Rumor: AMD to revive FX branding

[Jos]

AMD is reportedly getting set to revive the 'FX' branding with its upcoming Bulldozer parts, according to DonanimHaber. The moniker was used in the company’s enthusiast range of chips carrying unlocked multipliers and steep price tags, but has been absent for years with its Phenom and Phenom II series CPUs unable to compete in higher-end market segments. Instead, AMD replaced FX with "Black Edition" to avoid brand dilution and has mostly stayed in the $300 range.

But it seems that AMD might finally be ready to fight back at all market segments of consumer processors, with Bulldozer "Zambezi" desktop chips reportedly launching in Q2 2011 in two ultra high-end SKUs: a flagship 4-module, 8-core part branded as Vision Black FX, and 4 to 6-core to be known as Ultimate Vision FX. Not much is known in terms of specs, so whether they’ll be a match for Intel's high-end processors or not remains to be seen.

If the rumor is indeed accurate, it will also be interesting to see if AMD’s new FX branded chips will carry a price premium to place them squarely in the enthusiast market or will be in the more affordable range of the last few years.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/41790-rumor-amd-to-revive-fx-branding.html

 

[Guest]

Sorry, I'm pretty offtopic here, so feel free to ignore me. For me it doesn't matter, AMD sucks, poor drivers and products, they are only cheaper than Intel/nvidia ones.

I've an ATI RadeonHD 4890, 10.10 drivers works great for me, but newer ones are pretty buggy, so I decided to use the older one. For the next build I'll get a new GTX570.

Regards to their CPUs, at same price Intel ones are always better. Even their new hexa-core is slower than the quad-core i7 series.

 

[Guest]

Dude, If you have that extra Cash, then you can always buy those unaffordable nvdia's n Intel's. Regarding ATI driver, I myself own a HD5850 and boy, its flawless working here even with the latest Drivers. No bugs for me.

also, i'm one of those anti-monopoly types, so its AMD Graphic card for me with AMD chips. But then these are my views sir.

 

[Xero07]

Guest said:
Sorry, I'm pretty offtopic here, so feel free to ignore me. For me it doesn't matter, AMD sucks, poor drivers and products, they are only cheaper than Intel/nvidia ones.

I've an ATI RadeonHD 4890, 10.10 drivers works great for me, but newer ones are pretty buggy, so I decided to use the older one. For the next build I'll get a new GTX570.

Regards to their CPUs, at same price Intel ones are always better. Even their new hexa-core is slower than the quad-core i7 series.

I've never had any AMD driver problems on my 4830, 2600 or 1550 and all 3 are still be using with no problems.

The last statement about processors is also false. At the same price there are many AMD processors that beat out their intel counterparts especially in the $50-$180 range.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/cpu-benchmark-value_10.html

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/cpu-benchmark-mainstream_11.html

 

[Xero07]

The links above are reviews from xbitlabs

 

[dividebyzero]

Not bad. Four comments up, Four comments totally unconnected with the article.

So , AMD revive the FX branding.
Back in the day I believe this was an acronym for F*****g eXpensive. Still less expensive than Intel's "Extreme Edition's"...but not by much*. I would hazard a guess and say that anyone waiting on Zambesi as a moderately priced upgrade path might be waiting some considerable time if AMD are resurrecting all their premium marketing tags and the hype surrounding the architecture/performance bears fruit.

* As example-circa beginning of 2007 (leaving aside the 2P server SKU's)
Intel QX6700 Quad-core launch price $999
Intel Q6600 Quad-core launch price $851
AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 Dual-core launch price $713
Intel E6700 Dual-core launch price $530

 

[Mizzou]

Just hope for AMD's sake that Bulldozer lives up to at least most of the hype; last I saw you'll need a new AM3+ motherboard to boot. The initial reviews on Sandy Bridge look pretty strong and may force AMD right back into the price performance market again.

 

[DokkRokken]

Here's hoping AMD isn't getting too big for its britches here. I'd prefer to see their 'mid-range' chips offer compelling performance on par with Intel's similar offerings before trying to attack the high-end.

