Spring RTS Engine

Small notice for people that don't count geeking as among their foremost hobbies.

AMD recently released a highly-overclockable 6-core processor for $200.

Canadian.

$200... Canadian. Like, Canadian dollars.

It was briefly available on Tiger Direct (USA) for under $150 USD after rebate.

Some review I just read said that it idles at room temperature with stock cooling, and another person (who may or may not have been making things up) says you can configure what speeds it automatically over/underclocks cores when under load, and how many of them should be disabled when single-threaded applications are running.

Another of your excuses to own that shitty computer has been eliminated, join the PC gaming master race and together we'll crush the insignificant console rebellion.

Unfortunately pretty much irrelevant for games and so the comparison with the consoles is sort of futile. The CPU itself is pretty nice though and sells itself with it's great bang for bucks in comparison to Intel's stronger i7 CPUs...

Master-Athmos wrote:pretty much irrelevant for games

not true. the dynamic core disabling/overclocking makes it potentially very excellent for games both single-threaded and not.

when a game isn't taking advantage of extra cores, it can idle them and overclock the primary cores. this is similar to i7's turbo boost, which works really well on my laptop

my laptop has a "1.6ghz" processor, and plays games almost as well as my desktop's 3.5ghz quad... watching the clocks, it goes between 400mhz and 2.8ghz depending on the load

not true. the dynamic core disabling/overclocking makes it potentially very excellent for games both single-threaded and not.

Get a fast quad core for that which has higher clocks anyway resulting in better game performance. Also which single-threaded game nowadays needs such clocks to run properly (and don't argue with a niche like Spring which still just is single-threaded (apart from zerver's work) because nobody had the time / wanted to recode Spring)? That's why I say you shouldn't consider those CPUs being gaming monsters because they're not (of course they're not bad either but for a gamer they don't pay off in comparison to the quad cores)...

Master-Athmos wrote:Get a fast quad core for that which has higher clocks anyway resulting in better game performance.

The "fast quad core" you're talking about, is it $150 with rebate? Would it, combined with a 5xxx series card and everything else in your case, consume less than 100 watts combined while idle?

I was planning to hold off until 2011 and get a 32nm chip, but the benefits one of these would bring to, for example, video transcoding and Max rendering, make it very tempting to just buy a new system today.

...nephew could use a new computer, I could give him my mobo & cpu... hmm... hmm... hmm... just got back that colossal tax refund...

must...act...responsibly! must...set...example...for future generations...!

Master-Athmos wrote:fast quad core for that which has higher clocks anyway

you missed my point. I don't know numbers yet, but if the dynamic overclocking is implemented properly, this six-core processor will both outperform an equivalent (but higher-clocked) quad core in single/dual-core operations, *and* operations able to leverage all of the cores.

when the low-clocked i7 in my laptop overclocks a core or two, it has gaming performance comparable to the high-clocked quad in my desktop. this concept will also apply to a six-core processor, except you'll also have six cores when you need them.

aegis wrote:

Master-Athmos wrote:fast quad core for that which has higher clocks anyway

you missed my point. I don't know numbers yet, but if the dynamic overclocking is implement properly, this six-core processor will both outperform an equivalent (but higher-clocked) quad core in single/dual-core operations, *and* ones able to leverage all of the cores.

This review seems to agree with you:

http://www.guru3d.com/article/phenom-ii ... t-review/1

The overclocked 1090 ($300) is second only to Intel's $1000 6-core 980X in almost all the tests. The 1055 (~$200) is an identical chip, but 400 mhz slower at stock, and could probably run with similar performance without much difficulty.

Edit: Aegis, did you just edit my post to retroactively correct a grammatical error in your quote? ~.~ Srsly...

aegis wrote:you missed my point. I don't know numbers yet, but if the dynamic overclocking is implemented properly, this six-core processor will both outperform an equivalent (but higher-clocked) quad core in single/dual-core operations, *and* operations able to leverage all of the cores.

How should it outperform the quad cores? Both CPUs use the same architecture, the same L2- (per core) and L3-cache. The new hexa-cores now can throw a turbo at three cores while clocking the other three down to 800 MHz I think (while also decreasing voltage). Still the new turbo clocks aren't that extraordinary high and should be no problem to match with the fastest quad cores who feature those clocks on all four cores all the time (only for the fastest hexa-core in turbo mode you might need to overclock the fastest quad slightly)...

