AMD officially relaunches FX brand for high-end processors

[Jos]

Today at the E3 conference in Los Angeles AMD officially reintroduced the FX brand for their top performing processors aimed at PC enthusiasts and gaming aficionados.

As expected, the company also announced the first AM3+ platform based around the FX name. Dubbed Scorpius, the platform consists of AMD 9-series chipset motherboards, unlocked FX processors (codenamed Zambezi) powered by the Bulldozer core and Radeon HD 6000 Series of graphics cards.

"AMD's FX brand will enable an over-the-top experience for PC enthusiasts," said Leslie Sobon, vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, AMD. "By combining an unlocked, native eight-core processor, the latest in chipset technology, and AMD's latest graphics cards, FX customers will enjoy an unrivalled feature set and amazing control over their PC's performance."

No actual products were launched, though AMD 9-series chipset motherboards from a handful of vendors are already available at online retailers. According to the latest leaked roadmaps, the company should start selling its mainstream A-Series processors on notebooks by the end of June and follow up with the FX-Series sometime between July and September.

Pricing for AMD's enthusiast-grade chips is rumored to begin at $220 for the quad-core FX-4110, $240 for the six-core FX-6110, and $290 or $320 for the eight-core FX-8130 or FX-8130P, respectively. These are meant to compete with Intel's Core i5 2500K/2500 and Core i7 2600K/2600 processors on the upper end.

Besides making the FX and Scorpius names official, AMD is also furthering its efforts to promote an advanced experience for gamers with the announcement that Bioware, Creative Assembly, Codemasters and Eidos have all joined the "Gaming Evolved" initiative. The latter is meant to ensure that games from these companies take full advantage of things like DirectX 11, Eyefinity multiple-monitor configurations, CrossFireX, and AMD HD3D support for 3D gaming.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/44130-amd-officially-relaunches-fx-brand-for-high-end-processors.html

 

[Kralnor]

So we shouldn't expect to see the desktop-based FX-series until late July at the earliest? Damn, I was planning on building a new rig very soon. Sandy Bridge suddenly looks all too tempting again...

 

[fpsgamerJR62]

I hope that new FX series does indeed bring back the performance of the old FX chips. I remember back then that the single and dual core FX chips really cleaned house although I never got close to being able to afford one because they were priced much like the Intel Extreme Edition processors. It has been a long time since Intel had any credible competition in the high-end market.

 

[Guest]

@TechSpot : I can't wait for reviews and benchmarks vs. SandyBridge

 

[Guest]

great this is really starting to look like the same old crap from AMD "more cores for your money, they are are just slow as hell". the whole AMD platform is pointless when their six core phenom II's(laughable) get their asses handed to them by Intel dual cores. I want an AMD quad core CPU that compete with an Intel i5-2400. No one wants an AMD eight core that competes with an Intel i5-2500k in 2-3 synthetic benchmarks designed for multi core and then gets its *** handed to it in every single real world benchmark. Especially when that said eight core CPU costs $80-100 more.

 

[r8bwp]

LoL, been hearing how great the bulldozer was, was being the keyword delayed postponed putoff.

I`ll stick with my 2600k, fast as lightning. Been good as gold! no game too much for it to handle admirably.

 

[yRaz]

The only reason to go AMD is to build a highend-midrange gaming rig or a really budget build. For everything else such as manipulating large databases, photoshop, rendering, ect. Intel is the way to go. AMD needs to get their s*** together. Today's games seem to going backwards as far as the hardware they need, CPU's are rarely the bottleneck. Get an X4 940 and a GTX 570 and you have an awesome gaming rig. If I'm messing with 20 MP pixels in photoshop my X3 720 just can't handle it, overclocked or not.

 

[zillion]

I really hope AMD will step it up with the desktop cpu´s because atm i dont see any competition for the midrange to highlevel at this point, and to be fair i dont even see AMD as a competitor nor option for low budgets aswell.

