When will the low end am3 chips be stocked again?

JHefile

Necrophilia Makes Me [H]ard
Joined
Jun 22, 2003
Messages
1,180
Hi.

Did I miss something? Are they being phased out right now? If they are what is the replacement? Do they expect everyone to go am3+?

I guess I'm not surprised to see them emptying off the shelves, but at the same time I don't see any suitable replacement for these.
 
They've EOL almost all of the Pherom II chips. Once they are gone your only AMD upgrade path will be Bulldozer variants going forward...quite sad actually.
 
yep as postered above mentioned, 45nm parts are no longer in production.
you may find the odd X2/X4/X6 floating around on some retailers shelves but once there gone, that's it, no more.

i looked at one of my big local pc shops, the only 45nm part they have left is an X2 560.

BD being what it is, if you have an AM3+ socket, PD maybe worth looking forward to.

if you're looking to upgrade, i'd hang on to your AM2 system till the revised AMD CPU's surface sometime this year (was it Q1 or Q2?). when PD arrives, i don't doubt they'll be better than BD, the question is will it be better than deneb/thuban in 'IPC per core'?

IB will be out shortly too with a decent platform compared to the orindary SB P67/Z68 MBs (PCIe 3, more native SATA3 6Gb ports? and native USB3).
 
used market is your friend.. easiest way to find them for pretty decent prices.
 
Thanks All

My situation is I have a phenom2 already in my one system. I intend to leave it in tact. I did buy a am3+ board and it's been sitting around my place and I'm trying to figure out what I am going to put in it.

I am kinda scratching my head.
 
The microcenter near me has been running the same AMD deals for nearly 2 years. Buy a phenom get 50 dollars off a mobo. Online sights probably aren't going to be keeping stock, B@M stores are your best bet. I just built 3 phenom x4 systems in the past 2 months on pocket change.
 
Thanks All

My situation is I have a phenom2 already in my one system. I intend to leave it in tact. I did buy a am3+ board and it's been sitting around my place and I'm trying to figure out what I am going to put in it.

I am kinda scratching my head.

PD 'should' be released sometime in the 1st half of this year.
It's suspected to at least match PII in IPC tho hopefully a bit better.

Can't wait till then, you can still dig up new x2/x4/x6 if you look hard enough.
Or as sirmonkey suggested, hit up the forum 'for sale' threads or flebay.
 
PD 'should' be released sometime in the 1st half of this year.
It's suspected to at least match PII in IPC tho hopefully a bit better.

Can't wait till then, you can still dig up new x2/x4/x6 if you look hard enough.
Or as sirmonkey suggested, hit up the forum 'for sale' threads or flebay.

I'll wait for the new chips.

Thanks!
 
Piledriver cores will be released 1H of 2012, but the Vishera AM3+ chips with improved Piledriver cores should be here late 2012.

If you're looking to see how well Vishera does then you'll want to keep your eyes on Trinity, as it sports (probably) the same Piledriver cores that Vishera will use except that the Trinity APUs will lack L3 cache.
 
Thanks All

My situation is I have a phenom2 already in my one system. I intend to leave it in tact. I did buy a am3+ board and it's been sitting around my place and I'm trying to figure out what I am going to put in it.

I am kinda scratching my head.


honestly, if you are into overclocking, i'd say put the 945 in the am3+ board. just recently did that with a athlon II x4 645 which was on a 890GX am3 board which maxed out its overclock at 3.65Ghz. threw it in a cheapo am3+ gigabyte 970 motherboard and was able to break the 4Ghz barrier with a max stable overclock of 4.18Ghz @ 1.53v. so if thats your thing it might be worth a shot to try it. just wish my 940 was an am3 processor to see if it was just a fluke or if the newer power circuitry used on the am3+ socket made all the difference.
 
honestly, if you are into overclocking, i'd say put the 945 in the am3+ board. just recently did that with a athlon II x4 645 which was on a 890GX am3 board which maxed out its overclock at 3.65Ghz. threw it in a cheapo am3+ gigabyte 970 motherboard and was able to break the 4Ghz barrier with a max stable overclock of 4.18Ghz @ 1.53v. so if thats your thing it might be worth a shot to try it. just wish my 940 was an am3 processor to see if it was just a fluke or if the newer power circuitry used on the am3+ socket made all the difference.