So you have the same tech with the same clocks - there's no reason why any software should run faster on the hexa-core then. It's just a neat feature to give you a good performance for such apps you usually wouldn't have as you don't get as high clocks with that many cores...

And still - there are pretty much no games that can make good use of six cores (and there most certainly won't be many in the near future) and the same goes for games that still just are single-threaded which don't need today's clocks though as all recent games at least can use two cores...

So my point still stands: For gaming you don't need this hexa-cores...

Caydr wrote:This review seems to agree with you:

http://www.guru3d.com/article/phenom-ii ... t-review/1

The overclocked 1090 ($300) is second only to Intel's $1000 6-core 980X in almost all the tests. The 1055 (~$200) is an identical chip, but 400 mhz slower at stock, and could probably run with similar performance without much difficulty.

Actually - no. That test doesn't even have any single-threaded benchmarks if I didn't miss something. In addition to that things also turn out as I said gaming wise: While you cannot say much about Crysis as it's pretty obviously GPU limited you can see that the quad is slightly faster in the lower resolutions in Far Cry 2...

Caydr wrote:The "fast quad core" you're talking about, is it $150 with rebate? Would it, combined with a 5xxx series card and everything else in your case, consume less than 100 watts combined while idle?

Well the "fast quad core" would be the Phenom II X4 965 BE which costs around 150 Ôé¼ while the Phenom II X6 1090T (which is the one which would get clocks in that area) costs around 280 Ôé¼. Power consumption is more or less identic for both CPUs...

Caydr wrote:I was planning to hold off until 2011 and get a 32nm chip, but the benefits one of these would bring to, for example, video transcoding and Max rendering, make it very tempting to just buy a new system today.

If you can wait you really might want to wait for AMD's new Bulldozer architecture. While exact details didn't make it yet things sound very promising and especially for your highly multi-core software some features should be extremely interesting...

Agreed, if you can wait, 2011 is the year to upgrade your CPU.

32/28nm will without question make a huge difference to performance, regardless of whether the architecture is actually better.

I just made the post because I know there are people on here who have held onto their computer too long and this is a great opportunity. Even though 2011 will doubtlessly bring much better CPUs, you can bet they will still be more expensive for a while.

Basically what I mean to say is, a $200 hexacore CPU that runs at room temperature and competes with the best Intel has to offer, isn't something you're going to feel silly about buying in a year or two, regardless of what happens.

(Frankly, I'd buy one today except that I'm too damn lazy to disassemble my computer for the third time in a year.)

Well I'd say next year will be extremely interesting for AMD. Just the 32nm process itself isn't that extraordinary and Intel actually already produces its latest CPUs in 32nm. For AMD many things come together though. There finally will be a new architecture after all the failures of the initially planned K9 / K10 tech which then resulted in "just" upgrading the K8 architecture leading to the not so impressive Phenom and later on better Phenom II series. There also finally will be the switch to High-K gates which has to potential of doing some nice improvements - especially after the partially very unsuccesful past like the entire 65nm process (actually AMD's 90nm CPUs were slightly faster than their 65nm predecessors which had a slightly better power consumption - it also probably is the reason why the Phenom (1) CPUs weren't that good i.e. only could get low clocks because of the high consumption). So together with the finer 32nm process AMD might create some nice pieces of hardware and also create some competition in the High-End sector...

Caydr wrote:Basically what I mean to say is, a $200 6-core isn't something you're going to feel silly about buying in a year or two, regardless of what happens.

True but if you want a gaming PC there's no real reason to invest more for those two additional cores you cannot really make good use of and when you can you actually might be able to buy a hexa-core from the money you saved by just buying the quad in the first place...

Master-Athmos wrote:True but if you want a gaming PC there's no real reason to invest more for those two additional cores you cannot really make good use of and when you can you actually might be able to buy a hexa-core from the money you saved by just buying the quad in the first place...

Sure, but at the end of the day, your penis would have 50% less cores than mine.

Caydr wrote:

Master-Athmos wrote:True but if you want a gaming PC there's no real reason to invest more for those two additional cores you cannot really make good use of and when you can you actually might be able to buy a hexa-core from the money you saved by just buying the quad in the first place...

Sure, but at the end of the day, your penis would have 50% less cores than mine.

I will soon be a proud HEXASEXACORE PROSESSOR BONER OWNER!!!!

Sexacore bOwner?