AMD Quietly Starts to Sell Two New Six-Core and Quad-Core FX Processors

From X-bit Labs: Advanced Micro Devices has quietly started to sell two new multi-core AMD FX-series microprocessors with four and six cores. The new chips are based on Piledriver micro-architecture and support all the modern instructions and technologies. The new products are positioned for affordable performance-mainstream desktop personal computers.

The new AMD FX processors available for pre-order at ShopBLT online store are FX-4350 as well as FX-6350. The new central processing units feature much higher (200MHz – 400MHz) clock-speeds than previous offerings and therefore it is logical to expect decent performance gains over predecessors. AMD FX-4350 costs $142.86, whereas AMD FX-6350 is priced at $154.76.

According to CPU World world web-site, specifications of the chips currently listed for pre-orders are as follows:

AMD FX-6350 - six-core, 3.90GHz/4.20GHz, 6MB L2 + 8MB L3 cache, 95W - $155
AMD FX-4350 - quad-core, 4.20GHz/4.30GHz, 4MB L2 + 8MB L3 cache, 95W - $143

AMD FX "Vishera" central processing units sport up to eight Piledriver (second-generation Bulldozer) x86 cores with 1MB L2 per core, dual-channel DDR3 memory controller, 8MB L3 cache, Turbo Core 3.0 dynamic performance boosting technology and new instructions. Piledriver’s Front End now has a more precise branch predictor and a larger instruction window. The execution units acquired an enhanced scheduler and learned to process individual instructions faster, such as integer and floating-point division, for example. Moreover, the developers claim that they have increased the L1 TLB size and improved the data prefetch and arbitrating algorithms in the L2 cache.

Piledriver x86 cores use a new resonant clock mesh technology developed by Cyclos Semiconductor, which allows to cut power consumption by 10%, or boost clock-speed by 10% (compared to Bulldozer) without increase of TDP.

AMD FX chips are compatible with AM3+ infrastructure as well as Scorpius platform featuring AMD 990FX core-logic sets.

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