As for the whole upgrade path, I'm not sure why people are complaining. It just comes with the 'hardware enthusiast' territory. Enthusiasts should consider themselves fortunate that AMD offered the backwards compatibility it did. But if AMD wants to shrug off the 'budget' image, it better be offering a totally new platform, and architecture, instead of rehashed Phenom's every two months.

 

[yRaz]

*sigh* fanbois

I remember the FX-60, that was the most epic 939 part out there. I can't remember if the FX62 was AM2? or was there an FX-64? LOL it's been so long >.>

The only people who deny AMD's priceerformance ratio's are fanbois of any kind.

@DokkRokken
stop talking. AMD gives great performance to both enthusiast and budget. I have been building AMD machines for 12 years now and they always make more sense than intel machines. Intel is good for raw power, and that has only been true with the c2d and i7. Remember the AMD K8's vs the later Pentiums? the K8's KILLED all of intels offer for a better price too. Remember anything about intel giving deals to computer stores that would only sell intel a few years ago?

Each has their place, I just like AMD's better

 

[edison5do]

Each has their place, I just like AMD's better

Really true, Im a Butget person, I can´t afford 120+ CPU, I get Athlon X3 and unlock the 4° core, buy and HD 5770, then get some money and get another HD 5770, work my *** out and the M4A79T Deluxe, and so on with my other parts. INTEL NEVER CACHT UP WITH AMD in Price vs Performance, 100$ AMD's part always (or almost) outperform Intel´s 100$ parts.

If you got the money for Intel and Nvidia part, just go for it, but dont start talking BullS**t about who won or lose, cause EACH HAS THEIR OWN PLACE ACORDING TO THE CUSTOMER NEEDS.

 

[Kibaruk]

I'm well aware of new intel sandybridge and how i7 ravages Phenom II x6 and haven't come to say the contrary just because I'm a fanboy of either BUT I will say again, price/performance amd is the bang for the buck.

If I had the money I would buy the meanest i7 out there. Dont make this a dumb fanboy fight of who has the most posts please...

Going back to the news its amazing and cant wait to see how the architecture is going to be.

 

[Sarcasm]

Guest said:
Sorry, I'm pretty offtopic here, so feel free to ignore me. For me it doesn't matter, AMD sucks, poor drivers and products, they are only cheaper than Intel/nvidia ones.

I've an ATI RadeonHD 4890, 10.10 drivers works great for me, but newer ones are pretty buggy, so I decided to use the older one. For the next build I'll get a new GTX570.

Regards to their CPUs, at same price Intel ones are always better. Even their new hexa-core is slower than the quad-core i7 series.

While I don't have any experience with Radeons as I have owned only Nvidia's, the last statement is false. I have an AMD 965 BE and love it so far. Although it comes up short to the intel offerings, it's HALF the price.

AMD knows this and they aren't trying to meet intel head to head, so they made great value CPU's that is more than enough for the average user. And that doesn't mean they are bad CPUs just because there's "value" in the sentence.

Infact, there are some cases like the Athlon X4 quad cores that can be had for as little as $100. $100 for a quad core!

 

[Guest]

To summarize the article and the comments:

1.AMD to revive FX branding - AMD, make sure you live to the hype with bulldozer or else you'll be again seen as a budget cpu technology. lol.

2. Those who bought AMD processors have limited cash.Those who can afford the best of the best in technology will go to intel and nvidia.

3. No one will tell that their cpu is worst. they will always brag about it. AMD users will always comment when they see intel articles so vice versa. But clearly, Intel is the winner. The era of athlon xp is long over. sorry amd fanboys.

4. I predict bulldozer will fail to catch up with sandy bridge. their only selling point is no.of cores which majority of native applications can't utilize. lollololololol.


i love being a guest!

 

[Guest]

AMD has and will provide exceptional products.

Intel's products are perceived by many as being superior. However, some real world testing quickly proves this to be a farce.

Three or four frames extra @ 1080p does not qualify as superior - it is a monstrous waste of money.

