AMD Delays High-End Phenoms, Introduces Low Power Version

Nope, not taking that bet. I think they will successfully launch their 9700 and 9900 in Q2.

Not last year.

Yep, power-saving cpus. We really need them.

I mean why bother with the high-end cpus? Oh wait, we have Intel for that. And the power-savings ones.

I bet it'll be pushed to Q3...at the earliest.

You'll be dead by then!

as i said when i was drunk off my ass on new years eve...to hell with 2008, lets just skip to 2009.

Well, that would make it a perfect match for Microsoft's Home Server.

Ouch...thats hurts. >;o)

Hmmm... apparently, the reason for pushing back was still due to TLB errata.

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boar [...] d=25851279

What OEM wants a 1.8 gigahertz 65 watt Phenom? All I want is a B3 stepping 65 watt 45nm Phenom running at 2.4 gigahertz, and I want it by March 31, 2008. That's as long as I'll wait for Phenom.

If worse comes to worse, I'll just upgrade to HD 3850's and won't even buy another dual core AMD that will only be a little bit faster than my X2 4600+. I can't see buying if they don't have what I'd expected them to have by now. Maybe the triple cores will be worth it, but I'm starting to have doubts.

I still won't buy Intel, as all I'd planned is to upgrade the processors on my ASUS 690G motherboards. Maybe I'll just wait for Swift in 2009? What a way for a company to treat a fan, and I've been an AMD fan ever since I ditched Netburst when Intel came out with their lousy Prescotts.

What do you think they will do with all of their Errataed Proccesors that are already produced?

REDUCE CLOCK RATES AND DISABLE stuff so it doesnt fail

you got instant LOW power quad cores for oem to quickly resell and make some profit out of them so then they can launch the fixed ones , i woudl buy one of these for cheap entriline systems

A slower clocked Phenom really had me down. I saw no use for it, hence my negative post above. AMD really must be aiming for the Emachines budget OEM market with this.

Perhaps it's because of the Wolfdale preview at Xbit Labs?:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/c [...] fdale.html

Though a Phenom single core beats an X2 core by 17% or so, unless AMD can get 45nm processors out soon, based on B3 Phenom cores, they're really going to be in trouble in the second quarter of 2008.

the Compaq division of HP and small boutique venders like iBuyPower which make desktops aimed at college students with weaker discrete graphics cards would benefit a lot from a lower clocked EE version of a phenom.

the buyers of this market tend to not know much about what they are doing, and tend to open way too many applications at once for what there computer can handle.

many people i am around everyday who know very little about even operating windows but need to use photoshop will try to wriet a paper, run photoshop, be on the internet and stream video while operating vista on 1gig of 667MHz ram...these kinds of people will see a performance gain compared to all dual cores in their price range while stupidly multitasking like this on their weaker systems.

i am however skeptical that the B3 fix is ready or else why not make both? But i do think this is a good strategy if AMD can set the price right, i will still be waiting until the faster phenoms come out, hopefully an FX version comes out by Q2 2009 so AMD can compete at the high end once again...

long live competition!

mmm where I said "I hope it has at least an atractive price... "
I should have said "I hope the new releases have an atractive price... " (lower than actual price)

How does anyone know any of this? about the cpu engineers i mean. Surely its just like a team of like a hundred guys all doing meticulous pain-staking work that unfortunatley just takes a very long time. Maybe theres more to this delay than we might know, like improving the process or minor redesign in addition to that needed to fix the tlb. I cant for the life of me think that the tlb error is the absolute only thing stopping phenoms coming out sooner, they must be up to something else.

Beautiful point.MrsBych,also made a valid point inregarding to whats going on with AMD.Notice how at CES AMD has so many new stuff that they are pushing including the R680 whic seemed to be a monster.Phenom/Barcy are having issues,no not talking about the TLb,but the clocks and for that we might not see these cpu for a while.The gpu department is being pushed real hard because thats where they can find money to get them out the hole they are in and for Nvidia to give AMD a 2weeks headstart ,I think its working.I have a htpc that I can use AMD Phenom EE in .Waiting on the RS700 chip for my gaming upgrade

well I didnt mean a big new storming phenom just meant they might be modifying the design and the process more than just fixing the tlb. Given the length of time its taking to get new phenoms out there must be some factor x noone knows about.

now on sale: facotr X: Gross incompatence

It is highly likely.

