A big nail in amd's coffin. Absent raw performance and power efficiency, the sole advantage cheap amd chips had was the possibility to overclock and get some perf for free. This new chip might turn out to be a great overclocker, keeping in mind the low core and cache count.
Any sources on the CPU being overclockable only "a little"? Intel CPUs overclock MUCH better than AMD CPUs, which doesn't stack too well for AMD considering that even midrange i5 chips beat its high end products.
Intel will not "kill" AMD, just because they will look bad without any competition, Intel has crippled AMD into being a perpetual runner-up. The move to unlock such a cheap CPUs is yet another "stay down" blow for AMD, inflicted in the one of the last market niche AMD still looked "attractive".
I am far from being an Intel fan - I sympathize with AMD and think Intel did a lot of damage to the market by crippling it with years of illegal anti-competitive practices - but I cannot deny the facts.
I can't think of a better value at $78. This will probably do nearly 5ghz without a sweat. That together with Haswell IPC will provide superior single-threaded performance to the point of eliminating the advantage of having more cores in AMD offerings. Only downside is paying for a more expensive Intel Z-class motherboard.
Yes, because only software that doesn't require performance bothers with multiple threads, right? I mean, all of today's demanding software is completely single-threaded. Obviously a 750K or 760K, which are also unlocked, just can't compete, right?
I'm suggesting the IPC will probably be superior to the point that the two overclocked cores will be faster than four AMD cores in multi-threaded tasks. The bonus is a slaughter in single-threaded performance. Overall it will be a much better chip at that price point.
Im the exact person AMD makes chips for and this is a nice looking processor. However, Im just going for a Haswell i5 in a few months. Im sick of CPU inferiority complex. So AMD has until end of summer before I make a move on a new rig to announce something big.
It's still missing some important features lit VT-d for no good reason. AMD doesn't do this for their CPUs, all the features are still there, even at the low end. AMD still has a was better GPU in the same price range as this one.
There're plenty of leaks suggesting both 3.7/4.1 and 4.0/4.4. Not noting that BLT's leak is the former while Legitreview's repeating the 4.0/4.4 leak while also showing the BLT screenshot is the latter is confusing. 4.0/4.4 last flared up on the 12th with a few images that look like slides from previous Intel briefings.
Good catch. I never thought +400 MHz for the K with the same base name (4790) made any sense. +100 Mhz sounds much more reasonable, although Intel should have given it a higher number. What are 4 digits there for if they don't use them anyway?
it's also worth noting that today's rumors include Devils Canyon only being a paper launch on the 2nd of next month but chips not shipping until September. SInce that's about when Broadwell is about to launch, if true launching them as 1150 Haswell doesn't really make much sense. Either make them a broadwell SKU or Haswell-E.
If you read the whole article you'll notice toward the end:
"The leaked image above is from Chinese VR-Zone, showing the G3258 (as shown in the Specification line) "
Oftentimes, CPU-Z will not correctly identify an unreleased processor and will display a close match from its database instead. You'll note that G3258 is also in the pricing list.
I really feel like there should be more hay made about the PCI lanes available in these new chips. I'm personally feeling depressed about the revelation that the 4770 that I bought only has 16 lanes available, which is pretty limiting in the PCI expansion department. However, the 4930 has 40 lanes available for only 200 extra bones. Which means I could add items like RAID controller cards which are sort of a necessity in the video editing business, or any environment where distributed hard drives would help things along.
Can we get in these articles a bit of commentary on the PCI lane availability, if for no other purpose than to push chip makers to open up those PCI lanes a bit? Thanks for a great website.
The rumor is that SkyLake will be adding 4 more PCIe lanes to the CPU. These can't and broadwell can't add new lanes to the CPU because they're limited by the same socket pinout.
In theory, they could've added more lanes to the chipset; but in addition to driving up costs for OEMs by forcing them to do a major redesign after one year instead of two, there's also the question of how easy it would be to saturate DMI under heavy loads. IIRC it's equivalent in bandwidth to a 4 lane PCIe2.0 bus; so they're already at 2:1 before adding up the potential load from USB3 and SATA connectors. going to 12 might've been too much.
This CPU is only for super rich people that constantly upgrade their rigs and impatient people that need to rebuild right now. Considering Broadwell will be out "well before the holiday shipping season" it sounds like october will be the release maybe late oct early nov. If u cant wait like 5-6 months because of a pc with problems go for this. Or if you are just very spoiled and buy new systems every 6 months to a year. For the majority of us normal people broadwell will be the proper cpu to wait for. And I have a super old we are talking over 4 years old LGX 1366 x58 build with watercooled 4.5ghz OC'd i7-980x full coverage motherboard waterblock only thing upgraded was the gpu to a water cooled gtx 780ti 1250mhz core OC 7880Mhz Memory OC. Wish the 6GB version were out. the 120hz tempest x2700oc monitor is an awesome 2560x1220 IPS 120hz monitor which actually lets you gave with motion blu much closer to a faster tn panel without all the negatives ont TN. Worried the 3GB nuffer may fail for some games.
