Athlon II X4 Take 2

Kinda disappointed there isnt a Black Edition.

For $100 you can get the Phenom II X2 550 which can OC to 3.8 without breaking a sweat. I wonder if that wouldnt be the better way to go.

Still, Im glad to see this. As a gamer on an extreme budget, Im all for bargain performance.
 
Which ones? The 620 and 630 are at Newegg and a few other online shops.

The 45W chips not sure, later this month or next I'm guessing

Or do you mean in pre-builts like in Best Buy?
 
Gym Rat said:
Kinda disappointed there isnt a Black Edition.

For $100 you can get the Phenom II X2 550 which can OC to 3.8 without breaking a sweat. I wonder if that wouldnt be the better way to go.

Still, Im glad to see this. As a gamer on an extreme budget, Im all for bargain performance.
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Ah the Kuma of the 45nm era... Nice OC but that sounds like a seriously hot core at that speed. Especially as these are normally lower quality cores.

There will obviously be BE editions one day for now they likely just want to get a few months worth of cores out before they focused on those types.

They have 125W versions to get out. Likely to be very very fast.

65W mid power versions obviously

And the 45W versions about to arrive. 2.2 2.3Ghz that type of thing for HTPCs

Then you've got the same for the X3 versions

That is ALOT of market to cover in the next few months. I doubt there is room in the fab schedule to put in unlocked versions during that time. Next year maybe.
 
Zachstar said:
Overclocked backups for teh win then I guess!

Hopefully they will have more versions out soon. Perhaps one at 65W
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I'd love to see a 65w 3.0ghz model released. I don't think they could do it now without cherry picking but once C3 hits that may be a possibility.
 
TheBlueChanell said:
I'd love to see a 65w 3.0ghz model released. I don't think they could do it now without cherry picking but once C3 hits that may be a possibility.
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An X3 Maybe and that has to be one hell of a cherry picked core meaning expensive expensive expensive. Tho with AMD as without market at it is they would likely try if they could.
 
Zachstar said:
An X3 Maybe and that has to be one hell of a cherry picked core meaning expensive expensive expensive. Tho with AMD as without market at it is they would likely try if they could.
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That's what I mean. They'd have to charge and extremely high price premium for the current cherry picked X4's. That would defeat the whole purpose of propus to begin with. According to what I've read C3 is supposed to bring lower power draw for higher frequences. I could see a 65w 3.0ghz model being a possibility if that is the case.
 
C3 does look good and will help AMD sell cores while Intel puts the pressure on with 32nm and HUGE pressure from ARM based systems like Cortex,Snapdragon and of course Tegra

It just does not really look like it can get the wattage that low and on top of that they are already seriously delayed on Propus (They were supposed to be out in the April-May timeframe.) My guess is at best C3 for Athlon X4s Q2 next year maybe...
 
Unless ARM (reduced x86) starts showing some real oomph(!) in HTPC (that means all HTPC tasks... not just bluray!), I'll stick with low power Intel/AMD.

Though, the Tegra is intersting...
 
Zachstar said:
C3 does look good and will help AMD sell cores while Intel puts the pressure on with 32nm and HUGE pressure from ARM based systems like Cortex,Snapdragon and of course Tegra

It just does not really look like it can get the wattage that low and on top of that they are already seriously delayed on Propus (They were supposed to be out in the April-May timeframe.) My guess is at best C3 for Athlon X4s Q2 next year maybe...
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I'm just really liking the idea of using a 3.0ghz X4 an HD5770 and a 30gb SSD for a mini-itx build. It'd be one hell of a build, powerful but extremely energy and cost efficient.
 
And absolutely useless. Games are mostly severely CPU limited. If you are going to use an X4 Athlon save yourself money and accept lower quality graphics and get a cheaper video card. ATI will have mainstream and submainstream 5 series out in a month or two.

That L3 does make a difference in games.
 
Gym Rat said:
Kinda disappointed there isnt a Black Edition.

For $100 you can get the Phenom II X2 550 which can OC to 3.8 without breaking a sweat. I wonder if that wouldnt be the better way to go.

Still, Im glad to see this. As a gamer on an extreme budget, Im all for bargain performance.
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same here, if the 620 were BE i'd probably be saving up every penny i can find, i just dont like the idea of bus-clocking anymore (my 7750 spoiled me :p)

as for the budget, your 7750 isnt the weakest part of your system imho (i have one myself, paired with a gtx260), i'd say a new video card should be way above a cpu upgrade on your list
 
Zachstar said:
And absolutely useless. Games are mostly severely CPU limited. If you are going to use an X4 Athlon save yourself money and accept lower quality graphics and get a cheaper video card. ATI will have mainstream and submainstream 5 series out in a month or two.

That L3 does make a difference in games.
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If you are referring to my post useless for what? An X4 640, 4770/5770 and a small SSD is an extremely gaming capable machine. Pair it with a cheap 120hz 22" Monitor and you have yourself a nice little gaming rig.