There were probably a few things that the hardware people wanted to get done before release... but these things got pushed back so that the release could be officially completed on time. Now with this problem they will take the time to fix the known issues, fix a few issues we don't know about, and also probably finish up a few of the things that got pushed back.

This delay will really bend some people out of shape. But if they DO go ahead and take the time and then release a new stepping in April that benchmarks a lot better... that would be a good business decision. (And it gives motherboard makers time to do what they should already have done.)

Even if we are not correct in this... and they didn't have anything on the drawing board that should have been done before release... you can BET they will now take the opportunity that has presented itself.

If they DO NOT take this opportunity to do more than just fix the TLB errata... they need to all be unemployed.

I have no basis for my opinion... but I'd bet they have something up their sleeve.

It is possible they had the Phenom working and giving them extremely wonderful benchmarks... then right before the last release of the silicon they made a change that seemed logical... seemed like a good idea... and ended up messing up their speed.

When I first read that they had postponed and stopped shipping "because of the TLB" errata... I wondered to myself what OTHER problem or issue they knew about; I don't believe management would have allowed the delay due to JUST the TLB errata.

This hypothetical situation would explain it. It is easier to say "Oops we found an errata that we need to fix. Please wait" rather than "Oops we made a change that hosed our speed up at the last minute... please wait."

(They look bad either way. But one way makes them look like they are fessing up to a problem that needs correction. Admirable. The other way announement would not gain them any confidence.)

EDIT: If they release a 1.8Ghz Phenom that uses low power... and you can overclock it to 2.8-3.0Ghz on air just by using more power... they will save face. If they can provide a chip like that and it is more efficient than competing chips... they will not only save face... they will walk on water.

Several of us have wondered about just this, that there is something far more seriously wrong than the errata problem. If the errata problem was never or very rarely found in real use, and it didn't do anything more than the occasional BSOD or similar, then it makes little sense to stop shipment of Barcelona and not release higher clocking versions of Barcelona and Phenom. Of course, none of us have any proof of that at present. The release of the Black Edition of Phenom is a convenient way of selling chips without a guarentee of performance, that is, people who buy them want to overclock, and AMD can sit back and rightfully say that they are not responsible for overclock failures. Also, by selling the BE without a heatsink, AMD can avoid warrenty issues with anyone who fries the chip.

Another issue at hand has been the problem with the 790 motherboard and the SB600 south bridge, which has been shown to have problems. A delay with Phenom gives time to get better mobos out that use a SB700 south bridge.

But, like most of the Barcelona/Phenom trouble, we have far more speculation than real information. That leaves everyone in a limbo like situation. We know something is wrong, but not what, and not very many people or business want to gamble with using problem chips and motherboards.

From the past experience, AMD's Q2 is usually June~July time frame. On a side note, Barcelona was supposed to launch in Q2 07.

I don't want to say I was right or I told you so..

Who am I kidding? Yes, I do want to say that!


I remember some people, who I will not name, claiming 2.5ghz Barcelona's by the end of 2007, it's now 2008, and you can't even buy them yet.

I hope AMD can get their stuff together. Some suggest they are adding other features to make the chips faster, to that I say you're wrong.

Why would AMD prolong the shipment of processors any longer than what they have already? Not shipping product is the biggest disaster. AMD would fix it up as quickly as they could and start cranking out K10's rather than leave their fabs idle.

In other words, when we finally do get B3, I highly doubt it will address anything other than the TLB errata.

I predict large losses again for Q4, especially since they weren't shipping product.

I don't mean to suggest that AMD is adding anything to the chips, but rather that they are trying to fix more than the errata problem. The SB600 motherboard problem is more to the motherboard companies to fix than it is AMD's.

I fully agree that not shipping processors is the biggest disaster financially, unless there is a problem that they haven't admitted which would be even worse, one that would force a massive recall and hurt their reputation even more than it has already suffered. Something like first tossing them into the trash can and then tossing them out of the trash can into the dog poop.

This is insane, AMD have totally lost the plot at this point.

Why on earth would anyone buy a 65W 1.8GHz Phenom X4 for power reasons, when in a few weeks time they will be able to buy a 65W 3GHz Core 2 Duo that will have similar TDP, same or lower price, similar performance in apps that can fully utilise 4 cores and about twice the performance in apps that can only use 1 or 2 cores!

This reeks of desperation.