|
Advice Beginners BIOS Guide CPUs Links Mainboards Memory Network Storage Video/Sound Cards Contact Forum SiteMap Sponsors WebNews Home 
|
. | . |
Prices: Mainboards ABIT ASUS Chaintech Shuttle Soyo Tyan CPU Intel P4 2.4C-800 P4 2.6C-800 P4 2.8C-800 P4 3.0-800 P4 3.2-800 AMD AthlonXP XP 1700+ XP 2000+ XP 2400+ XP 2500+ XP 2700+ XP 3000+ XP 3200+ Athlon64 Athlon64 3200+ Athlon64 FX-51 Opteron Opteron 240 Opteron 242 Opteron 244 Opteron 246 Memory Corsair Crucial Kingston Mushkin OCZ |
|
|
|
LOSTCIRCUITS
|
|
| AMD's Phenom X3 8750 - The Power of 3 | |
|
(Author: Michael Schuette, April 27, 2008) | |
Summary
Three Cores instead of four is the word of the day. AMD follows in the footsteps of ATI's "Pro" series to increase yield on the Phenom series. As it turns out, though, it is not just an issue of reducing the number of cores and incurring some scaling back of performance, there are also software recognition and licensing issues that come into play. In the end, while the Phenom X3 performs admirably well in some applications, it's performance comes in last in a number of other applications simply because, in a triple core configuration, those will only utilize a single core.
Does that really matter for the end user? Read on ...
AMD’s Triple Core Phenom
Three has always been an odd number, there is poison ivy, there is the infamous triumvirate ending with the assassination of Cesar, there is the well documented issue that in groups of three always two will gang up against the third, and of course there is clover, the probably most harmless form of things coming in threes. Three is also a fascinating number with three points defining a plane, with triangles and triangulation creating the foundation of geometry and tracking algorithms and, needless to say, redundancy and error checking algorithms. Three-wheelers and even tripods, though, are notorious for their lack of stability and tendency for tipping over, even though they provide a minimalistic solution of self-sufficient balance under static conditions.
1-2-3-4 cores in the lineup of AMD CPUs
What does this have to do with AMD’s release of triple core CPUs? Computing as we know it is a binary technology, with everything starting from simple bits and bytes coming in powers of 2, that is 1, 2, 4 … 16777216 and further. In other words, there are no odd numbers, and this thread also runs through most of the software currently available in terms of support of whatever number of CPUs is at work.
The most advanced processors, even though they are highly specialized, are currently graphics processors and there, it does not appear to be any problem going with any non-power-of-2 number of execution units. ATI has set precedents with its “Pro” series of graphics cards running on three legs and offering a tremendous “bang for the buck”. Whether the trickling down of the same philosophy from GPU to CPU was caused by the corporate merger, or whether there were other factors that influenced the decision to move to a ¾ die is besides the point, but the fact is that triple cores were released and now we have to deal with them one way or the other.
In theory, really nothing is wrong with three cores, but it only takes a look at Microsoft’s monstrosity of an operating system called Vista to find out that DRM paranoia has not stopped at anti piracy but has also included special precautions against odd numbers of CPU. That is, a Vista license in its native form can only work on CPUs coming in the power of 2. Luckily, Microsoft has published a hotfix to address this licensing issue and allow the use of three cores. Well, it is not quite that easy, getting the hotfix requires submitting an online request that is then answered via email by Microsoft to reveal the download location and password necessary to extract the compressed file. It took about 4 hours for Microsoft to reply to our email BEFORE the triple cores were released to the public – well within the 8 business hours response period posted by Microsoft on their website. After the official release of the X3 processors into the retail channel, we checked again and the response was emailed by Microsoft after 4 hours – again within the claimed time of response. Keep in mind that the patch is not elementary for the operation of the X3 processor, all it does is increase the number of cores allowed by Vista (or Server 2008) from two to three. Intriguingly, Windows XP does not have any licensing problems with the triple core design, yet another reason to stick with XP, regardless of what fire-sale Microsoft has on Vista licenses.
So…. The next question is, if the OS does not support three cores without patch, what can we expect from the different software applications. Is the number of threads going to be limited by the power of 2 and if so, which power of 2 are we going to be looking at? The reason to ask this question is very simple. Numerous software applications have the naughty tendency of just defaulting to a single thread if there is any unknown variable in the CPUID – like the number of cores that is supported. To make a long story short, it did not take very long to find exactly this issue in some of the most commonly used software out there, we’ll get to those data in just a bit.
next page: => New AMD CPUs and Specs =>
All advice and educational articles on LostCircuits are free, but if you feel you can, please make a small donation to us!
