Am3+ is dead after...

[Zarathustra[H]]

It wouldn't shock me. With die shrinks and increased core counts in the past this has occured a few times. Hell my QX9775 processors had a TDP of 150watts. Today's quad cores have a TDP of less than half that. The Core i7 980X had a TDP which was in line with previous generation quad cores like the Core i7 975EE but with two more cores. (As I recall.)

Aren't current SB-E hexacore parts 8-core parts with two cores disabled?

If I recall, there are 8 core Xeons where the lower clock speeds allow all 8 cores to fit in the power envelope.

Since that is the SB-E configuration, I really don't think it's a stretch that if Haswell winds up being efficient enough all 8 cores might be enabled in top end desktop parts.

 

[Dan_D]

Aren't current SB-E hexacore parts 8-core parts with two cores disabled?

If I recall, there are 8 core Xeons where the lower clock speeds allow all 8 cores to fit in the power envelope.

Since that is the SB-E configuration, I really don't think it's a stretch that if Haswell winds up being efficient enough all 8 cores might be enabled in top end desktop parts.

That's my point. Right now they can enable 8 cores with a lower clock speed and hit the TDP window they are aiming for or they can enable higher clocks on hex core or quad core parts. I don't think it's unlikely that we'll get reasonable clocks and 8 cores enabled in Haswell within TDP ranges suitable for existing LGA2011 boards.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

That's my point. Right now they can enable 8 cores with a lower clock speed and hit the TDP window they are aiming for or they can enable higher clocks on hex core or quad core parts. I don't think it's unlikely that we'll get reasonable clocks and 8 cores enabled in Haswell within TDP ranges suitable for existing LGA2011 boards.

Maybe this will even be possible with IB-E? By the time these are ready, the process may be mature enough that power savings over the previous generation is greater than with the original IB release.

Expect them to be expensive though...

 

[Dan_D]

Maybe this will even be possible with IB-E? By the time these are ready, the process may be mature enough that power savings over the previous generation is greater than with the original IB release.

Expect them to be expensive though...

Possible. We saw essentially the same move with Gulftown. Die shrink, slight IPC improvements, and the same power envelope with two more cores. Overclocking performance improved greatly over Nehalem. If we do see it on Ivy Bridge-E I would expect it to be costly. Perhaps following Gulftown's lead with a single $1,000 Extreme Edition part.

 

[/dev/null]

The 990FX chipset based boards are a great example. They were designed more with Bulldozer in mind but when we reviewed a few using older Phenom II X6's we ran into nothing but trouble with them. Many people reported the opposite problem. Especially with older 890FX chipset based boards supposedly sporting newer VRD implementations for Bulldozer. AM3+ is a mess. It took far too long to sort out and was handled poorly. As a reviewer I dread the thought of another generation of boards using the same dated hardware for newer CPUs. At least with Intel we don't have all these processor board / compatibility issues. And surprise surprise when they stuck with LGA775 for so long it was a mess often times too.

I'mgoing to search for this. I"m thinking of buying a 990FX board to use with my 1090T (I don't overclock)

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I'mgoing to search for this. I"m thinking of buying a 990FX board to use with my 1090T (I don't overclock)

Dan's experience was far from universal, and in many cases were launch problems that were fixed with BIOS updates.

When I was waiting for Bulldozer I found myself in need of an upgrade and couldn't wait until bulldozer launch, so I bought a MSI 990FXA-GD80 and a Phenom II x6 1090T to hold me over until Bulldozer was launched.

When BD turned out to be the fiasco it was, I became a little irrational and plunked down too much money on my current CPU & Mobo, but for th eperiod I had it, the 1090T and MSI 990FX board worked great and were rock solid (just not as fast as I had liked)

I ran the combo at 4.1Ghz in my rig with two Radeon 6970's in x-fire rock solid for 5 months, and now the motherboard and CPU live on in my stepsons rig at 3.8Ghz (smaller cooler) and a GTX470 and has not been problematic at all.

So, I never experienced any of the issues Dan complained about in his review, but I was also on a much more mature BIOS than the pre-release version in his test.

 

[Dan_D]

Dan's experience was far from universal, and in many cases were launch problems that were fixed with firmware updates.

When I was waiting for Bulldozer I found myself in need of an upgrade and couldn't wait until bulldozer launch, so I bought a MSI 990FXA-GD80 and a Phenom II x6 1090T to hold me over until Bulldozer was launched.

When BD turned out to be the fiasco it was, I became a little irrational and plunked down too much money on my current CPU & Mobo, but for th eperiod I had it, the 1090T and MSI 990FX board worked great and were rock solid (just not as fast as I had liked)

I ran the combo at 4.1Ghz in my rig with two Radeon 6970's in x-fire rock solid for 5 months, and now the motherboard and CPU live on in my stepsons rig at 3.8Ghz (smaller cooler) and a GTX470 and has not been problematic at all.

So, I never experienced any of the issues Dan complained about in his review, but I was also on a much more mature BIOS than the pre-release version in his test.

Yeah they are fine now but back then pretty much all of these boards were problematic to some degree.

 

[ebduncan]

Yeah they are fine now but back then pretty much all of these boards were problematic to some degree.

pretty much this.

I bought the gigabyte 990fxa ud3 before bulldozer was launched, for my 1055T and figured i would drop in Bulldozer when it came. Was plagued with all sorts of issues at first, until about 5 bios later at F5 where most problems were fixed. Now on F9C beta, and still streamlining things and making it better. So not really a issue anymore, but it was a issue at first.

Oh well Bulldozer launched I swaped in a 8120 overclocked it to 5ghz, and was happy. But playing with different bios finding which one suited me the best was a chore. Oh well all is settled now and its faster than my room-mates 2500k @ 4.4ghz in just about all things besides gaming. Even then I often get better FPS than he does, but he only has a single 7970, while I have crossfire 7870's