You could easily power that off the 300w PSU in the SG05. Throw an H50 in there and you have yourself an awesome little rig.
 
Its going to be CPU limited thats all im saying. I think a cheaper card will do you better. As I hear even the 5770 will be 200USD
 
Zachstar said:
Its going to be CPU limited thats all im saying. I think a cheaper card will do you better. As I hear even the 5770 will be 200USD
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This pc is just my vision for my next build. I have to finish the one I already started before moving onto #2. ;) by the time I'm ready to start building the 5770 will have probably fallen to the 4770's price point and the C3 stepping will probably be out.
 
jeremyshaw said:
Unless ARM (reduced x86) starts showing some real oomph(!) in HTPC (that means all HTPC tasks... not just bluray!), I'll stick with low power Intel/AMD.

Though, the Tegra is intersting...
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What do you mean "All HTPC Tasks"

Lets just say Tegra for now because there is not enough info on Snapdragon and Cortex is designed for things like the beagle board (Tho that board does do 1080P)

It has different cores for different uses. It has an ARM11 and ARM7 packed in with GPU HD video decoder HD video encoder Audio and others.

No it does not interface with TV tuners yet tho that could be easily rectfied if drivers are written for USB tuners. Those tuners simply pull the digital video from the stream and send it through the cable. There is no encoding needed and 1080i 720 will be easy for it to run especially if whatever Media Center software specially written for tegra uses CUDA.

Ion is great but not for Media Center, Hulu or HD youtube. XBMC and COD4 L4D and other source games are about its only strength and with XBMC you have to use a linux distro for Hardware Video. And then all of this takes power not a whole lot but still enough that you will want to shut it down or atleast leave it in standby.

With Tegra such a nettop will always be on. Restarted at most once a few days. As the cores are tuned off when not in use. When not watching video or being used to browse the web (Hardware accelerated) It will simply be used to play music all day.

That drew the topic quite a bit off topic but you have to admit it is AWESOME having all these choices late in 2009.
 
Ok folks we have some new info. Sadly it looks like things are going to slow down a bit.

http://xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/displa...re_Athlon_II_Chips_with_Windows_7_Launch.html

X3 seems to have been pushed back to bask in the PR spotlight of the Windows 7 launch

Advanced Micro Devices plans to release its first AMD Athlon II X3 microprocessors with three cores on the day of Microsoft Windows 7 operating system launch, on October 22, 2009,
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I could have sworn that X3 was coming much quicker than that the good news is it seems AMD is going to launch most of the lineup including 45W Tris near the same time and the article seems to indicate they will be cheap.

The first triple-core Athlon II X3 processors will be models 425 and 435, which will function at 2.70GHz and 2.80GHz, respectively. The central processing units will feature 1.5MB of cache (512KB per core), will have thermal design power of 95W and will be compatible with AM2+ and AM3+ infrastructure. AMD will also energy-efficient triple-core microprocessors – models 400e and 405e – with thermal design power of 45W.
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Also hopefully this part of the news indicates that more quads and 45W Quads and duals will come out before that

In addition to triple-core chips, AMD will also broaden the lineup of its low-power (45W) desktop offerings with Athlon II X2 235e and 240e as well as Athlon II X4 600e and 605e central processing units.
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It's pretty clear from the article that those CPUs are going to be launched along side the Athlon X3. Not before. Not after.
 
Doubtful to me one they don't want to be launching 10 different CPUs on the same day. Second the reason they may want to delay the X3s is because they have been getting great Propus yields meaning there wont be enough with damaged cores to go around and getting just turned off cores out now will just make the unlockers go after them like flies to honey.

No they will be launched before hand. The X3s will wait until they build up stock of enough damaged cores.
 
Zachstar said:
Doubtful to me one they don't want to be launching 10 different CPUs on the same day. Second the reason they may want to delay the X3s is because they have been getting great Propus yields meaning there wont be enough with damaged cores to go around and getting just turned off cores out now will just make the unlockers go after them like flies to honey.

No they will be launched before hand. The X3s will wait until they build up stock of enough damaged cores.
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:rolleyes: Okay. Whatever. It's not like you haven't been wrong in the pass with dictatin- guessing what AMD is going to do. As for what's actually in the article (and not made up, straight out of just your head) it sounds like AMD plans to either release or just announce an X3 along with several new CPUs (most of which will probably be hard launched that day).
:rolleyes:
 
Zachstar said:
Ah the Kuma of the 45nm era... Nice OC but that sounds like a seriously hot core at that speed. Especially as these are normally lower quality cores.
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Actually its not that bad. I tested this OC with Prime95 for 8 hours and the highest it ever got was bouncing back and forth between 48-50. Stays in the low 30's when online and low 40's when gaming. Max temp for these things is 72 I believe. I dont have too fancy a cooler, just an Arctic Cooling Alpine 64 but my case does have 2 exhaust fans (120mm, 140mm) and 1 intake fan (120mm) so Im sure that helps. I tried to get 3.3 to work but havent had any luck yet. Ive read about a ton of people getting 3.4 so Ill still keep trying. Ill be buying a P2 550 once they get under $100 anyway so this chip is expendable. :D

Ill be very interested in seeing what the Athlon X3 is capable of. Considering that the Phenom X3's damn near outperform their X4 counterparts, itll be very interesting to see what the bargain triple cores can do.
 
