With such a mainstream run of dual cores and quad cores....whats the point of a triple core...bridging the gap?

You have one more core! wait, look at those clock speeds...whatever...good luck

I believe I read somewhere that the triple cores were all Quadcores that did not completely pass their QA process. Ie, one of the cores didn't make the QA cut. So instead of tossing them, they are rebranding them as triple-cores and pricing them appropriately.

It's probably a way of trying to make use out of the increased number of dead chips that AMD is likely to get with their manufacturing process. Since, unlike Intel, AMD is going to actually have four cores per piece of silicon (as opposed to Intel who stick two dual cores together and talk via the FSB), it means the likely hood of error will increase significantly (i.e. otherwise three cores would be useless if one came out bad, where as the Intel strategy, only one core is useless if one comes out bad). AMD will never admit this, but the cynics suggest that it is just a way of trying to market a product to increase margin (which makes perfect sense).

They can take quads that have a faulty core, disable it, and sell it as a quad core.

Tri-Cores are Quads that have one core disabled, usually from being faulty. rather than scrapping the whole proc, they can package it as a tri

AMD has said that these are quads that have one core turned off, no doubt because it wasn't usable anyway. This way, they can still sell them. Intel uses two dual cores slapped together on the same die, so dont need to market a tri-core.

really all they are doing is trying to sell parts that have a defective core. Not all of the quads that they build will work perfectly.

This from the December issue of PC Pro - a British computer magazine:

From Greg White, AMD vice president of the desktop division: "This innovation is a direct result of the industry's first true, native quad-core design, coupled with AMD's manufacturing flexibility, to create multicore processors in two, three, or four core configurations on a single die of silicon."

And from Paul Ottelini, Intel CEO: "We see a distinct advantage in having all the cores on our die work."

"We see a distinct advantage in having all the cores on our die work."

OMG LOL! Go Intel Go! Bash DAAMIT with your damn perfect logic.

Dear AMD (from concerned)
Why cant you get it right? At least K8 did something new, but you cant even make a K10 withou turning it into something stupid and uterly worthless marketing effect?

GPU manufacturers disable unusable parts of their chips, Intel disables damaged Core Duo to single core and defective Quad to dual core. Intel will probably also do tri cores with their new architecture to come. AMD can do it now. Why not? Why waste silicon that can be sold and make some revenue. Personally,I think this will affect the OEM market rather than enthusiasts. And there's money to be made with OEMS and mainstream.
I would buy if the price is right.

Every company in the industry uses this tactic. Lower clocked, single cores that where dual cores, GT, PRO XT GTS GTX, a lot are almost the same, just broken. Intel use it with cache too.

Be glad, if they throw them away, they would be out of business before the first toli rolls out. Even if it comes from a broken part, the other parts work fine so who cares, more choices.

Tri-Yawn

Future Headline - AMD Unable To Meet Demand for Lower Price Tri-Cores! AMD announced that they are now puposely disabling good cores on their Quad core processors so they can meet the demand for the lower price Tri-Cores. This is a Win/Win for AMD since their Phenom Quad Cores can't compete with Intel's.

If its at the same price of any competitive entry level dual core from either AMD or Intel, people will buy it. It will get better performance mainly because of a an extra core not because of new instructions.

i just wouldnt hold my breath for a Febuary date.

This has been published elsewhere that triple-core chips have some advantages over quad-core setups... If one core needs to talk to another (i.e. grab something off another core's cache), it has a direct path to every other core in a 3-core setup. For some unknown reason to me, each core in a multi-core setup seems to only communicate with the cores physically next to it. Arrange 3 cores in a triangle and any core can talk with any other core directly. Arranging 4 cores would cause "hops" wouldh have to take place. (Think of it this way, 4 cores are arranged in a square, numbered 1,2,3,4... Core 2 needs something from core 4. That means that core 2 needs to communicate with core 1 or 3 which then communicates with core 4. Core 2 is waiting and core 1 or 3 has been interrupted).

Sure, a 4 core design may be easy enough to add more direct paths (assuming chip designs can handle communicating with 3 other cores), but 8, 16, etc. core designs would need to have exponentially more CPU paths to avoid hops...

If it's priced correctly why not?

