AMD next-gen unveiled

[screwballl]

DailyTech - Final AMD "Stars" Models Unveiled

gone is the Athlon naming for the mainstream procs but they are keeping the FX and X# naming... current day Athlons will soon become Semprons much as the SocketA and 754s did. They will continue 1 current Athlon 64 X2 with the codename Rana.

[Lead Head]

Why would AMD change the name? That seems like a pretty dumb-ass move to me. It took 4-5 years for the Athlon name to become more wide spread and known. People are going to see Phenom and be like "What the hell is that?"

[Capper]

AMD needs a complete marketing overhaul, much like INTEL did getting away from the "Pentium " moniker........the Phenom is something new, and in this case new is good.

[screwballl]

Now the Intel Core series are the higher end procs, Pentiums are mid to lower level and Celeron is budget.
AMD has always had Athlon covering the full range with Semprons competing with Celerons. Now they are following in the footsteps with a brand new name which will hopefully be a brand new series of kickass procs.
Phenom as in Phenomenal! Catchy! And the simplistic naming continues (FX, X2, X4) rather than guessing Intels CoreDuo T series, Core2Duo E Series and Core2Duo Q/QX series.

[Panda Man]

Originally Posted by Lead Head

Why would AMD change the name? That seems like a pretty dumb-ass move to me. It took 4-5 years for the Athlon name to become more wide spread and known. People are going to see Phenom and be like "What the hell is that?"

Along with what capper said, the name that will catch people's attention is "AMD" and not "Athlon." When I see the name of a proc from AMD and don't know what it is, since its from a good company I will probably look it up and see what it is capable of.

[qazwsx]

hmmm a whole new socket? now theres A, 754, 939, AM2 and now this new 1. Surely just changing the CPU not the socket would be a a wiser move? Anyone who wants to keep up with AMD has to change their mobo, which is a hassle and expencive.
Is there a reason they have changed the socket?

[screwballl]

there is currently AM2 and Socket F (aka 1207)
The new gen will be AM2+ and 1207+ (because F+ sounds like my high school history grade)
next will be AM3 (AM2 = DDR2, AM3 = DDR3)
The plus signifies compatibility with a higher HT speed (3200-4200MHz)... but the procs with the plus will still work in older non-plus boards but at a lower HT rating. also the older procs without the plus will still work in board with the plus.. much like putting an Intel 4300 (800Mhz bus) into a 680i mobo that can handle the 1333 bus speed. Of course Intel will not allow their new QX6700 to work in an older 800MHz bus mobo... thats the great thing about scalable HyperTransport in AMD. The new Phenom X2 with 3600Mhz HT will just scale down the HT itself if used in a mobo that can only handle 2000MHz HT. Of course some tweaking would be needed to keep the proc at 2.4GHz such as multiplier...

[qazwsx]

DDR3? sounds expencive and surely the processers wont use the full DDR3 speed will they? Sounds like the thing to bring back AMD. Will intel get a taste of DDR3 or is it just AMD to begin with?

[Lead Head]

Originally Posted by screwballl

there is currently AM2 and Socket F (aka 1207)
The new gen will be AM2+ and 1207+ (because F+ sounds like my high school history grade)
next will be AM3 (AM2 = DDR2, AM3 = DDR3)
The plus signifies compatibility with a higher HT speed (3200-4200MHz)... but the procs with the plus will still work in older non-plus boards but at a lower HT rating. also the older procs without the plus will still work in board with the plus.. much like putting an Intel 4300 (800Mhz bus) into a 680i mobo that can handle the 1333 bus speed. Of course Intel will not allow their new QX6700 to work in an older 800MHz bus mobo... thats the great thing about scalable HyperTransport in AMD. The new Phenom X2 with 3600Mhz HT will just scale down the HT itself if used in a mobo that can only handle 2000MHz HT. Of course some tweaking would be needed to keep the proc at 2.4GHz such as multiplier...

Multiplier depends if AMD changes the base speed, Like how the current HTT base is 200MHz. My guess is that they pumped the bus some more, instead of raising the base speed.

@Gaz, Intel is actually going to be the first ones to introduce DDR3. Right now, Dual Channel DDR is enough to handle dual core AMDs. Single Channel DDR2 @ high speed can dual core K8. So its quite possible that QuadCore K10s will need single or dual channel DDR3 to run properly

[qazwsx]

so would DDR3 show any more preformance for say a core 2 duo e6600 or would it just bottleneck?