Enter the Dragon: AMD AM3 6-core desktop arriving in 2010

[kl0012]

I think the 6 core will get replaced by a Bulldozer 6 core later on. Till then quad cores maybe based on Bulldozer. Its similar way to how Intel has used Nehalem and its shrink together in its product tree. Intel will eventually replace the quad nahelem with a shrunk. In a similar way AMD may have 6 core Thuban and 4 core Bulldozer running together and eventually replace the 6 core Thuban with a 6 core Bulldozer. Also the AMD part is 2.6Ghz while the x5550 is 2.66Ghz & with turbo its 3.06Ghz, so its quite nice to see how the 2435 vs x5550 battle is so close. If AMD does release a 2.8-3.0 Ghz hexa core processor with a TDP of around 140w it would be a instant hit.

Now for the people who say AMD cant make profit on the hexa core because it too dam huge at 346 mm2 as compared to 265 mm2 for the nehalem, well the die size is not the whole thing of the equation. There are numerous other things that determine how expensive the processor will be to make like the cache, IO system, etc.



But Intel and AMD has given up the speed race what else can they do but make the cpu's more efficient and parallel in nature with addition of cores.

The question is not whether or not it will be replaced by Bulldozer. The question is "when?" I was sceptical about Bulldozer in Q4 2010/Q1 2011. Now I'm sceptical even more. I dont believe that AMD plans to release a year from now so questionable processor (from performance and cost points) that would be changed to something else within next 6 months.