Old? That's not old. I had the Core 2 Extreme QX9650 S775 CPU from March 2008 to December 2013 before I finally bought a 4770k and a Maximus VI Hero. Almost six years. I'd say you could keep your X58 rig for a couple more years if you want.
That's old, but it's still better than my Q6600 2.4Ghz 775LGA, I am not sure if I should update now or wait for the new processor. I recently updated the GPU from a GTX260 to a GTX770 OC.
Sure it makes sense to wait a bit longer. But: Broadwell won't be available this quickly for desktops. Current rumors say summer of next year.. which makes these chips OK for anyone wanting or needing a powerful rig now.
BTW: early dual core A64 or Core 2 Duo chipos are getting old, but are still fine for desktop work given an SSD, 4 GB RAM and a new Win 8.1 install. Your system may have a few years on the mileometer, but is nothing like "old" yet.
I'm still running a Q9550 system I built in 2008. I want to upgrade, and am having a hard enough time waiting for the Devil's Canyon chips, and you want me to wait for Broadwell? Damn..
The current Pentiums aren't far behind the quadcores. Roughly 5-25+ FPS differences. Give it 5 Ghz clock speed and I can see it being on par or past it. All the good games are console ports anyways, and PC-only games are the same crappy indie games such as Dota 2 and Day Z. MEEH. No need for expensive PC hardwares anymore.
Budget CPU? Yes. Budget motherboard? No. The biggest problem with Intel's unlocked processors is that you need an equivalent Zxx chipset to do any overclocking. Most people get a cheap motherboard to go with cheaper processors like the Pentium and Core i3. Unless they have a cheap motherboard to go with the unlocked Pentium 20th anniversary edition, I see it as nothing more than novelty.
In AMD's case, most of their motherboards can overclock out of the box, even the very cheap ones. The main difference being how far you can overclock, as cheaper motherboards tend to have lower power phases and cheaper VRMs. For instance, I could only overclock my friend's FX-4300 completely stable to 4.3 Ghz on a cheapo Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2P (rev 5.1) which uses an older 760 chipset and costs less than $50. A motherboard with the newer 970 chipset, better VRM and power phases can overclock the FX-4300 much higher.
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Silenus - Friday, May 23, 2014 - link
So Pentium G3258...looks like that could be the new goto processor for budget gaming PC builds!ddriver - Friday, May 23, 2014 - link
A big nail in amd's coffin. Absent raw performance and power efficiency, the sole advantage cheap amd chips had was the possibility to overclock and get some perf for free. This new chip might turn out to be a great overclocker, keeping in mind the low core and cache count.Mayuyu - Friday, May 23, 2014 - link
The nail was hammered in long before. This is like running up the score.kyuu - Friday, May 23, 2014 - link
A dual-core Pentium with no hyperthreading is going to kill AMD just because you can overclock it a little? Please.ddriver - Friday, May 23, 2014 - link
Any sources on the CPU being overclockable only "a little"? Intel CPUs overclock MUCH better than AMD CPUs, which doesn't stack too well for AMD considering that even midrange i5 chips beat its high end products.Intel will not "kill" AMD, just because they will look bad without any competition, Intel has crippled AMD into being a perpetual runner-up. The move to unlock such a cheap CPUs is yet another "stay down" blow for AMD, inflicted in the one of the last market niche AMD still looked "attractive".
I am far from being an Intel fan - I sympathize with AMD and think Intel did a lot of damage to the market by crippling it with years of illegal anti-competitive practices - but I cannot deny the facts.
MikeMurphy - Friday, May 23, 2014 - link
I can't think of a better value at $78. This will probably do nearly 5ghz without a sweat. That together with Haswell IPC will provide superior single-threaded performance to the point of eliminating the advantage of having more cores in AMD offerings. Only downside is paying for a more expensive Intel Z-class motherboard.Alexvrb - Saturday, May 24, 2014 - link
Yes, because only software that doesn't require performance bothers with multiple threads, right? I mean, all of today's demanding software is completely single-threaded. Obviously a 750K or 760K, which are also unlocked, just can't compete, right?lyeoh - Saturday, May 24, 2014 - link
Keep calm and carry on buying AMD. Someone has to do it to keep AMD alive, otherwise the rest of us buying Intel's stuff would have to pay more ;).MikeMurphy - Sunday, May 25, 2014 - link
I'm suggesting the IPC will probably be superior to the point that the two overclocked cores will be faster than four AMD cores in multi-threaded tasks. The bonus is a slaughter in single-threaded performance. Overall it will be a much better chip at that price point.trichome333 - Wednesday, May 28, 2014 - link
Im the exact person AMD makes chips for and this is a nice looking processor. However, Im just going for a Haswell i5 in a few months. Im sick of CPU inferiority complex. So AMD has until end of summer before I make a move on a new rig to announce something big.mforce - Friday, May 23, 2014 - link
It's still missing some important features lit VT-d for no good reason. AMD doesn't do this for their CPUs, all the features are still there, even at the low end.AMD still has a was better GPU in the same price range as this one.