Interesting.... ty

I can get 3.5ghz now with the chip in this old gigabyte board too. I might try it.
 
Interesting.... ty

I can get 3.5ghz now with the chip in this old gigabyte board too. I might try it.

its worth a shot, the one nice thing with am3+ on almost all the boards is it has a separate CPU-NB multiplier where as the 890gx board didn't so even at 4.18Ghz the NB is sitting at just a tad over 2Ghz instead of what would of been something like 3.1Ghz which we all know the x4's won't do. i believe that is the same problem the 945 suffers from as well since its a half multiplier lower then the 645.
 
I just ordered a Phenom II x4 960T, There is another thread which goes on about unlocking cores and overclocking it.
 
I know the Microcenter near my Cincinnatti area still has some 1100T's in stock @ 179.99.

Not that that applies to everyone just that MC does have some older AMD stuff still, so check in your area. Plus Ebay, though looks like the 1100t goes for around 200. lol Amazon has 1090t and 1100t like 280-300+ now.

960T should be another good option if you get 6 cores unlocked and it doesn't run to hot. Then it's an amazing deal imho if you also know how to OC them.
 
The AM3 chips have dried up super fast. I was looking around earlier and saw the same Amazon prices Teletran8 did. My eyes rolled so hard that I thought the weight shift was going to launch me out of my chair. AMD must be super serious about forcing people into the AM3+ chips though I don't know why anyone would want to intentionally draw attention to the current ones. They would have been better off letting them die a quiet death and then doing a push when the newer ones come out (provided they can actually out-process a Phenom II).
 
The AM3 chips have dried up super fast. I was looking around earlier and saw the same Amazon prices Teletran8 did. My eyes rolled so hard that I thought the weight shift was going to launch me out of my chair. AMD must be super serious about forcing people into the AM3+ chips though I don't know why anyone would want to intentionally draw attention to the current ones. They would have been better off letting them die a quiet death and then doing a push when the newer ones come out (provided they can actually out-process a Phenom II).

happens with every new socket, then after a year the prices start dropping. if you want a good example outside of AMD, look at S775 processors.. right when lga-1366 came out you could get a C2Q 9550 for 100-125 bucks used.. a couple months later magically the 9550 peaked to 200 and the 96x0 peaked at 250-270 dollars.. after 4-5 months prices started dropping slowly.

the worst i remember though was back when S754 was phased out by S939 and the sempron 3000+ went from 75 bucks to almost 200 dollars then tanked to a measily 40 bucks about 6 months later when people realized there wasn't a demand for them. the athlon 64 processors were far worse though.

it really has nothing to do with what AMD wants to do. the process is EOL, there is no point in producing them any longer and its just to damn expensive to continue producing 45nm and 32nm processors at the same time. so they phased them out, its how the processor/gpu manufacturing has always worked. but once a processor goes EOL, retailers can pretty much do what ever they want with prices.
 
happens with every new socket, then after a year the prices start dropping.

Thankfully I've missed a majority of the price fluctuation since the last system I built was a single core 3200+ on the socket 939 platform. That was back when the dual cores were still in the "there's no way I'm paying that much" price bracket. Despite having missed all of that, two months seems like an awful short duration for the Phenom IIs to disappear off the face of the planet barring a few stragglers at the B&M (brick & mortar) level. I did manage to see the absurd prices DDR 400 was fetching a few years ago though and, I've seen Supply & demand/gouging in other markets. I know that BD isn't exactly popular but, I'm a little shocked that the availability of the Phenom IIs was reduced to this level so quickly given the "average" consumer probably would have no idea about what the "enthusiast" crowd thinks. Then again, I've never kept up with how fast supply dries up once production of one CPU line is dropped after the initial phase in of a new CPU line.
 
They stopped making 45nm AM3 processors at the end of December. The current going prices of the 45nm chips has to do with limited availability.
 
I can't believe all the am3 mother boards left yet and the chips are gone! newegg is polluted with the boards.
 
I can't believe all the am3 mother boards left yet and the chips are gone! newegg is polluted with the boards.

some AM3 MBs can be bios updated to support BD chips.

AMD's board partners are probably a bit pissed that their customer can't clear their backlog of stock due to lack of 45nm CPU's (not to mention the retailers).
 