Worst case scenario would be Intel keep beating AMD and then have to donate a zillion bucks to keep them alive so they wont be draged into court for monopolizing such as Microsoft.

 

[gwailo247]

I suppose *this* time they may come out with something, but in my experience AMD and performance do not go hand in hand. I've had concurrent AMD and Intel setups for about 8 years now, and while I appreciate AMD's prices, I won't make them my primary CPU.

But they have their place. An Intel CPU would be overkill for what I use my secondary computer for, both in terms of price and power.

 

[OnaZ]

r8bwp said:
LoL, been hearing how great the bulldozer was, was being the keyword delayed postponed putoff.

I`ll stick with my 2600k, fast as lightning. Been good as gold! no game too much for it to handle admirably.

ok ok in all my life i have never used any CPU's accept for AMD and when i moved over to INTEL i went the sandy bridge i7 2600k route and that thing is blazing fast and reliable.

 

[Guest]

I think these is too much late, Really today, Intel has not competition... and AMD has lost a lot of time, They will lose a lot of market and users ... and They are knocked out!

"The future is Intel"

 

[amstech]

Did someone just say thier 720 X3 is subpar at encoding (something its not meant for) and that AMD has no midrange offerings? What about the $185 X6?

Are you people commenting from Jupiter?
And too late? How is that?
SB isn't much faster then the X58 stuff, in gaming there is NO difference clock for clock.

I can see AMD's 8 core's smacking around Sandy Bridge.
I love my i7 930, been a great overclocker and steamrolls everything but AMD isn't far behind anymore.

 

[Leeky]

I love my i7 930, been a great overclocker and steamrolls everything but AMD isn't far behind anymore.

They aren't going anywhere until they release BD and start to offer something to compete with the SB offerings from Intel.

AMD's technology can be the most cutting edge, industry re-defining offerings available, it counts for absolutely nothing until we can use it. Until then SB will continue to take AMD customers - everyone is fed up with waiting!

 

[yRaz]

amstech said:
Did someone just say thier 720 X3 is subpar at encoding (something its not meant for) and that AMD has no midrange offerings? What about the $185 X6?

Hence the reason to go intel. I bought the 720 when it first came out, X6 didn't exist then. AMD's whole line up is midrange offerings, when it comes to demanding applications that NEED power AMD isn't the way to go.

 

[Zen]

I personally feel that until the day comes that AMD can go back to basics and produce monster processors again, it will just keep getting it's a** handed to it by the likes of Intel. It's funny but within the past 5 years most of my clients that I would build computers for, have gone from the majority asking that AMD chips be put into their systems, now almost all want Intel, I wonder why. Most of my clients are very educated people, they do some research before hiring me on to build their computers, could it be that even these people see the hand writing on the wall about AMD.

I will just continue from time to time to place both my old AMD Duron and AMD Athlon (64) x2 chips in my hand and remember their better days!

 

[Guest]

amstech,

You think Sandy Bridge is barely faster than Nehalem clock for clock? The difference is about 15-17.5%. That's nearly as much as Nehalem was over Core 2 Duo/Quad architecture. Also, if you think X6 processor is a good mid-range offering at $185, you should recheck your benchmarks.

1) X6 gets destroyed by any modern Core i5/i7 processor for most tasks (even previous generation Core i5 760/i7 860 processors).

2) Your assertion that Sandy Bridge is not much faster per clock vs. a 930 isn't really relevant since 2500k/2600k processors can overclock to 4.7-4.8ghz with ease. So it makes sense to compare a Nehalem/Lynnfield @ 4.0-4.2ghz vs. a fully overclocked Sandy Bridge.

Check out 6-7 pages of benchmarks and tell me Sandy Bridge doesn't mop the floor with Nehalem, nor X6?

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i7-2600k-990x_9.html#sect1

Ya right!! The 2600k beats a 6-core 12 threaded 980X half the time. Once overclocked, Sandy Bridge is MILES away from that overclocked X6. Let's not even get started on the power consumption.