 

[Guest]

^@guest

LoL seriously what era are you from. 1980's? 1990's?

Intel is superior compared to AMD's offering as of 2011. Read and ask experts. The only thing AMD can do best is to provide budget builds. Which category are you from? budget, mainstream or enthusiast?

mainstream and enthusiast is dominated by intel. sales and tech news sites can verify it for you.

So I believe you own an AMD processor. Good for your budget build. Good luck telling it to others that it is the best. lol!

 

[Guest]

Three or four frames extra @ 1080p does not qualify as superior - it is a monstrous waste of money.

You shouldn't use games fps to compare CPUs, because :

1. Only a small part of the frame is spend on CPU [for game physics] and most of the impact is on your GPU.
2. Most of the game engines aren't tuned very well to use 100% of your CPU, if you have a look at techspot's reviews of game performance you will see most of the CPU cores aren't utilized very well and jobs aren't distributed equally between them.
3. Programmers are careless and don't care about the code performance too much these days and just want to release the game before the deadline.

The best way to compare them are archiving and encoding programs, which they depend heavily on CPU. Intel CPUs are way faster than AMD ones. You may ask why?

Well, they have fewer cache misses [thanks to their unified cache] and are equipped with extensions such as SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2 and AVX that accelerates them in multimedia tasks very great which AMD one's are lacking. You may say AMD ones are equipped with SSE4a, but they really suck and doesn't provide anything useful.

Regards to AMD graphics card drivers, they are the most buggy drivers and it's a big challenge for game developers to code their graphics engines way to work on them without problems like nvidia ones.

I'm not a fanboy of any of them, just a game developer side of view.

 

[DokkRokken]

@DokkRokken
stop talking. AMD gives great performance to both enthusiast and budget. I have been building AMD machines for 12 years now and they always make more sense than intel machines. Intel is good for raw power, and that has only been true with the c2d and i7.

I don't understand why I'm catching hell. Obviously, AMD is not at all content being the 'budget' option if it is indeed going to opt for the 'FX' line. AMD's low price might suit you guys, but it sure does not suit AMD's bottom line, especially when people are doing this:

I can´t afford 120+ CPU, I get Athlon X3 and unlock the 4° core

It seems I have have a little miscommunication going on between myself, and AMD fans. Because in one instance, AMD fans want Intel to be torn a new one, but are then praising AMD's price/performance ratio. If AMD produces a superior product, you're going to be paying top dollar.

Enthusiasts may not NEED raw power, but many of them want it, as do people operating workstations. Intel's superior figures are enough to sway people in that very lucrative market. So AMD machines may make 'sense' to you, but to many, it seems they do not. AMD needs to really work their butt off to reverse that trend; Bulldozer will likely be a good start, but...

While I have no doubt that Bulldozer will be impressive, the problem is, Sandy Bridge is impressive, and it's being released 'now.' I'm excited for an 'FX,' but if the top AMD chip is going to just equal a 2500K, then it'll only be midrange. Hopefully that won't be the case, but it has been for the past couple years.

*sigh* fanbois

The only people who deny AMD's priceerformance ratio's are fanbois of any kind.

Bringing out the 'F' word really doesn't make for a better argument. I've built my share of AMD machines In fact, my main machine has a 955. That does not mean I can somehow dismiss Intel's far superior performance. For gaming the 955 is fine, but in almost any other application, the comparable Intel smokes the Phenom.

Plus, the price/performance advantage has really diminished for AMD. Buying an AMD platform new made far more sense when X58 ruled the roost, and the Core2 option was nearing EOL. But when the P55/i5-750 combo rolled out, and prices stabilized, it didn't cost that much more for the comparable Intel solution. Maybe, what, like, fifty dollars or so between a 955 and an i5-750? That's less than a day's work for most people. Since people keep their PC's for a couple years, paying a little more for what amounted to a far greater degree of performance, and far better overclockability made sense.

Their midrange advantage has been lost, and now they're the best option in the 'budget box' market, which is even less lucrative.

