AMD has an unlocked multiplier in their black edition which works best when underclocking it appears.
 
AMD must believe in the PT Barnum quote about one being born everyday.
 
 
 
 
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?a [...] pert&pid=3

The latest version of AMD OverDrive does allow the user to disable the fix for greater performance. That is a good thing.

 . o O ( . o O ( ) ) )

 
So overdrive now allows you to disable the tlb fix.....so no more 20% performance hit.  Cool, now B3 should fix everything and allow it to overclock more.  Which should make it competative with an OC'd Q6600 at a cheaper price.

should be called green - green with envoy for intel

 
Cmon, really...maybe the heavens will open, and rays of magically blessed sunshine will radiate down upon B3, solving all of Phenoms woes in one fell swoop. But honestly, given all the 'yeah but when AMD releases product/revision/update/node, "X" etc etc etc, it will solve everything'  weve heard the past 18 months, and given that they released the chip with a flaw so significant as to cause a stop ship and a product hold, what do you really think the odds are that B3 is going to:
Arrive on time
Solve all the problems
 
If we base the probability of that on AMDs recent history of performance, the odds look slim.

 
I am not trying to belittle AMD they have made A$$es of themselves with little help from anyone else but let us put this in perspective.
 
You buy a car to find out when you run it on the freeway it shuts off. You go back to the car company and they say, Oh there is a problem and we knew about it but we really didn't think people would drive it on the freeway so now that we know this we are going to make a temporary fix until we can get it right.
 
The car had a V6 and the fix is we will take one of the sprak plugs out, then you can go down the freeway but you wont be able to go very fast, we will sell you this car for about the same price.
 
But we also have another option, we will give you a spark plug to put back in the car so it will run as fast as it was designed...maybe. Of course if you put the spark plug back into it you may get broken down on the freeway if you go too fast, we are not going to guarentee that this wont happen but look how much faster it will be if you don't break down. We are going to charge you a few more dollars becuase after all this is an upgraded product with a V6 that actually will run off of 6 cylinders if you want to put the spark plug back in.  
 
In a few months we will actualy have a V6 in this car that will run off of all of the cylinders and will not break down on the freeway at all. So when you are driving down the freeway and you see a car that looks like yours sitting on the side of the road it's probably because the dummy that bought it tried to make a V5 into a V6.
 
By the way how many of these cars do you want to buy? we will give you the spark plug for free when you buy it. I guess if we were to do the right thing we would exchange the V5 car for a V6, but we told him when we sold him the car that it might have problems and he bought it anyway. You know we have the best interests of our cutomers in mind and we are only trying to sell them what they are asking for.      
   
End of commentary
 

I keep getting visions of QFX when I think of Phenom. AMD said the QFX was going to run circles around C2D. It did, in the heat department. AMD said it was going to come out with a FX76 cpu that would solve all the problems. AMD canceled the FX76, and later canceled the whole QFX. What is going to happen with Phenom? AMD says it will come out with a B3 stepping that will fix all the problems. In the meantime, other promised Phenom chips get delayed. Will Phenom join the QFX in obscurity?
 
I think Turpit has it right concerning AMD's ability to solve problems: "If we base the probability of that on AMD's recent history of performance, the odds look slim".

only thing that can save amd is ati
 
the dual 3870 - nvidia has its line up ready as soon as this is released.
 
i smell a gpu war like the dual core war

I don't think B3 will fix overclocking issues.  I think that manufacturing issues related to the inferior monolithic design causes low binning parts.
 
Intel's superior MCM design allows core to be made in pairs and allows better binning and pairing of parts to make faster and more overclockable parts.
 
B3 is going to be a step in the right direction, but it will only be a moderate step, not a leap.
 
AMD just doesn't have headroom in K10, Intel does have headroom.  If anything, Intel is selling deliberately underclocked processors.

 
3870 and 3850 are actually really good GPU choices in 512mb configurations.  They're not the best, but there very close to the best and they're priced well.

I am running an HD3870 on my Q6600 and it is sweeet.

 
 
Post of the Day

 
Would be, but an envoy is like a diplomat ... envy is all green and nasty  

Things the B3 Must do.
 
1. Fix the TLB bug
2. Hit at least the Clock speeds that AMD was supposed to have at launch. The 9700 9900 speeds.
3. Be able to do #2 without excessive heat problems.
4  Be released. This thing seems to be at least 2-3 months away.
 
 
Things that would be nice for the B3 to do.
 
1. overclock. Im not talkin about OC'n  like some of the intel chips that are overlcocking beast but a good 200-400mhz without a voltage increase or a very slight one.
2. This isnt AMDs fault but it would be nice for it to work in more AM2 boards then what we got right now.
3. Run at the NB speeds of the ES's.  
 
 
As turpit said I dont see a B3 being a magic CPU that is just going to solve everything.
But if they just get it to do those 4 things I think it must do, AMD should be ok.
 
 

but most people wont know this though...

 
Unfortunately, under things B3 must do, I don't expect #3 to happen. The SOI process is heat prone. There is no way to fix this short of starting with a different gate material. As to #4, I'd look to Q2 at best. AMD doesn't have the money now for the R&D to fix the problem quickly. They need to sell chips, a lot of them, before any money starts coming in. Unfortunately, the only chips they have which sell decently are the cheap, low performance, low profit ones that don't fill the money coffers.
 
I'd really like to see AMD do well, but I have to ask myself the simple question; Is there anything they have that sparks my interest? The answer is generally no. Unless I bought a 790FX mobo and put a 5000+ BE into it and hopefully wait for a working Phenom to appear that actually does better then the 5000+ BE, there is just nothing that interests me. And to take that gamble, that a working Phenom will be made, is a big gamble.

 
 
Did you not already give this award out today?