AMD Triple Core Phenom 8600 Early Results
01.24.08 - 09:13pm
It looks like someone has managed to snag a B2 revision Toliman processor and run a few benchmarks with it. The Toliman processor is essentially a 4-core Phenom with a core disabled which is due to the stringent testing of processors off the assembly line. Since K10 is a monolithic core, any minor errors effectively limit AMD’s ability to churn out quad-core processors compared to Intel’s MCM design so to counter-act the low yields AMD has decided to simply disable the bum cores and peddle the rejected processors as tri-core units. This will result in a very broad product line with dual, tri, and quad-core processors lining up between the $100 and $300 price-range, making it all that much easier harder for consumers to choose the processor fit for their applications. Due to the pricing between Intel and AMD, these tri-core processors will compete against dual-core Wolfdale processors which should be a very interesting matchup. Wolfdale will have higher clocks but Toliman will technically have a 50% increase in potential through-put. I’m still putting my money on Wolfdale but Toliman may be very competition in the OEM market.
Here are a few screenshots from the Phenom benchmarks along with benchmarks I just ran to compare them to a simulated tri-core Intel processor along with a similarly clocked Yorkfield processor. The results still don’t look good for Toliman but I’ve been told this processor had the TLB patch which typically results in a 10% performance penalty.
Even though the systems weren’t identical, they were close enough in clockspeeds that the gross differences in performance aren’t within the margin of error. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to run my QX9650 at 11.5 x 200 as the lowest FSB possible with this board was 333MHz. The interesting bit in all of this was the rather attrocious performance scaling of the Toliman processor. A 2.66 ratio compared to 2.79 on the simulated “tri-core” Yorkfield was rather shocking. It sure sounds like all the propaganda flooding from AMD about “true” quad-cores being better might have been fluff.
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