Specification- Mfr Part Number: HDX710WFGIBOX
- Process Type: AMD Phenom II X3 Triple-Core Processor 710
- Frequency: 2.6 GHz
- FSB: 4000 MHz
- L2 Cache: 3x 512KB
- L3 Cache: 6MB
- Process: 45nm SOI
- Socket: Socket AM3
- Power Consumption: 95 W
AMD has followed Intel's transition to DDR3 with the launch of its socket AM3 CPUs this week. That's not to say AMD and its customers still don't have reservations about how much performance the extra memory bandwidth offers over 1,066MHz DDR2 when comparing the cost of upgrading to DDR3. However, the same was said about the transition from DDR to DDR2 for AMD - as it was then, it wasn't until AMD jumped on board that the price of memory really started to tumble and the upgrades were more viable.
There were other factors in play too - AMD jumped from DDR-400 to DDR2-800, effectively doubling its memory bandwidth and, coupled with a bout of oversupply from the memory manufacturers, caused a prolonged period of very low DDR2 prices that never really recovered - to the customers' benefit. Since AMD increased its official DDR2 support to 1,066MHz with the K10 architecture, the jump to DDR3 isn't that great.
Official support comes in at just 1,333MHz, with an "unofficial" 1,600MHz available on some motherboards as well. That's not a huge jump and with ever higher latencies that naturally accompany every DDR evolution, does this mean anything significant for AMD's new products?
The thing is, AMD is forced to move to DDR3 eventually - simply because DDR3's data density is designed to be higher, so should we start wanting 4/8GB sticks of memory, DDR3 is our only option. Here's the problem though: to get 1,333MHz DDR3 running, the current Deneb core limits it to just one DIMM per channel.
Phenom II socket AM3 CPU details
- L1 Cache: 64KB L1 data, 64KB L1 instruction per core, exclusive
- L2 cache: 512KB per core, exclusive
- L3 cache: 4-6MB accessible by all cores
- Hyper Transport and Northbridge Frequency:
- 2.0GHz (4.0MT/s) HT 3.0 16-bit bi-directional
- 128-bit dual channel or two 64-bit single channels DDR2-1,066MHz or DDR3-1,333MHz
- ~758 Million transistors, 258mm² die size
- TDP: 95W for all AM3 CPUs (to date)
As the transistor count is exactly the same as the 45nm AM2+ CPUs, we can only assume the cores are identical but AMD chose to disable support, in addition to a different package pin-out to the 938-pin AM3 CPUs. It's rare to progress to a new socket and see a
drop in the number of pins, but this is how AMD has made 940-pin AM2+ CPU not fit in a 938-pin AM3 motherboard socket, but to allow AM3 processors to fit in AM2+ boards.
Price(pkr) 14000.
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