AMD desktop rejig: six-core 'Thuban' set for Q2 2010?
Phenom IIs out, Phenom IIs in
AMD is reported to have rejiggered its phase-out and phase-in plans for various members of its Phenom II and Athlon II processor lines.
According to a report on Monday by the Taiwanese market-watchers at DigiTimes, "sources at motherboard makers" say that AMD has stopped taking orders for the 2.6GHz Phenom II X4 910 and 3.0GHz 945, and will stop shipping those processors entirely in the second quarter of 2010.
In addition, sources say, AMD will end orders for the 3.4GHz Phenom II X4 965 and 2.8GHz 925 processors in Q1 2010, while orders for the 3.2GHz 955 are scheduled to come to a close in Q2, with a 95W version of the 955 to be added to the lineup in Q2 2010.
The DigiTimes sources also add that AMD will "stop taking orders for several Phenom II X4 800, X3 700, X2 500, Athlon II X4 600, X3 400 series CPUs next year, leaving the Phenom II X4 820, Phenom II X3 740 and Phenom II X2 550 in its lineup," plus add an 80W Phenom II X2 555 in Q4 2009, and a 95W Athlon II X4 640 and 95W Athlon II X2 445 in Q2 2010.
Rounding out the AMD rumor-fest is the purported introduction of a six-core desktop processor codenamed Thuban, said to be scheduled for release in Q2 2010. This 45nm, 2.8GHz part is reported to be set for the company's Socket AM3, and to have 6MB of L3 cache.
When asked for comment on the DigiTimes report, an AMD spokesperson told The Reg: "We do not comment on rumor or speculations…and this is very much rumor and speculation." ®
COMMENTS
Will that Bring In AM3 R.2.
One obvious point is dose AM3 Revised socket have to do with change. both line cuts and socket revision are ways out, indication of GOOD cpu. Remember Barcelona or others that have sold out & gone for good. plenty.
drashek
What will AMD do
@Matt -- don't worry. People use home PCs for four things:
1. Basic office work
2. Web browsing
3. Entertainment
4. Limited content creation
Of course, number one hardly needs more than one core. Number two can benefit from two of them (browser+flash), number 3 will benefit from more cores (more and more games are springing up to take advantage of multiple cores). Of course, 4 is going to take advantage of all the cores your PC can muster.
And multiple cores make for a future-proof investment -- most applications are written to take advantage of multithreading and it is the current paradigm. Even if a dual-core CPU is fine today, it may not be enough in a month or two. If the current HD movies can tax one core if you don't have hardware acceleration, future movies might tax four of them. Sucks to be you if you don't have multiple cores then.
And multiple cores help out a lot in normal usage, too. With more of them, you're able to be browsing, listening to music, running flash and no stuff in the background will disrupt your work (including e.g. virus scanners).
Six might be overkill at the moment, but people will eventually find use for them. And individual cores can idle quite nicely, Windows 7 scheduler is supposedly written to be aware of an idling core and will not assign a workload to it if it would be underperforming.
@h4rm0ny -- AMD wouldn't shoot themselves in a foot like that. They need a well-rounded lineup and new parts should be forthcoming.
@Gary F -- I read online that AMD is well able to create their own i5/i7 equivalent, problem being price given current AMD market share. Magny-Cours and Sao Paolo are supposed to close the gap, and if Intel screws up: 1) by focusing too much on the integrated GPU in Sandy Bridge, 2) if 32 nm ends up too expensive to manufacture and as a result offers no tangible benefit compared to the price point*, Bulldozer might very well end up faster than future chips from Intel.
*) And it's not far-fetched, too -- analysts point to the fact that 32 nm might be too expensive to manufacture, especially at first.
No 965?
I was going to buy one of these as my Christmas present. What do I do? Is there something better about to come out at the same price point? Will the 965 fall or rise in price if it's discontinued? I can see why AMD don't like to encourage rumours like this - makes it very difficult for us customers to decide what to do.
Are so many cores needed for the average desktop?
With the current crop of desktop OSs, especially Windows, most of those cores are going to sit idle the majority of the time. I can see the advantages of dual-cores, even quad-cores for heavy desktop users or Linux, but six? Being realistic, the majority of new PCs bought with these chips will be running Windows 7, and although it is described as having "better multi-core support than Windows XP", I haven't read anything saying it was designed from the ground up to really take advantage of as many as six cores (any MS gurus please correct me if I'm wrong).
Hex-cores in servers = yes please! Hex-cores in desktops = probable waste of electricity?