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Well hopefully the delay simply means they want to get out some actual damaged cores rather than undamaged cores just to fill a price range. That way they wont just be an unlocker's fantasy.

The reason I say that is more than ever now that I DONT want AMD raising the prices on the tri cores because they figure unlockers will pay more for an attempt.
 
Zachstar said:
What do you mean "All HTPC Tasks"

Lets just say Tegra for now because there is not enough info on Snapdragon and Cortex is designed for things like the beagle board (Tho that board does do 1080P)

It has different cores for different uses. It has an ARM11 and ARM7 packed in with GPU HD video decoder HD video encoder Audio and others.

No it does not interface with TV tuners yet tho that could be easily rectfied if drivers are written for USB tuners. Those tuners simply pull the digital video from the stream and send it through the cable. There is no encoding needed and 1080i 720 will be easy for it to run especially if whatever Media Center software specially written for tegra uses CUDA.

Ion is great but not for Media Center, Hulu or HD youtube. XBMC and COD4 L4D and other source games are about its only strength and with XBMC you have to use a linux distro for Hardware Video. And then all of this takes power not a whole lot but still enough that you will want to shut it down or atleast leave it in standby.

With Tegra such a nettop will always be on. Restarted at most once a few days. As the cores are tuned off when not in use. When not watching video or being used to browse the web (Hardware accelerated) It will simply be used to play music all day.

That drew the topic quite a bit off topic but you have to admit it is AWESOME having all these choices late in 2009.
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What I meant is these system could be integrated into TV to replace basic HTPC.
TV tuner would be built into the TV, so...
 
I am looking at upgrading my old Athlon single core system. I have been reading and both the Athlon II X4 620* and the Phenom II 550 seem to be Deneb cores, which means both can be unlocked to become a Phenom II X4 processor. As I understand, the 550 can be overclocked a bit higher than the 620 with L3 enabled. The tradoff is that one might not be able to unlock all cores off the 550 while the L3 cache of the 620 is almost always intact.

I am correct in my assumption? The 620 costs €80 while the 550 costs €85, which means the pricedifference is no issue

*Well, at least the ADX620WFGIBOX which I can buy is not a Propus yet as far as I know.
 
From what I read only some of the 620 and 630 are Deneb cores, some are the new Propus.

How do you know the ADX620WFGIBOX is a Deneb core for sure?
 
Ok lets get this straight.

They did what I call a "PR Run" By throwing up a Athlon 620 on newegg for 125 USD this was not a propus but a L3 disabled deneb. It was a PR stunt that quickly turned wrong when unlockers started flocking to it because like the PR stunts of the past. It was a perfectly good deneb core off the line with just a switch thrown to turn off the L3 there was very few damaged L3 denebs in the Athlon X4 deneb line.

This time the ones you see on Newegg are true Propus cores you cannot unlock the L3 and by comparason with the "old" 620 there is less power consumed during normal use because there is no L3 period sucking power even when disabled.
 
Shane_c82 said:
From what I read only some of the 620 and 630 are Deneb cores, some are the new Propus.

How do you know the ADX620WFGIBOX is a Deneb core for sure?
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The ones on newegg right now are true propus cores. They MAY sneak some of the remaining older stock denebs back in but I highly doubt it. Most likely they will just turn the L3 back on with them and sell them as Phenom IIs
 
Man. I think I'm going to bite on the 620 for now, wait for the E series ones for another project. I want to play around with it (currently using an E2180 OCed). :D
 
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Zachstar said:
Ought to be a fun core to play with. Or build a medium gaming rig with.
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No gaming for mine, it's replacing an E4300 in my file server/vm box. I also picked up a 780G motherboard so I can use the integrated graphics which should also save power. I might even underclock it to 2.2 or 2.4, I'll have to play around with it to see the performance impact.
 
Shane_c82 said:
So my question remains for him.

How does he know the ADX620WFGIBOX is a Deneb core for sure?
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The Romanian guy from xstremesystems.org forum had one, so I assumed those must be the denebs. I was probably wrong in my assumption, just like I was wrong in assuming that fab 1 in Dresden wasn't ready to massproduce Propus cores yet. I heard they had production problems. I should have said the AACYCs were Denebs. Anyway, here is the pic of the Deneb 620.

Seems like I am too late and have to go for the 550 now:(
 
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lol Yes, the mass confusion is awesome to watch.

Anyways, ordered mine! Later this week I'm going to have to order the mem and mobo. :)
Now I just have to find out how I'm going to modify the Apple case I'm working on to fit the mobo better.
 
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