AMD's board partners are probably a bit pissed that their customer can't clear their backlog of stock due to lack of 45nm CPU's (not to mention the retailers).

I imagine they will be sitting on them for a while or they will have to slash prices and hope for the best. The retailers I mean. The manufacturer's are going to be screwed unless they can unload them on repair shops but that would still be a hard sale with a lack of AM3 CPUs.
 
Given the obvious demand, I'm a little surprised AMD hasn't farmed out a few big batches of x4 and x6 'Stars' CPUs to TSMC or another 'budget' 45nm fab. As an X2 owner, I'd be just one of many willing to pay decent $ for a 6 core chip.
 
probably because the 45nm production at TSMC has stopped or is stopping very soon.. they didn't have any yield issues with the star cores so they probably have a ton back stocked.



I imagine they will be sitting on them for a while or they will have to slash prices and hope for the best. The retailers I mean. The manufacturer's are going to be screwed unless they can unload them on repair shops but that would still be a hard sale with a lack of AM3 CPUs.


nah not really.. am3+ will be around for another 2 years. there won't be much changing on the chipset side so boards produced now will just be as viable as anything produced in a year or so. in fact its probably better for them since they don't have to throw any money into new production. if AMD does end up changing chipsets all they do is take back what they have produced, replace the chipset and southbridge and call it a day. its not the manufactures that have to worry, they already got their money from the retail companies that bought the boards, its the retail companies that have to worry the most.

lets just say manufactures rely on the uninformed, and guess what.. the majority of people buying computer hardware are pretty effing uninformed, so i really wouldn't worry all that much about the manufactures or retailers. i mean hell, how do you think bestbuy has stayed alive for so long?
 
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Given the obvious demand, I'm a little surprised AMD hasn't farmed out a few big batches of x4 and x6 'Stars' CPUs to TSMC or another 'budget' 45nm fab. As an X2 owner, I'd be just one of many willing to pay decent $ for a 6 core chip.

I don't think anyone besides IBM and GF have a 45nm SOI process. It would make more sense for AMD to shrink K10.5 to 32nm instead, since I think GF is switching the 45nm SOI lines to either 32nm SOI or 28nm SOI.
 
I don't think anyone besides IBM and GF have a 45nm SOI process. It would make more sense for AMD to shrink K10.5 to 32nm instead, since I think GF is switching the 45nm SOI lines to either 32nm SOI or 28nm SOI.

You're right about the SOI thing. TSMC doesn't employ it and really the only viable fabs that do are at IBM and GF, so any chips being made on a gate-first SOI process have to be made by IBM or GF.

They needed a new architecture as K10 was really on its last legs. AMD also can't suddenly decide to start making Stars cores on 32nm, as it would take a year + to see those things out in the market. If you want to see how Stars does on 32nm then take a look at the Llano. It's CPU performance is pretty poor despite the shrink.

GF is going 28nm SOI and will likely produce all of AMD's APUs on that process. We might see TSMC make some as well, but that would likely require TSMC to take up SOI, which they currently don't have nor any plans to. I guess if Trinity does real well then TSMC may want to look at employing it to take some $$$ from GloFo.
 
nah not really.. am3+ will be around for another 2 years.

Right but my reply was about the AM3 boards which Newegg currently has 48 different models compared to 53 models of AM3+. With the loss of AM3 CPUs, the only people remotely interested in an AM3 board will be someone needing to rplace just their motherboard and given the current prices of the AM3 boards it would make more sense to move to AM3+. I can see how the lack of quotations implied I was talking about the relationship of 45nm CPUs to AM3+ though. For clarification, these were the quotes I was addressing:


I can't believe all the am3 mother boards left yet and the chips are gone! newegg is polluted with the boards.

some AM3 MBs can be bios updated to support BD chips.

AMD's board partners are probably a bit pissed that their customer can't clear their backlog of stock due to lack of 45nm CPU's (not to mention the retailers).
 