Ken_g6 - Friday, May 23, 2014 - link
You say the 4790K will turbo to 4.4GHz, but the image only shows 4.1.Achaios - Friday, May 23, 2014 - link
I am pretty sure that the 4790k will [email protected] GHz and turbo to 4.1 GHz. The "4.0 GHz/4.4 GHz" 4790k is hogwash.antiquebanana - Monday, June 16, 2014 - link
So, a few days ago they launched the 4790k. It's 4.0/4.4. Still hogwash?DanNeely - Friday, May 23, 2014 - link
There're plenty of leaks suggesting both 3.7/4.1 and 4.0/4.4. Not noting that BLT's leak is the former while Legitreview's repeating the 4.0/4.4 leak while also showing the BLT screenshot is the latter is confusing. 4.0/4.4 last flared up on the 12th with a few images that look like slides from previous Intel briefings.MrSpadge - Saturday, May 24, 2014 - link
Good catch. I never thought +400 MHz for the K with the same base name (4790) made any sense. +100 Mhz sounds much more reasonable, although Intel should have given it a higher number. What are 4 digits there for if they don't use them anyway?MrS
Ken_g6 - Sunday, May 25, 2014 - link
Some are for Ivy-E. (48xx and higher.) Some are for Broadwell. (Potentially 5xxx.)DanNeely - Friday, May 23, 2014 - link
it's also worth noting that today's rumors include Devils Canyon only being a paper launch on the 2nd of next month but chips not shipping until September. SInce that's about when Broadwell is about to launch, if true launching them as 1150 Haswell doesn't really make much sense. Either make them a broadwell SKU or Haswell-E.http://www.guru3d.com/news_story/intel_devil%E2%80...
vred - Friday, May 23, 2014 - link
Broadwell for socket only launches in 2015. This year is mobile version only.Flunk - Friday, May 23, 2014 - link
I wouldn't hold your breath for Broadwell before early 2015.vred - Friday, May 23, 2014 - link
More like before mid-2015 for desktops... Intel is only competing with themselves now.RU482 - Friday, May 23, 2014 - link
anyone else notice CPU-Z says Pentium G3420, and the price list says G3240?MrCommunistGen - Friday, May 23, 2014 - link
If you read the whole article you'll notice toward the end:"The leaked image above is from Chinese VR-Zone, showing the G3258 (as shown in the Specification line) "
Oftentimes, CPU-Z will not correctly identify an unreleased processor and will display a close match from its database instead. You'll note that G3258 is also in the pricing list.
hojnikb - Friday, May 23, 2014 - link
I wonder if this petium is based on standard celeron/pentium die (2core, no ht, 3MB cache) or is it a i5 with half of the die disabled...vred - Friday, May 23, 2014 - link
Why would Intel do something different to this Pentium as opposed to the rest of Celerons/Pentiums?hojnikb - Saturday, May 24, 2014 - link
Because other pentiums were not designed with open multipler in mind ?aggiechase37 - Friday, May 23, 2014 - link
I really feel like there should be more hay made about the PCI lanes available in these new chips. I'm personally feeling depressed about the revelation that the 4770 that I bought only has 16 lanes available, which is pretty limiting in the PCI expansion department. However, the 4930 has 40 lanes available for only 200 extra bones. Which means I could add items like RAID controller cards which are sort of a necessity in the video editing business, or any environment where distributed hard drives would help things along.Can we get in these articles a bit of commentary on the PCI lane availability, if for no other purpose than to push chip makers to open up those PCI lanes a bit? Thanks for a great website.
DanNeely - Friday, May 23, 2014 - link
The rumor is that SkyLake will be adding 4 more PCIe lanes to the CPU. These can't and broadwell can't add new lanes to the CPU because they're limited by the same socket pinout.In theory, they could've added more lanes to the chipset; but in addition to driving up costs for OEMs by forcing them to do a major redesign after one year instead of two, there's also the question of how easy it would be to saturate DMI under heavy loads. IIRC it's equivalent in bandwidth to a 4 lane PCIe2.0 bus; so they're already at 2:1 before adding up the potential load from USB3 and SATA connectors. going to 12 might've been too much.
