Items tagged with B3
Ever since Bulldozer's less-than-spectacular debut, enthusiasts and investors have watched to see if the company would follow up with faster chips that improved overall performance. That's finally started to happen; AMD announced two new chips today -- the quad-core FX-4170 with a 4.2GHz base clock speed / 4.3GHz Turbo mode, and the six-core FX-6200 at 3.8GHz stock / 4.1GHz Turbo. Both of the new parts are clocked ~15% faster than the FX-4100 and FX-6100 and may offer a slightly faster integrated memory controller as well; rumors indicate that the IMC is clocked at 2.2GHz, up from 2GHz. The new chips are reportedly based on the B3 stepping that's been in the works for months; current Bulldozer...
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AMD has finally gone into full production with a new mask spin of their Phenom processor now dubbed the Phenom X4. The new flagship 2.5GHz Phenom X4 9850 is representative of a new revision of the native quad-core Phenom silicon that resolves the well known TLB errata. Quad-core Phenom X4 processors based on the new B3 revision silicon should be hitting store shelves in the not too distant future. In addition to resolving the TLB bug, AMD is also unveiling some higher clocked Phenoms and tri-core and low-power models too. We've got AMD's latest and greatest Phenom processor, the Phenom X4 9850, on the test bench and have our findings posted for you all right here... AMD...
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It doesn't take a genius to figure out that AMD's initial Phenom processor launch didn't go exactly as planned. The first batch of retail-ready Phenom processors were clocked lower than expectations and in the days leading up to the launch, the now infamous TLB bug reared its ugly head. If you're not aware, all initial Phenom and Opteron quad-core processors based on the Barcelona architecture were plagued by an errata that could cause a system crash under certain circumstances. The errata involves the processor's translation lookaside buffer or "TLB" and L3 cache. Keep in mind, every processor has some sort of errata, but it usually isn't cause for concern,...
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After numerous delays the Phenom finally shipped late last year, but suffered an immediate set back due to the TLB errata issue. This certainly didn't help AMD pull off a stellar launch, but the issue has been fixed in the new B3 series K10 CPUs.“In addition to fixing the TLB race condition, AMD will finally increase the core frequency of the Opteron series on the B3 stepping. After the initial OEM orders are filled, channel vendors like Newegg and TigerDirect will carry the new Opterons in frequencies ranging from 1.8 GHz to 2.4 GHz. Vendor estimates put this e-tailer ship date in early April.” The Barcelona K10s might end up with a relatively short lifespan as rumors persist...
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According to a forum post at the IsoHunt website, the good folks at AMD were nice enough to hook up the admins with a pair of pre-production B3-stepping Opteron 2352 processors, what appear to be the first processors of their type to be "out in the wild". AMD's B3 stepping is supposed to fix the TLB errata affecting current quad-core Opteron and Phenom processors. But what's more interesting is that IsoHunt - a site that facilitates piracy - apparently got the processors directly from AMD to power their servers. "I'd like to thank the nice people at AMD for allowing us to have 2 pre-production engineering samples of their Opteron 2352 CPUs. These cpus have been installed in our primary...
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