Right but my reply was about the AM3 boards which Newegg currently has 48 different models compared to 53 models of AM3+. With the loss of AM3 CPUs, the only people remotely interested in an AM3 board will be someone needing to rplace just their motherboard and given the current prices of the AM3 boards it would make more sense to move to AM3+. I can see how the lack of quotations implied I was talking about the relationship of 45nm CPUs to AM3+ though. For clarification, these were the quotes I was addressing:

ahh ok, gotcha.

its just normal backstock.. newegg was selling s775 boards pretty heavily for a good 6 months after lga-1366 came out. its just the nature of the business and newegg knows how to deal with it. they usually don't overstock items very often either. so even though there are 53 models more then likely they only have 10-20 in stock of each board.

but like the last part of my post says.. they rely on uninformed customers and most of them are. so if they have an am3 board, they are more likely to replace it with an am3 board instead of getting an am3+ board which already supports their current processor. it took me 3 hours to explain to my roommate that an am3+ motherboard would support his am3 athlon II x4 645 processor and hes not computer illiterate either, so think how bad it is with people that are and don't have some one to tell them otherwise.
 
ahh ok, gotcha.

its just normal backstock.. so even though there are 53 models more then likely they only have 10-20 in stock of each board.

but like the last part of my post says.. they rely on uninformed customers and most of them are.

All completely valid as we are really just playing a guessing game.


it took me 3 hours to explain to my roommate that an am3+ motherboard would support his am3 athlon II x4 645 processor and hes not computer illiterate either, so think how bad it is with people that are and don't have some one to tell them otherwise.

Wow. I can see being concerned that socket "insert CPU socket here" wouldn't fit in "insert motherboard socket here" because at some point that becomes true but I wouldn't have thought it would have taken a conversation that in depth to convince someone. It's hard to take off the "knows better glasses" sometimes and see it with the "deer in the headlights gaze".

I originally went the AM3+ 990FXE because, the AM3 890FXE boards I was looking at were no longer available new. The discontinuation of the Phenom II manufacturing makes me glad I went that route even if the current BDs aren't up to par as at least I will have some upgrade/replacement path when it comes to the CPU and RAM. Hopefully PD does well otherwise it won't matter that I have an upgrade/replacement path. I guess there is always the second hand CPU market but, I equate that with the used sports car market as you know both were used "spiritedly" in most cases. I know CPUs aren't as prone to failure as car parts are and, I know not everyone does excessive things to their CPUs but that doesn't exactly set my mind at ease when it comes to second hand electronics especially when said electronics are individual components susceptible to "excessive" physical force and static discharge.
 
I recall hearing that they stopped production on all 45nm AM3 products except the Phenom II X6 some time mid last year.

edit: Ahh, here's the link.

They have probably just been shipping existing production ever since, and now they have run out.

This article from December 2nd suggests that the only chip that could still be ordered from AMD at that time was the Phenom II X4 960T "Zosma", probably just until stocks ran out. This suggests that the X6 has ceased production by now as well, and they were just cleaning out the old bin of X^ rejected silicon and selling it as X4's. Question is if they are completely out by now or not.

My guess would be that as far as 45nm AM3 components go, what's in the distribution channels and on retailers shelves now is it. They won't be restocked.
 
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I just added a bunch of am3 boards to my basket at newegg and made the qty 999 each so it shows how many they have up to 100.

Out of 14 different boards the qty available looks like this:

57
5
5
100
92
100
5
20
100
100
19
100
100
93

The have way too many boards left.
 
I just added a bunch of am3 boards to my basket at newegg and made the qty 999 each so it shows how many they have up to 100.

Out of 14 different boards the qty available looks like this:

57
5
5
100
92
100
5
20
100
100
19
100
100
93

The have way too many boards left.

Looks like they are definitely going to be taking a hit on their large AM3 stock.

They might have some sort of agreements with the board partners on what to do with unsold product, but even then there is going to be some sort of financial hit.
 
I was hoping my mb would have a bios update to make it bd/am3+ compatible...but they made a revised board instead, keeping mine just am3 :(
 
I was hoping my mb would have a bios update to make it bd/am3+ compatible...but they made a revised board instead, keeping mine just am3 :(

am3 can't be am3+ compatible.. all that talk about it was bogus marketing gone wrong. AMD changed the power circuitry requirements for BD which also meant they had to make the pins thicker on the BD chips which means it won't fit a standard am3 socket.
 
They do make revision of the old am3 boards to support am3. But everything else remain the same.
 
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