MrSpadge - Saturday, May 24, 2014 - link
It's socket 1150 as it always has been, there's nothing the new CPUs could do about these 16 lanes. Socket 2011 is a different beast, of course.hapkiman - Friday, May 23, 2014 - link
Got me a shiny new MSI Z97 "Gaming" series board, just waiting for the i7 4790k. Can't wait.Laststop311 - Friday, May 23, 2014 - link
This CPU is only for super rich people that constantly upgrade their rigs and impatient people that need to rebuild right now. Considering Broadwell will be out "well before the holiday shipping season" it sounds like october will be the release maybe late oct early nov. If u cant wait like 5-6 months because of a pc with problems go for this. Or if you are just very spoiled and buy new systems every 6 months to a year. For the majority of us normal people broadwell will be the proper cpu to wait for. And I have a super old we are talking over 4 years old LGX 1366 x58 build with watercooled 4.5ghz OC'd i7-980x full coverage motherboard waterblock only thing upgraded was the gpu to a water cooled gtx 780ti 1250mhz core OC 7880Mhz Memory OC. Wish the 6GB version were out. the 120hz tempest x2700oc monitor is an awesome 2560x1220 IPS 120hz monitor which actually lets you gave with motion blu much closer to a faster tn panel without all the negatives ont TN. Worried the 3GB nuffer may fail for some games.Achaios - Saturday, May 24, 2014 - link
Old? That's not old. I had the Core 2 Extreme QX9650 S775 CPU from March 2008 to December 2013 before I finally bought a 4770k and a Maximus VI Hero. Almost six years. I'd say you could keep your X58 rig for a couple more years if you want.Gurglingmonk - Monday, May 26, 2014 - link
That's old, but it's still better than my Q6600 2.4Ghz 775LGA, I am not sure if I should update now or wait for the new processor. I recently updated the GPU from a GTX260 to a GTX770 OC.MrSpadge - Saturday, May 24, 2014 - link
Sure it makes sense to wait a bit longer. But: Broadwell won't be available this quickly for desktops. Current rumors say summer of next year.. which makes these chips OK for anyone wanting or needing a powerful rig now.BTW: early dual core A64 or Core 2 Duo chipos are getting old, but are still fine for desktop work given an SSD, 4 GB RAM and a new Win 8.1 install. Your system may have a few years on the mileometer, but is nothing like "old" yet.
Gimpy2k7 - Saturday, May 24, 2014 - link
I'm still running a Q9550 system I built in 2008. I want to upgrade, and am having a hard enough time waiting for the Devil's Canyon chips, and you want me to wait for Broadwell? Damn..jwcalla - Saturday, May 24, 2014 - link
Intel sure is ballsy with their pricing.dwade123 - Saturday, May 24, 2014 - link
The current Pentiums aren't far behind the quadcores. Roughly 5-25+ FPS differences. Give it 5 Ghz clock speed and I can see it being on par or past it. All the good games are console ports anyways, and PC-only games are the same crappy indie games such as Dota 2 and Day Z. MEEH. No need for expensive PC hardwares anymore.devione - Saturday, May 24, 2014 - link
Dota 2 isn't a "crappy indie game".dave1231 - Saturday, May 24, 2014 - link
Power consumption is far more important to many users these days so over clocking a CPU seems excessive. Roll on Broadwell.hero4hire - Saturday, May 24, 2014 - link
Go buy a tablet then if power consumption is so important to you. I want performance and I want it cheapScabies - Saturday, May 24, 2014 - link
WHERE'S THE DDR4DanNeely - Sunday, May 25, 2014 - link
Haswell-E and Skylake for main stream systems.huldu - Saturday, May 24, 2014 - link
You call that old? I had a pentium 2.5ghz running on a 775 socket, 2gb ram, hd4650(agp) up until quite recently.Now I'm on a e8400, 4gb ram and hd4870(pcie!)... it can play games at least, to some degree.
SymphonyX7 - Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - link
Budget CPU? Yes. Budget motherboard? No. The biggest problem with Intel's unlocked processors is that you need an equivalent Zxx chipset to do any overclocking. Most people get a cheap motherboard to go with cheaper processors like the Pentium and Core i3. Unless they have a cheap motherboard to go with the unlocked Pentium 20th anniversary edition, I see it as nothing more than novelty.In AMD's case, most of their motherboards can overclock out of the box, even the very cheap ones. The main difference being how far you can overclock, as cheaper motherboards tend to have lower power phases and cheaper VRMs. For instance, I could only overclock my friend's FX-4300 completely stable to 4.3 Ghz on a cheapo Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2P (rev 5.1) which uses an older 760 chipset and costs less than $50. A motherboard with the newer 970 chipset, better VRM and power phases can overclock the FX-4300 much higher.
WarpedGhost - Thursday, June 26, 2014 - link
Well there is only one thing to say about this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpMvS1Q1sos