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

[Lightman]

For me this will be great feature to use and play with! I already can imagine my setting for gaming will set 2 cores at high freq while other 2 at minimum. For browsing I will put only 1 core up to 2GHz and 3 cores at minimum speed. For 3D modeling and other time consuming tasks all 4 cores maxed. The possibilities are almost endless....and when I will set up all this I will make nice and easy icons on my desktop for each settings so switching between modes will be a matter of 2 mouse cliks !

Regarding independent core voltages, they are not available for K10 in AM2+ incarnation but this feature will be implemented in mobile Griffin CPU! I heard (not confirmed) voices that AM3 might bring it to desktop....

[Zytek_Fan]

AMD is really going all out now

[EvlUndrWareNome]

This could be nice!

Maybe moving OS processes and other stuff to a slower core and games to the faster ones.

Sounds pretty cool


I still want the BULLDOZER!!!!

has to be the best cpu name ever

[John600rr]

Removed. Got some PM's from some sensitive AMD fans.

[informal]

I appreciate your attempt at humor,but that was spam.

[AliG]

This could be nice!

Maybe moving OS processes and other stuff to a slower core and games to the faster ones.

Sounds pretty cool


I still want the BULLDOZER!!!!

has to be the best cpu name ever

lawl, I just hope for amd's sake it is a bulldozer to demolish nehalem. From what I've heard from a friend of mine that's an engineer at intel, nehalem will definitely be huge, and from what we've seen from k10, there's no way that will be a contendor

[kl0012]

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.

I'm little sceptical about that. When the core is in idle, the most power consumption is coming from transistors leakage because of insignificant amount of transistor's switchings. So frequency reduction can't help here a lot, imho.

[LordEC911]

No independent voltages - only clocks.

Then why do I specifically remember reading, multiple times, about independent voltage and frequencies for individual cores and IMC?

Edit- Hmmm... guess when they said "individual" they just meant one voltage for the cores and another for the northbridge...
Lame...

[kl0012]

For me this will be great feature to use and play with! I already can imagine my setting for gaming will set 2 cores at high freq while other 2 at minimum. For browsing I will put only 1 core up to 2GHz and 3 cores at minimum speed. For 3D modeling and other time consuming tasks all 4 cores maxed. The possibilities are almost endless....and when I will set up all this I will make nice and easy icons on my desktop for each settings so switching between modes will be a matter of 2 mouse cliks !

Regarding independent core voltages, they are not available for K10 in AM2+ incarnation but this feature will be implemented in mobile Griffin CPU! I heard (not confirmed) voices that AM3 might bring it to desktop....

What about multithreaded programs? How can you set CPU affinity for dynamicaly created and allocated threads?

[kl0012]

Then why do I specifically remember reading, multiple times, about independent voltage and frequencies for individual cores and IMC?

All can I say - "don't read "yellow press". Read more creditable source www.amd.com

[awdrifter]

Hopefully AMD will release a quad-core optimizer to make the OS move the non-demanding stuff to the slower core.

[Shintai]

Hopefully AMD will release a quad-core optimizer to make the OS move the non-demanding stuff to the slower core.

They cant. Its handled by the OS scheduler. Only MS can change it.

[Shintai]

What about multithreaded programs? How can you set CPU affinity for dynamicaly created and allocated threads?

You dont. They would have to be hardcoded for it. And then all OCs etc would have to be same on each core. Like best on 2, worst on 4 etc.

[MaSell]

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

I'd prefer to disable 3 cores...

[RFC Rudel]

Remember my tread from 2005

CPU affinity performance gains

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...ighlight=games


I wish vista came with the resourse manager, but only server 2008 have it.

I will search a way to port it to Vista when sp1 and 2008 are final (I will move to server 2008 anyway)

Resume: empy the core, then put your app there

[Shadowmage]

I'm little sceptical about that. When the core is in idle, the most power consumption is coming from transistors leakage because of insignificant amount of transistor's switchings. So frequency reduction can't help here a lot, imho.

You're right about that. My equation was for dynamic power. Static leakage will be constant. AMD's SOI process lowers static leakage though, so it's not as big of a deal (although it should still be a good 10-25% of dynamic power).

[iddqd]

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...

Actually, running at 200mhz as opposed to 2ghz would save you a lot of power, even if you don't undervolt.

[v_rr]

They cant. Its handled by the OS scheduler. Only MS can change it.

That´s right, but Microsoft can do it. But it´s very unlikely that Microsoft does that.

[RFC Rudel]

if you set the afinity to core 1 and core 3 the multithreaded app will use those cores.
if you set to use only one the app will use 1core.

with the WRM you also can set how &#37; of those cores the app can use.

you can send the entire OS to 1 core and leave the others empty.