Remember the AMD K8's vs the later Pentiums? the K8's KILLED all of intels offer for a better price too. Remember anything about intel giving deals to computer stores that would only sell intel a few years ago?

Each has their place, I just like AMD's better

Every time I tango with someone who has a hardware-on for AMD, I always get the same schtick about the 'good ol' days.' Fantastic! AMD made superior products. Problem is, they MADE superior products. Now Intel does. Bulldozer may very well flip it again. Who knows.

 

[red1776]

Every time I tango with someone who has a hardware-on for AMD

:haha: I like that!
I don't understand that exchange either Dokk, it was very baroque. I don't think AMD has been relegated to the "budget box" just yet, but they have milked K-10 within an inch of its life. I continue to build some nasty high performance gamers for my customers, but if the new long awaited architecture 'Bulldozer' is a fail, It surly cannot survive another new gen from Intel without a protracted stint of 'rebuilding years' status or worse...and Brett Farve is no longer available. It would be rather bracing to watch the falling out from AMD going the way of IBM/Cyrix.

 

[dividebyzero]

...but if the new long awaited architecture 'Bulldozer' is a fail, It surely cannot survive another new gen from Intel without a protracted stint of 'rebuilding years' status or worse.

I personally don't think Bulldozer will be a fail- at least for the vendor-neutral buyer. There could well be a "Is this it?!!" moment when it launches, but that is more due to the slippage in timetable and AMD's dubious PR/marketing of late. Attempting to blunt sales of Lynnfield, Bloomfield, Westmere and now Sandy Bridge with a continuing barrage of "our unreleased architecture that we aren't going to talk about is going run rings around Intel" talkinghead/slide deck presentations is building up a level of expectation on par with Barcelona.

AMD should still be smiling even if Bulldozer isn't the SB ( or Westmere-EX in the case of the server market) killer. Zacate and Ontario are shaping up well, and even if Llano turns out more than a little "meh" (which now seems to be the prevailing attitude), the volume mobile space should provide a reasonable revenue stream (as should the graphics market).
The worrying aspect of Bulldozer seems to be that most AMD-philes, and indeed, AMD associated people seem to have targeted Sandy Bridges performance as the benchmark to equal/beat¹ (albeit with better graphics one would think in respect of Llano), while somehow forgetting Intel's ability to produce according to their timetable. Bulldozer (Zambezi and Orochi) might well produce against SB- but it better be significantly better considering Paul Otellini is on record as saying that

Ivy Bridge (22nm microprocessor) is back from the fab and functioning well²

Which basically means that Bulldozer wont be battling SB for more than a few months (if that) before IB (and Sandy Bridge-EP/-EX in server) steps into the fray

¹ An estimate of Bulldozer and SB's relative strengths and weaknesses can be found in this excellent article by Dave Kanter at RWT. I've linked to the conclusions/ summary page but the whole article is well worth reading for anyone with a real interest in CPU architecture/feature sets.
² BCGTC link for webcast/pdf presentation

...and Brett Farve is no longer available.

Hey, but Donovan McNabb should be (sort of) ready, willing (to pick up a paycheck) and able (to run a 2 minute drill in 5 minutes)...I can hear Childress salivating from here!

 

[red1776]

I personally don't think Bulldozer will be a fail- at least for the vendor-neutral buyer.

I think its going to be a great chip, they have adopted high k metal gate over SOI...just like intel....Hmmm, black helicopter time. You think when they get a look inside it will be remarkably architecturally similar to Nehalem? a little payback for Hyper Transport?...huh?...huh?...C'mon now!:wave:

Hey, but Donovan McNabb should be (sort of) ready, willing (to pick up a paycheck) and able (to run a 2 minute drill in 5 minutes)...I can hear Childress salivating from here!

and the Vikings are just the team to try it Its going to be some lean years here for a while football wise.

 

[dividebyzero]

I think its going to be a great chip, they have adopted high k metal gate over SOI...just like intel....Hmmm, black helicopter time. You think when they get a look inside it will be remarkably architecturally similar to Nehalem? a little payback for Hyper Transport?...huh?...huh?...C'mon now!:wave:.

