast in the past moved the decimal point when claimed we would see a 15% improvement.

This is joke right ? You CAN NOT be serious posting this.
While i agree AMD's "bonus cores" are better than Intel's "bonus cores".
Saying 8000 and 9000 have "8 true cores" is just a ignorance, or even worse a blatant lie/manipulation.

Assuming the price is right (let's not get into TDP) there is probably a small market for this kind of CPU :
As fast as a 4770 in single thread, and as good as a 3930K in multi-thread.

Both the series 8000 and 9000 have 8 cores (as Anand knows):

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7066/amd-announces-fx9590-and-fx9370-return-of-the-ghz-race

You can count them

It is Intel 3770k 4770k which has only 4 real cores plus 4 virtual cores.

 

[Vesku]

There s no enginering involved , only binnings that
are automated so there s no added costs.

As for Kaveri Lisa Su expressly confirmed at Computex
that it will be launched this year :



Litteraly " The first cards have been delivered to our customers,
and launch will effectively occur from now to the end of the year"
did promise Lisa Su.

http://www.clubic.com/hardware/comp...re_fois_kaveri_confirme_pour_2013-563142.html

That just makes this sillier, why not a 220W boutique Kaveri instead?

 

[SlowSpyder]

Yes confirmed by multiple computer tech sites including Anandtech.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7066/amd-announces-fx9590-and-fx9370-return-of-the-ghz-race

Thanks.

That's too bad, I was hoping AMD could work some magic and keep it down a bit... I wasn't expecting a 125 watt TDP, but 220 is up there. I guess we'll have to see what the price is for these parts. Hopefully those $800 rumors were wrong.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

I already considered Crysis 3 in #232. Your figure is very interesting. I predicted a 1-5% performance gain for Hasfail (aka Hasbeen aka Failwell) and crysis 3 shows an incredible increase of about 1.5% over the ivy.

An entire FPS more (66->67) is going to convince me that maybe some enthusiast in the past moved the decimal point when claimed we would see a 15% improvement.

The hard part is figuring out where the cpu bottleneck and gpu bottleneck begin and end.

If we look at the mins, which are most likely cpu limited... Given I have a faster setup, with my overclocked 7950's. I'm also cpu limited before I'm gpu limited until I cross a certain threshold where my cpu is faster than what my gpus can output via overclocking.

If we look just at the area where the cpu is commonly the biggest factor we see "Hasfail" increased performance by 10% over Ivy whereas compared to "Hasfail" AMD is currently working with a 73% performance deficit.

AMD needs to increase performance per core 73% to be on an even threshold with Intel in gaming, a slight clock speed bump and a horrendous power consumption hike won't make that happen.

 

[frozentundra123456]

That just makes this sillier, why not a 220W boutique Kaveri instead?

Pumping up an APU with more shaders and high tdp only makes sense if they have solved the bandwidth problem. I believe the rumors of DDR5 in desktop Kaveri have been debunked, so even if you make a huge chip with a high TDP, you need to solve the bandwidth problem. Not sure how AMD will approach this. Besides for 220watts you could have an 85 watt cpu and a 160 watt discrete card. I doubt any apu could match the performance of this.

 

[Vesku]

Pumping up an APU with more shaders and high tdp only makes sense if they have solved the bandwidth problem. I believe the rumors of DDR5 in desktop Kaveri have been debunked, so even if you make a huge chip with a high TDP, you need to solve the bandwidth problem. Not sure how AMD will approach this. Besides for 220watts you could have an 85 watt cpu and a 160 watt discrete card. I doubt any apu could match the performance of this.

Even without more bandwidth it makes more sense from a marketing perspective than these Vishera 220W chips, just from the "look at that" factor. Being a boutique OEM SKU they could make sure it's paired with DDR3 2400 or some such which will be close to what initial DDR4 is going to come out at, granted DDR4 is supposed to use less power at those speeds.

Heck how about taking an iGP disabled Kaveri and push it out at whatever a 220W TDP gets you. At least it will be marketing points for an upcoming product line rather than the last gasps of an older product line.

 

[inf64]

What if Steamroller doesn't give as much improvements as everyone is expecting?

Trust me, it cannot bring as little as IB->Haswell. That is almost a given

 

[Mallibu]

I already considered Crysis 3 in #232. Your figure is very interesting. I predicted a 1-5% performance gain for Hasfail (aka Hasbeen aka Failwell) and crysis 3 shows an incredible increase of about 1.5% over the ivy.

An entire FPS more (66->67) is going to convince me that maybe some enthusiast in the past moved the decimal point when claimed we would see a 15% improvement.

Both the series 8000 and 9000 have 8 cores (as Anand knows):

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7066/amd-announces-fx9590-and-fx9370-return-of-the-ghz-race

You can count them

It is Intel 3770k 4770k which has only 4 real cores plus 4 virtual cores.

Since you judge CPUs based on GPU bottlenecked games then :

by your logic we can safely assume that FX8350 is an uber-fail since it has the same fps as the good old 2009 Phenom II.