Quote Originally Posted by RaV666 View Post
You have to excuse me and some other people JF.
AMD had a history for some time of using the same dies and architecture for desktop and server parts.
Started with MP, then first hammers.
I had athlon 64 san diego, and later opteron venus, and they were the same.Later x2 4800+ and opteron 165.And they were the same.
From what i read on many sites and forums amd used same masks for all these products.
It would be pretty good ending of this discussion if you would tell us at which point amd stopped using same masks for desktop and server products.
It would be awesome too if you could share some info on the exact differences between them (hardware wise, not feature wise).Maybe a post on your blog ?

And if this means that AMD is going with different designs/masks with the zambezi/valencia cores, thats very interesting too.Nobody touched on that before.
I bet dresden boy could use such info too.
Socket 939 Opterons were exactly the very same Processors that a comparable Athlon 64/64 X2, but with another brand name and higher quality bin. These weren't just similar, they were identical in package and everything, so they simply aren't good enough for a decent comparision. The best examples of a Core that had a very broad usage among many different platforms is the early Rev. SH-CG Core, also know as Clawhammer (Socket 754, 939) or Sledgehammer (Socket 940), as it was used in everything from Athlons 64, Athlons 64 FX to Opterons 8xx and Mobile Athlons 64. It was a one-size-fits-all, assuming that the Revision identifies an individual die piece design.
On the K8 Rev. E generation things started to get interesing, talking about variety. You had a Rev. SH-E1 Core (Single Core, 1 MB Cache L2) that was used in early Socket 940 Opterons, that later was replaced by the Rev. SH-E4 with same specifications, that had both Socket 940 versions in Single Core Opterons 2xx and 8xx while in Socket 939 it was used for Opterons 1xx and some Athlons 64. Also, you had an Rev. SH-E5 Core, that was used in some Mobile Athlons 64. I suppose that SH-E4 and SH-E5 coexisted as they feed two different lines, while SH-E1 was simply superceded by SH-E4. You also had two Single Core 512 KB Cache L2 dies in Socket 754/939, the Venice Rev. DH-E3 and Rev. DH-E6 ones. However, the main issues are that you need to get too technical to have at least a minor idea of what differences there are bewthem these Revision of a Core with the same base feature set (Erratas, manufacturing process, Voltage/Frequency/Power Consumption curves, etc).

Last time that I checked, AMD seems to be producing three different Hexacore dies, the Rev. HY-D0 for Socket F Istanbuls, the Rev. HY-D1 for Lisbons and Magny Cours, and the Rev. PH-E0 for Thubans. Without very specific data is pretty much impossible to know puntual differences, though it would be interesing just for the record.