14 DAY TRIAL // Intel is preparing both Haswell-E Core i7 CPUs and Haswell-EP Xeon central processing units for late August-early September, but it looks like Advanced Micro Devices isn't going to let it hog all the attention.
It makes it kind of sad that the Sunnyvale, California-based company won't have much of a presence at IFA 2014 (September 5-10).
Then again, Intel seems poised to hold back its big announcements as well, until it can hold its Intel Developer Forum (September 9-11).
Anyway, it's been reported that AMD is gearing up to introduce three new FX-series central processing units based on the Piledriver core architecture.
These chips are called FX-8370, FX-8370E and the FX-8320E, with the FX-8370 and were introduced, sort of, a few weeks ago, at ChinaJoy 2014. Their specs have been unknown until now, though.
The best processor in the trio, called FX-8370, has a price of $189 / €189 and a TDP (thermal design power) of 125W. It has a base core frequency of 4.1 GHz and a Turbo Core maximum of 4.3 GHz.
The FX-8370E appears, for all intents and purposes, to have the exact same specifications, and the same price for that matter, but a TDP of 95W.
Makes you wonder why the company bothered launching the 125W in the first place. Maybe not all of them came out with the 95W TDP from the factory for whatever reason. Both chips have a cache memory of 8 MB L3, in accordance to the eighth physical cores on the die (four Piledriver modules).
Anyway, AMD is preparing the FX-8320E as well, with the same physical traits, but 3.5 GHz clock (4 GHz Turbo). The TDP is, again, 95W, while the cache is 8 MB. The price should be of $139 / €139.
That leaves the FX-8300 central processing unit, which runs at 3.3 GHz and 4.2 GHz, has 8 MB L3 cache and runs on 125W TDP. Its price is $120 / €120, more or less.
Not sure how the chips will match up against Intel's Core-series of central processing units. Performance-wise, they're pretty on the level, but consumers tend to gravitate towards Intel's brand strength more. Also, 8-core chips can put people off, now that a general wariness of many-core designs has set it (or so it seems at times).
The Piledriver FX-series AMD CPUs probably won't come up much during the special event set for the day after tomorrow (August 23, 2014) but, as we said before, they're just around the corner regardless.