Given the relative R&D budgets and the risks increasing as Bulldozers timetable slipped (i.e. the need to compete with Intel as its moved from C2D to Nehalem to SB to IB) it's probably natural that AMD would utilise as much proven tech process as it can. I don't think either design team/s operate in a vacuum, and certainly people move between the two companys during the design process -Nehalem is already a four year old design)
The only question mark is the lack of cadence in Bulldozer's gestation. Both ATI/AMD's (and nvidia of course) grahics and Intel's CPU timeline involves the tick-tock of new architecture -> die shrink -> new architecture etc...which minimises risk and maximizes gain. AMD are now introducing a new untried architecture on a new process at a new process node. I can well see why AMD have given no inkling with regard clock speed, turbo speed and power requirement. They may have little clue themselves until each new revision wafer batch comes back from the foundry and they start testing. Bulldozer seems like (from my reading of the architecture) it will also require very good yields to be viable on top of the consumer-centric speed and power numbers. At ~310mm² per die you can ill afford to have too many duds (ref: GF100) or low binning (say 2.8GHz for example) and keep the ASP's and interest high enough to make this a financial success.

 

[red1776]

The only question mark is the lack of cadence in Bulldozer's gestation.

yes Bulldozer has been very odd in that respect, not secretive as to not tip their hand, but at times like they wished that john Q would actually forget about it. I guess that can be taken in many ways both prepare for greatness, and don't get your hopes up. I have noted now that Bulldozer's release is eminent, that i have not seen the traditional lowering of expectations. ....or as you say, they simply don't know themselves. I am getting the vibe that they genuinely think its going to exceed Intels offerings.(not based on anything but sounding different about this release) I will be preparing the smelling salts. I am very interested to see how the switch to High K changes the traditional high voltage, low OC's characteristics of AMD chips.
I have question for you, What was the primary difference in the Phenom II x6's being such better OC's/Lower voltage (to attain OC) than the rest? was this a respin, or just sitting on the best of the bin's?
BTW , where did you read 310mm² die size?

 

[dividebyzero]

I have question for you, What was the primary difference in the Phenom II x6's being such better OC's/Lower voltage (to attain OC) than the rest? was this a respin, or just sitting on the best of the bin's?

I would have put it down to the fact that 45nm is now a pretty mature process. AMD must have refined K8/10 down to the nth degree by now- transister length, leakage, thermal spec must be about as well known as it's ever going to get. Of the massive total of three Thuban systems I've put together, all three OC'ed pretty easily to around 3.8, but 4GHz still took a good voltage bump (seeing 1.5v in this day and age made my eyes water!).

BTW , where did you read 310mm^ die size?

I think it originally was mooted once the Orochi slides were shown (deliberately photoshopped) at AMD's Analyst Day in 2008. Working off known dimensions in the architecture scaled the die out to 19.5mm x 16mm in size (312mm²). The figure seems to have been arrived at by a number of people/sources over the last year or more. You could probably find something (relatively) concrete in Dresden Boy's Bulldozer blog if you don't already read it. I did a quick browse and came up with this:

Although it's rather unlikely that we'll hear about Orochi die sizes this week. But already several people including me analyzed the photoshopped die photo and found it to be in the ballpark of 300 sqmm (+/-20) in size. My analysis based on L2 cell size, I/O cell size (as Hans de Vries did) and L1 I$ size relations also resulted in a module area of ~17-19 sqmm and a L2 area of a little more than 10 sqmm. So this estimation lands at roughly 28 sqmm for a module with cache. Take this with a grain of salt.

 

[dividebyzero]

dividebyzero said:

BTW , where did you read 310mm^ die size?

I think it originally was mooted once the Orochi slides were shown (deliberately photoshopped) at AMD's Analyst Day in 2008. Working off known dimensions in the architecture scaled the die out to 19.5mm x 16mm in size (312mm²). The figure seems to have been arrived at by a number of people/sources over the last year or more.

If you believe Chucky D over at SA (and I wouldn't bet with stolen money on him being right in general) then 315mm is the lucky number.