Newcastle? Nope

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burningrave101

[H]F Junkie
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Sep 9, 2003
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I dont know if this has been discussed here yet or not so dont flame me if it has lol, but i just thought i would point this out since i found it interesting when reading articles today on the new A64's.

The Athlon 64 3000+'s are based on the same core as the 3200's which is Clawhammer. I would say that AMD got the idea that they could get a processor out on the market at half the price of their 3200's and also make money off the 3200's that were inoperatable because of defective cache. The die size of the 3000+ and 3200+ are both 193mm2. Was AMD really trying to create a cheaper processor for the customer or were they just looking to make some money off the deffective cores they were going to have to just scrap anyways. Maybe the plan was to kill two birds with one stone. Who knows.

As you can see, there is one more core there aka Newcastle, which distinguishing feature is also smaller 512KB L2 cache. Therefore, many of you could have considered Athlon 64 3000+ to be the first representative of the Newcastle family, but this is not quite correct. Newcastle core will be used for the upcoming Socket939 Athlon 64 processors, which will also feature a dual-channel memory controller besides the 512KB L2 cache. The idea behind Newcastle core has to do with the intention to reduce the production costs for the new AMD64 processors by reducing the die size. The freshly released Athlon 64 3000+ is designed for Socket754 mainboards and features a single-channel memory controller. It is based on Clawhammer core and features the entire L2 cache memory of the Clawhammer, one half of which is disabled. This way it would be completely incorrect to say that the new Athlon 64 3000+ is the first processor on the new core. It looks as if Athlon 64 3000+ were about to stay the only processor with 512KB L2 cache for Socket754, at least for the next half a year.
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http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/athlon64-3000_3.html

Despite the lower price, the chip likely costs about the same to manufacture as the version with the larger cache because it is about the same size, analysts said. AMD declined to comment on the manufacturing cost. Company executives have said that a version of the Athlon 64 with a smaller die, the piece of silicon itself, won't appear until the 90-nanometer manufacturing process kicks off in the second half of next year.

"They have disabled half of the cache," said Nathan Brookwood, an analyst at Insight 64. Still, the new chip could help the company improve its output. Some chips in the testing process get thrown out because the full 1MB cache doesn't work. However, many of these chips can be resold as 512KB chips and will not show any flaws.
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http://news.com.com/2100-1006-5129122.html
 
It has been discussed before, but I think you are pretty much spot on. I don't think it is a true newcastle, but instead a convenient way to sell some chips that otherwise would have had to be thrown away.

It is however, good thing for them, and a good thing for us that they did it. Win win situation.
 
Originally posted by DaveX
<courtesy edit >
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calm down bud, the search is still down, and he hasn't said anything flaming in nature. (at least I didn't preceive it that way)
 
It's like AMD egging overclockers on to compare who has the biggest penis. They can get rid of 754-pin cpu's in preparation for the transition to 939-pin and make some money. A64 3000+ still performs good though, making it a win-win situation like Doc said.
 
Originally posted by DaveX
*KUMBAYA*
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Well im not to worried about flames from nitwits like yourself cause they rarely have anything to back up their clames so i'll post wherever i like. And i wasn't trying to start a flame over my thread and i've only started viewing a few threads in the AMD section the last few days so i didn't know how much it had been talked about already and said that in my original post if you had payed any attention at all mr fangirl.

EDIT: WHAT THE HECK LOL KUMBAYA?
 
Originally posted by burningrave101
Well im not to worried about flames from nitwits like yourself cause they rarely have anything to back up their clames so i'll post wherever i like. And i wasn't trying to start a flame over my thread and i've only started viewing a few threads in the AMD section the last few days so i didn't know how much it had been talked about already and said that in my original post if you had payed any attention at all mr fangirl.
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Ok, whatever man. Keep thinking that.
 
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