Part of AMD’s multi-core Phenom blast today is the Phenom X3 8000, “the world’s only triple-core x86 processor,” which we heard about a few months ago. They’re supposed to bargain chips for budget consumers, but they’re a nicer bargain for AMD, actually, since it lets them dump bug-plagued quad-core Phenomsby disabling a core. But if performance is your top concern, you might want to steer clear of the whole Phenom batch anyway. We’re still waiting for AMD’s 45nm chippies, personally. [Hard OCP, Anandtech]
Paul Harris
March 29, 2008 at 2:46 AM
This is innacurate. Intel AND AMD have manufacturing options off one piece of silicon. Intel had options for EM64T, security bit, and virtualization. AMD has one for cores.
If you assume that triplecore is broken quad core, I guess you have to assume that Intel’s six core server part is a broken 8 core part.
Report PermalinkZeke
March 30, 2008 at 12:39 PM
I really don’t see how that’s a problem. It’s quite understandable. I mean, how do you expect they make 3X processors with 3 cores? They don’t! Everything with computers works in binary. 1, 2, then 4, then, hopefully in time, 8.
The manufacturing of X8 processors will leave room for selling of processors with anything from 5 to 7 working cores. It’s not like they charge as much for an X3 as they do for an X4. The working cores still WORK.
In fact, how do you know that a lot of X2s aren’t just X4s with 2 defective/disabled cores? They still cost as much as a proper X2 and perform just as well.
Like I said – I don’t see how that’s a problem.
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