x86 CPUs Spanning The Spectrum: AMD And Intel's Latest Attempts To Sustain Momentum

One month ago, during the Consumer Electronics Show, I reported on AMD’s introduction of the 45nm shrink of its Phenom quad-core microprocessor, with a dramatically boosted L3 cache allotment and other enhancements. At that time, I pointed out that this early revision of the architecture was targeted at the AM2+ socket and, as such, didn’t yet support DDR3 SDRAM. I also noted that the company planned to ’soon’ rectify this shortcoming (minimally a ‘paper’ flaw, versus Intel and its Nehalem i.e. Core i7 microprocessor, albeit perhaps not an actual weakness considering initially available DDR3 SDRAM speed bins), along with rolling out one-core-disabled variants in order to boost sellable product yield.

‘Soon’ is now. Today, AMD rolled out five socket AM3 CPUs, three of them quad-core (X4) and the other two triple-core (X3). The table below provides key specifications (note bolded differentiators):

The Phenom II X4 910 is a slower-clock version of the higher power consumption (125W) and faster (940: 3 GHz, 920: 2.8 GHz) chips introduced at CES. The 800- and 700-series variants’ die layouts contain the same L3 cache and core count physical resource allocations as their 900-series brethren, but relevant on-chip circuits are disabled during the product test flow in order to boost yield. All five CPUs are backward compatible with AM2+ sockets, thereby providing AMD’s customers with system design flexibility, albeit correspondingly with only DDR2 SDRAM support in the socket AM2+ usage case.

The Phenom II X4 910 is intriguing to me; a clock speed-reduced version of the Phenom II X4 940 and 920, albeit a product with socket-dependent faster DDR3 SDRAM support that the DDR2-only Phenom II X4 940 and 920 lack. The Phenom II X4 700-series chips are equally interesting; although they’re core-count deficient versus the Phenom II X4 900- and 800- counterparts, they have the highest L3 cache-per-core allocations of any of the current Phenom II CPUs. How did these cache, core and clock speed tradeoffs play out in the benchmark arena, both against each other and against comparably priced Intel Core i7 and Penryn alternatives? Take a look:

• The Phenom II X4 810 & X3 720: AMD Gets DDR3 But Doesn’t Need It (AnandTech)
• AMD launches new AM3 Phenom II processors / Phenom II 720 and 810 Review (DesktopReview)
• AMD Socket AM3 CPUs Ship–Phenom II 810 Review (ExtremeTech)
• AMD Phenom II X4 810 and X3 720 BE Processors (HotHardware)
• Socket AM3 Arrives — AMD Releases Five New CPUs that Support DDR3 (Maximum PC)
• Phenom II X4 810 and X3 720 Processor Review - DDR3 Arrives for AMD (PC Perspective)
• AMD Phenom II Socket AM3 processor (The Register)

Ars Technica and Slashdot provide additional commentary and discussion. A decent showing, AMD, though all it’ll take is one Intel price cut to put you back in second place…and speaking of pricing, I confess I still struggle to see a path to your sustained profitability.

While AMD focuses on playing catch-up with Intel in mid-range and high-end desktop PC designs, Intel’s busy extending its lead in netbooks, with a wary eye at potential chipset competitor Nvidia. The Atom N280, which I first mentioned two weeks ago and which combines (versus the Atom N270) a slightly faster 1.66 GHz core clock and much faster 667 MHz front-side bus toggle rate, is now shipping to customers, roughly six months ahead of originally forecasted availability. Isn’t competition great? The first announced Atom N280-based system, ASUS’s 1000HE netbook, is reputedly even available for pre-order as I type these words.

The Atom N280 can minimally operate with a correspondingly front-side bus speed-boosted version of the 945GSE chipset that was the Atom N270’s companion. However, if you’re in the mood for more modern graphics and video decoding performance, à la Nvidia’s Ion platform, consider the GN40 chipset that Intel also just introduced. Both the evolutionary clock-boosted CPU and more revolutionary chipset also make welcome power consumption improvements to the IC foundations of today’s netbooks.

Speaking of revolutionary, you’ll reportedly need to wait till near-year end for a more highly integrated Atom family follow-on, code-named ‘Pineview’, which on a single sliver of silicon embeds not only historical CPU resources but also the DRAM controller and graphics core. The first ‘Pineview’ implementation will seemingly be fabricated on the same 45nm process used to make today’s Atom CPUs, although Intel will likely do a rapid 32nm process shrink in order to reduce power consumption and cost.