Wednesday, April 28, 2010

The Six-Core battle

The hardware junkie in me just can't resist. I know I'm a bit late to the table, and no, I don't have one of these to play with. I wouldn't kill for one, but I would probably be willing to dish out a good flogging. Anyways, down to the good stuff.

Intel and AMD have both announced their Six-Core monoliths. The 6 core Core i7 980X and the Phenom II X6 1090T are the new players, and they clock in at 3.33 GHz and 3.2 GHz stock. Not that it makes that much of a difference, and the way these 2 processors actually handle data is vastly different as well, and they have different die sizes (Intel's 32nm and AMD is at 45nm). But, that may not make up for the price difference, with Intel's setting you back a grand ($999) and AMD sits you at $285. Another nice thing about AMD's is that it's still compatible with the existing (and widely used) AM2+ pin set, only requiring a BIOS upgrade. If you have an ageing system (not TOO old) that could use a face lift form 2 cores and were holding out, now is the time to get in. Intel’s chip outperforms AMD's, but at the price, you could buy 2 and a motherboard to support both, and have a 12 processor system.

I'm excited to see these hitting the market. Some of you may know I'm considering my own system build. I was going to go with a quad core AMD system (because they started making those sub $100 quads) and then decided to go the i3 route. It's hard, I don't have any MAJOR parts yet except RAM, but I can E-Bay that. AMD's new offering makes me wonder if I should. =D I’ll keep you posted for sure.

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