new way to play with Phenom X4: 4 cores, 4 frequencies!

[knightwolf654]

interesting indeed!
now i take it that phenoms will all be unlocked???
already looks like its gonna be a learning curve to o/c it!

[v0dka]

interesting indeed!
now i take it that phenoms will all be unlocked???
already looks like its gonna be a learning curve to o/c it!

It just looks like independant CnQ on all cores. Jumping to the conclusion that all Phenoms are unlocked upwards is not justified at all. It would be logical if all the cores were unlocked downwards only.

So you would probably only use fsb for overclocking. Similarity to CnQ reminds of problems that CnQ has while overclocking the fsb: the mem speeds jumping like crazy and you can only use stock Vcore. (But I would be seriously suprised if Phenom did 3.3Ghz on stock Vcore, so you could probably ignaore that last part. )

Could the thread starter comment on any of this please?

[Jigsaw]

Any word on Phenom/Agena pricing?

[awdrifter]

i see it more as a nice compormise between sacrificing max clock with all 4 cores on and having to disable cores...

but maybe thats just me

Well, I do agree that it's a nice idea, because it seems like AMD can't get good yields on this large piece of die, so we might get some cpu that have one core that just will not oc. But I'm just saying it'll make oc'ing 4 times more time consuming because we'll now need to find out how high each core will go.

I think the multi probably will not be upward unlocked. We'll probably have to drop the multi of all cores in the bios to lower than stock, increase fsb in bios, then play with individual core multi in windows with this overdrive program.

[knightwolf654]

it will help to be able to get the max o/c for each core, then just the max for the weakest core.

[tictac]

Did anybody notice the 3.3GHz overclock on core 3?

And 3.2 on core 2 as well

so max clock would be 3.3GHz? Can it go any higher?

Jeff.. That looks like Cinebench on the background... What the score... huh?

[largon]

new way to play with Phenom X4: 4 cores, 4 frequencies!

Existence of independant core clocks has been publicly known ever since June '06 analyst day.

But sure, it is a nice feature as it allows more efficient CnQ functionality.

That is a nice concept, but it makes oc'ing so much more time consuming. Now we need to test each core for stability (8hr P95 x 4?), then after we found the max speed for each core we need to test all of them at their highest speed for stability (another 8 hrs).

If this blows your mind then imagine Oc'ing the Phenom X8 "Montreal" octacore...

(...)
Similarity to CnQ reminds of problems that CnQ has while overclocking the fsb: the mem speeds jumping like crazy and you can only use stock Vcore. (...)

We're looking at a core that runs IMC at an independent frequency. IMC is no longer tied to CPU core speed as on K8. This means RAM speed stays the same regarless of core multipliers.

And btw, you don't have to use stock vCore with CnQ even on K8...

Now, all we need is +50% more OC headroom...

[LowRun]

Very nice feature and the OC is not too shabby either

[[XC] gomeler]

Very interesting but we need independent core voltages. Doesn't this come with AM3?

[VulgarHandle]

so, would that be the official AMD stability test on there?

[kl0012]

Very interesting but we need independent core voltages. Doesn't this come with AM3?

Independent voltage regulator for each core? I don't belive we will see such soon. Rather I belive AMD and Intel will integrate in their cores some logic to shut down unused blocks.

[tictac]

voltage tab on that tools... cool! wonder what will we get on that tab

[largon]

Very interesting but we need independent core voltages. Doesn't this come with AM3?

Not gonna happen.
Independent voltage for each core would require horribly complicated motherboard PWM circuitry.

[PhilDoc]

Yep, can't see independent voltages anytime soon, if at all. I suppose they could add some type of voltage divider circuitry to the chips itself, but I doubt that would be feasible.

Personally, I think this is very cool. It'll add a little bit to the challange of overclocking and a small amount of performance gain. I can see a lot of possiblities for this.

[hollo]

definitely cool, i can see the k10 spi threads now - one core at 3.5ghz, the others at 2.5

[Cheffy]

Just an FYI - i have 0 issues atall running C+Q enabled with overclock, i think its down to the motherboard's implementation and how close to the edge you are and how the voltage scaling of your chip is....

(X2 4800+ (939) @ 12*258, abit AX8 rev2)

multi can roam free between 5x and 12x and v-core is worked out as "C+Q v-core + the additional over stock picked in bios" eg, 1.1v = 1.1+(1.4-1.65) = 1.35V.

if you go into u-guru and wind down the oc a touch, (2920 @ 1.425) 1.1v C+Q now = 1.125v.

so i can see no issues with this myself. and as someone else mentioned the memclk is now detached from the core freq somewhat, so there should be less bouncing about.

[Shadowmage]

damn it. thanks for the info though. then the energy saving effect isn't that big if two of the cores run at 100% and the others clock down...

Although voltage is a large part of power consumption, frequency is as well:

Power = <some constants>*Vdd^2*f

So if the frequency is say at 600MHz for CPU0 while the other cores are running at 3GHz, then CPU0 will use 0.6/3= 20% of the power of the other CPUs.

[Shadowmage]

already looks like its gonna be a learning curve to o/c it!

No one says you have to run at different frequencies

What I would do is do your regular overclock, and when you hit the limit, then start seeing if you can increase any of the core frequencies for added performance. Note that the maximum step is in 0.5x multiplier units, so you may have to sacrifice some clock speed on the other cores to max out another. I would think that this would only be useful for overclockers when running single-threaded programs like SuperPI, etc.

[deathman20]

Not to be disrespectful but whats up with you're Avatar? Looks like you have a cap from a Salt Shaker on dudes head

More like an updated Cobra, you know from GI Joes.

BTW thats interesting, different frequencies and different multis.. Curious if there will be different voltages as well applied to them. Now that would be intresting definatly taking a new step to fine tuning the system, oh this processors good at 3.3 but that, na that one can do 3.6Ghz at the same voltage.

[rob[GL]]

thanks for all this!

[Caparroz]

More like an updated Cobra, you know from GI Joes.

BTW thats interesting, different frequencies and different multis.. Curious if there will be different voltages as well applied to them. Now that would be intresting definatly taking a new step to fine tuning the system, oh this processors good at 3.3 but that, na that one can do 3.6Ghz at the same voltage.

Did you read the thread? No different voltages...

OT, this will be great for mobile cpus aswell.

[XS Janus]

cool gimmick, but i bet this will win the "most useless new feature" award for 99.9&#37; users.

[Shadowmage]

cool gimmick, but i bet this will win the "most useless new feature" award for 99.9% users.

No it's not, since AMD's Cool&Quiet will automatically control this for 99.9% of the users.

[PhilDoc]

cool gimmick, but i bet this will win the "most useless new feature" award for 99.9% users.

Probaby true considering that 99.9% of users don't overclock. For the rest of us it'll probably be fun. I would expect Intel to offer something similar in the near future.

[XS Janus]

No it's not, since AMD's Cool&Quiet will automatically control this for 99.9% of the users.

Probably true, but whats the point if the voltages remain the same for all the cores together. No power savings there (again I mean for regular users)