Smart thing for AMD to do.

not that the article mentions this, but a little ingenuity never hurt anyone.... first, x360 uses a triple core proc (obviously, its not amd) and is quite powerful. second of all, it poses no extra cost to amd to do this. third, while many are to ignroant to come to this conclusion, in dual and quad processor configuration, the processors are again in an even araingment which is naturally the preference. 6 cores; 12 cores... its actually smart so go cry about the abundance of brain cells you have yet to tap into, its kind of like the third core theory...

Any way to disable one of the cores on a Phenom and give us a preview?

-----------

There cannot be room in the market for 2, 3, and 4 cores. Especially when Intel dual cores clock sooo high. If there was a tri-core Core 2, would it really be much faster than a dual-core clocked 500-600 MHz higher?

At my job, we sometimes have a used laptop we can let go for cheap, because there's something not working very well...

For every laptop we have there is about 2 people asking to have it.

It can't be all deffective quad cores sold as tri-core, AMD would run out of those faster then they happen on the production line...

It's probably just to save the price of adding another core on the same chip...

Hey genius how about you shut-up already, and who are you directing this question in particular? Most of the comments here are just questions and the responses are good ones as well.

Their is no reason to go all over TGDAILY bash everyone in every news discussion board. It looks like you are not reading any of the comments anyway since you seem to just call everyone here retards.

I may suggest that you go end your life or make one for yourself instead of wasting your time and ours, with your idiotic emotions over something so insignificant or your baseless "hatred" for this site.

That AMDs dual and tri cores are all from the Quad cores that don't pass fully. But if anything these cores will not perform much better if they can't get the L3 chace mess up fixed along with the insane power usage.

I think its a good idea but I just wounder if it will mess up at some point since the other three CPUs will have to pass minimal requirements. Its kinda like a Celeron. Not a bad processor but you can tell the difference between the speed of a P4 and a Celeron of the same clock.

Intel did it with their 486 chips years ago. They came up with a 486DX and then later 486SX with the math co-processor disabled. Perfectly good chip with some features disabled. Most people didn't even notice and were able to sell them at reduced price. This created a huge boom in sales.

Also, I remember the 486SX chips were very easy to overclock. We managed to crank up a 486SX-25Mhz to a full fledge 40Mhz or 50Hhz speed and it was stable! Going from 25mhz to 50mhz was alot in those days.

There is nothing wrong what AMD is doing. Although I am curious if the X3 does sell more than supply is available would they cripple the X4 on purpose to meet demand? I hope not.

Darkk

nothing new

Clock Speeds Alone don't always mean better performance.

I mean look at the difference in clock speeds between the Athlon64's and the P4's...my 2.4GHZ can easily perform just was well as a 3GHz P4. And as far as a Core 2 with 3 cores, yes it would be WAY faster than a dual core clocked 500MHz.

Its funny how he is accusing people of being stupid. You're proof enough you are EXACTLY the person you were describing! "You" couldn't put together a full thought in proper english writing.


wow.

Because its nothing more than a quad core with one bad core. Why throw it out? Although very precise nothings perfect, these are just the rejects that failed quad core QA tests. Just give it a new name and lower price and there ya go. I believe this was mentioned on Tom's somewhere, but makes sense :)

http://www.guru3d.com/newsitem.php?id=6175

[Real link: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/ 20071128120717_AMD_Readies_Black_Edition_Phenom_Process or_Phenom_FX_May_Face_Further_Delay.html -Rick]

check it out, i knew they would push it back again. I love AMD, but they make it hard for me to want to build a render machine from them.

[You gonna believe that rag? Just kidding, Anton. :) I crack myself up. :) -Rick]

cool, ive been corrected by rick!

who the hell is anton?

Cheaper than Quad cores, more performing than dual cores.
Basically AMD is doing what they said they would be doing.. targeting the mainstream market, not people with 700 euros to spend on a cpu. People don't seem to understand that.
Even i can see it and i've always been and still am an intel fan(i've even had a prescott! lol).

the vast majority of software, games especially still don't utilize multi-core processors fully. 3 cores is a great idea to get more multi-cores into the hands of users, so to make the developers step up some. 4 cores seems nice, but if 3 will suffice, why pay the 4th core tax? Especially when that core will go underutilized.