AMD FX-6200 Processor Performance Benchmarks Unlocking core Secrets Review

AMD FX-6200 CPU Review: A Small Bulldozer Refresh

The FX-6200

Ryan and I have covered the Bulldozer architecture in previous articles, so I will not go over the finer details here. I will discuss some of the basics of the chip and the architecture.
The FX-6200 is based off of the same Bulldozer revision as the previous FX series of parts that was released last October. There may have been some minor changes along the way, but they would have more to do with manufacturing rather than any kind of base silicon or extreme metal layer change. The product is still built by GLOBALFOUNDRIES on their 32 nm HKMG SOI process. The chip is a native 4 module/8 core product, but one of the modules has been fused off and is unavailable for unlocking. This leaves 3 modules/6 cores for the processor to work with. Each module features 2 MB of L2 cache to be shared between the two integer units and the single FPU/MMX/SSE/AVX unit, for a total of 6 MB of L2 for the entire CPU. The L3 features the full 8 MB of cache that is available on fully enabled CPUs.

The full meal deal of a retail/boxed processor.  The 3 year warranty and heatsink/fan are likely worth it to most users.

AMD Upcoming FX-series Specs, Details & Secrets

AMD Upcoming FX-series Specifications & Details:

AMD FX-4130 (FD4130FRW4MGU)

General information
Type	CPU / Microprocessor
Market segment	Desktop
Family	AMD FX-Series
Model number  ?	FX-4130
CPU part number	FD4130FRW4MGU is an OEM/tray microprocessor
Frequency  ?	3800 MHz
Turbo frequency	3900 MHz
Package	938-pin micro-PGA package
Socket	Socket AM3+
Estimated release date	2nd quarter 2012

Hybrid PhysX - AMD/ATI RADEON + NVIDIA PHYSX Performance Benchmarks Secrets Review

Hybrid PhysX (ATI RADEON + NVIDIA COMBO PERFORMANCE) BY GneL

Hybrid PhysX is an name of unofficial configurations, where AMD Radeon and NVIDIA GeForce cards are used simultaneously, AMD GPU for graphics, and NVIDIA GPU - for PhysX.

Hybrid PhysX configurations are not supported and even chased by NVIDIA (if AMD card is detected in the system, NVIDIA GPU will lock PhysX processing capabilities), thus are available only through special driver hack, known as Hybrid PhysX Mod, developed by a user with nickname "GenL". 

Important note. Hybrid PhysX is not officially supported by NVIDIA and AMD. Use it for your own risk.

Driver compatibility

Hybrid PhysX mod 1.05ff works normally with: (the list might be not full)

• PhysX System Software verion: 9.10.0224, 9.10.0512, 9.10.0513, 9.10.0514, 9.11.0621
• NVIDIA GPU Drivers version: 258.69 Beta, 258.96 Beta/WHQL, 259.09, 259.31, 259.32, 259.47 WHQL, 260.63 Beta, 260.89 Beta/WHQL, 260.93 Beta, 260.99 WHQL, 261.00 Beta, 275.33 WHQL, 280.19 Beta, 280.26 WHQL, 285.36 Beta, 285.58 WHQL, 285.62 WHQL, 285.79 Beta 

Hybrid PhysX mod 1.05ff is not compatible or not working with:
  
PhysX System Software: 9.11.1107, 9.11.1111, 9.12.0209 & 9.12.0213 .

AMD Phenom II X4 Processor Breaks 5GHz

AMD Phenom II X4 Processors Spotted

When it comes to desktop processors the AMD Phenom series of processors hasn’t been too phenomenal when it comes to performance or efficiency, but AMD hopes to turn that around in the months to come. AMD recently invited some key members of the press down to their Austin, Texas headquarters to take a look at Phenom II. This processor has been known under the code name ‘Deneb’ for many months now, but Phenom II is what the processor will be launched as. 

AMD Athlon II X2 250 and Phenom II X2 550 Processors Performance Overclocking Unlocking core Secrets Review

Athlon is Back!! Long Live Athlon II X2

What doesn't look right with this picture?

Could it be?  Did AMD really inject the old Athlon series with new life?!?!  Damn right they did!

With the new processor series come new marketing logos, so here are the fancy new logos for each respective series. These will be used on retail boxes and for promotional ads, so get used to seeing them for some time.

AMD Phenom II X3 720 BE and Phenom II X4 810 Processors Performance Unlocking core Secrets Review

AMD Socket AM3 Processors Arrive - X3 720 BE & X4 810

Last month during the Consumer Electronics Show, AMD announced their new 45nm desktop processors with the launch of the Phenom II series. The series consisted of Phenom II X4 940 and Phenom II X4 920 processors. In our review of the Phenom II X4 940 processor we saw that the new 45nm processors looked much improved from both a performance and overclocking stand point. AMD cannot pose a threat to the Intel Core i7 processor series with Phenom II, but they can compete with them when it comes to the price of the processor and the overall final price of the platform in its entirety.

AMD Phenom II 810 & 720 BE Processor Dry Ice Overclocking

Phenom II Meets Dry Ice

Months befores AMD Phenom II processors hit retail shelves the marketing department at AMD was in hard at work showing both the media and the enthusiast community and that Phenom II processors were overclocking giants once again. The original AMD Phenom processors were sensitive to temperature changes and once you got sub-zero they often had negative scaling when it came to overclocking.  With the vast majoirty of Phenom processors hit a wall at -20C the most extreme overclockers were out of luck. AMD has done a great job at getting the word out that Phenom II is a new and improved processor, but how do these new Phenom II processors overclock with extreme cooling? AMD showed us that the temperature bug is long gone by running a AMD Phenom II X4 processor at 1.95V and at below -190C, but what can we pull off on our own test bench? This weekend we purchased ten pounds of dry ice along with some Acetone to see what we could get a pair of Phenom II socket AM3 processors could do on the ASUS M4A79T Deluxe motherboard.  

AMD Phenom x4 9900 TLB Patch Secret Benchmarked and Explained

AMD Phenom Errarta 298 - Important or Hype?

When AMD was briefing the media about Phenom at their launch event they mentioned that a fix was in the works for one of the hundreds of erratums that the Phenom processor has.  All processors have glitches and they are documented and given a erratum number.  As time goes on many of these get fixed with BIOS updates and whole new CPU steppings.  This is normal and the way AMD and Intel have developed and updated processors for decades. The erratum that was in the fix dealt with the Translation lookaside buffers (TLB) on the new L3 cache fond only on Phenom processors. Translation lookaside buffers help the processor map virtual addresses to physical addresses. They hold the most recently used page mapping information in fast, chip-resident memory to speed up address translation. When a TLB miss occurs, page mapping information can be lost if it is not found in the L1 or L2 caches. For some reason AMD didn't fully expose how minor/major the erratum was, so when Scott over at the Tech Report wrote about huge performance loses when the TLB erratum was fixed many in the industry freaked out. At the time of his article the BIOS fix for the TLB erratum was automatically enabled in the BIOS and was not able to be turned off.  A couple weeks ago we got our hands on OverDrive 2.0.12 and found by using the Turbo button the TLB patch can be disabled. AMD just this week released OverDrive 2.0.13 beta, which adds more features but still lacks 64-Bit driver signing. That means if you are running 64-bit Vista for example you have to disable driver signing by hitting F8 while windows is booting, change the setting and then let Windows Vista 64-bit fully load.