Bulldozer needs a 30-40% increase in IPC to even compete with Sandy Bridge, unless all you do is run wPrime or Cinebench / rendering 24/7.

 

[Guest]

"And too late? How is that?"

Well, I think is Intel's Tick Tock.

 

[SeiveD]

Everyone seems to be ranting about how AMD is just "throwing more cores at you to compete with intel". I've seen other forums where people foolishly make the comparison between "INTEL WITH 4 CORES AND 8 THREADS LAHL" vs "AMD WITH 8 WHOLE CORES".. That's not exactly the case, as none of you have clearly been paying attention. Basically, AMD's Bulldozer has modules which are essentially two cores which share a single 128-bit FPU. This is what AMD is calling "hyperthreading done right"(or maybe I'm calling it that, nonetheless that's what it is). Given two threads into a single module, it should outperform a single Intel core running two threads as well. If you take a 4-core Intel CPU with hyperthreading, and an '8-core'(4 module) bulldozer, they will both show up as having 8 CPUs in your operating system. The difference AMD is willing to call them all cores. but they've put more hardware behind it, sure, but I read that doing what they've done, they've essentially doubled the cores (yet sharing a single FPU between each two) while only increasing the used die space by some 12% .

Really, a 4-core Intel processor should compare with an '8-core'/4-module bulldozer. They are on the same level. AMD did it differently, they number cores differently, but it's their own approach to the same problem. If it outperforms the Intel in that class, then I'd say they've done a damn good job at it.

Besides, all I've seen is one supposedly leaked benchmark, can't we wait til the thing is released for testing to see what it can really do rather than just sit here and talk trash about it before hand?

 

[Guest]

Loved AMD back in the Atlon days...They gave you best bang for buck..Ever since then...it has been Intel. I'm glad they are still around to keep prices in check but I would never use them or recommend anyone use them.

 

[Darkshadoe]

Oh yea..well I can play Crysis on my Commodore 64

.. its a text version..BUT STILL...


Its funny arguing which CPU is better when 90% of the software out there doesn't take full advantage of extra cores anyways. Now that number may be not be totally accurate, but you hopefully get my point.

 

[Guest]

"Its funny arguing which CPU is better when 90% of the software out there doesn't take full advantage of extra cores anyways. Now that number may be not be totally accurate, but you hopefully get my point."

I think is more like a 95%.

 

[63Jax]

You are so right, many of those speaking here don't know what an AMD module is, they all think a module is a real Dual Core which is not, it's just two integer cores sharing the same resources, just a different approach of hyperthreading, kinda...i think they're gonna be pretty good.
Way to much Intel praise, Intel doesn't deserve it, greedy bastards.

 

[amstech]

The X6 is a great midrange GPU, hits 4.0Ghz and game/multitasks well.
And no SB isn't any faster clock for clock when it comes to gaming... I didn't say it didn't have advantages in other areas.

 

[amstech]

1) The X6 does not get destroyed by 1366LGA chipsets... it battles and loses...but destroyed? No.
2) My assertion that Sandy Bridge isn't any faster is relevant because I stated I was talking gaming and many reviews including a large one by Toms showed a 2% difference clock for clock over 12 games or so.
So no, when talking gaming SB isn't an improvement. Literally, almost nothing.
3)The 2600K does beat the 980X but only noticabely so in isolated benchmarks. For the majority of us regular users who just game, multimedia and multitask, its no better or unnoticeably better. Not worth spending the cash, and many X58 owners didn't.
4) The only advantage SB has is clock speed, nothing else.
The architecture is superior but is it all that much better? For what I do? No.
I am sure there are good reason to own a SB CPU but I only game/multimedia/multi-task so its a waste of money.

 

[yRaz]

@amstech
The only genre of game I can think of where CPU power would make a difference would be RTS's where you have lots of units on the screen. When playing C&C or supreme commander I start to slow down after 600 units or so are on the map.