DailyTech - AMD Phenom Box Art Revealed

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Blog: Hardware AMD Phenom Box Art Revealed
Brandon Hill (Blog) - November 13, 2007 9:43 AM

57 comment(s) - last by JumpingJack.. on Nov 19 at 11:03 PM

AMD Phenom retail packaging (Source: AMD Zone)

AMDZone gets the scoop on Phenom's retail packaging

The AMD Phenom information has been coming in at a steady pace over the past few weeks. DailyTech was able to bring your retail pricing for three of AMD's upcoming Phenom SKUs earlier this month.

AMD's 2.2GHz Phenom X4 9500 will retail for $280, the 2.3GHz Phenom X4 9600 is priced at $320 and the 2.4GHz Phenom X4 9700 will come in slightly higher at $330. When the processors arrive, they’ll be wearing new duds.

Today, AMD Zone has an image of the official retail box for the Phenom processors. Although it's unlikely that many enthusiasts care what their processors boxes look like when they arrive from online retailers, it's a nice departure from AMD's current design.

According to AMDZone's Matthew Cameron, AMD showed him three prototype boxes in early June -- but he declined to note whether the final design shown on the right was one of the three candidates or a new design altogether.

Regardless, Phenom in on the way and will do battle with Intel's newly invigorated Penryn family of processors. AMD is expected to officially launch the processors on November 19.

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Did you notice?

By JTKTR on 11/13/2007 11:32:50 AM , Rating: 3

On the box it says "True multi-core design." If thats not aimed towards Intel then call me a fanboy.

RE: Did you notice?

By Master Kenobi

(blog) on 11/13/2007 11:34:17 AM , Rating: 2

Oh that's absolutely aimed at Intel.

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RE: Did you notice?

By TomZ on 11/13/2007 11:50:59 AM , Rating: 2

quote:
On the box it says "True multi-core design."

AMD has yet to prove directly, or through third-party benchmarks, that "true multi-core" means anything to the product besides being an item in an marketing bullet list.

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RE: Did you notice?

By KristopherKubicki

(blog) on 11/13/2007 11:59:18 AM , Rating: 1

Interestingly enough Henri Richard has already told a bunch of media that "native quad-core" was a bad decision over a multi-chip design. Go figure.

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RE: Did you notice?

By Le Québécois on 11/13/2007 12:30:34 PM , Rating: 5

I think you took that out of context. If I remember correctly he said that in regard that going "native quad-core" took more time to develops than a multi-chip design would have taken...

Meaning that AMD had no competition in term of speed against the Core 2 for more than a year now.

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RE: Did you notice?

By sj420 on 11/13/07, Rating: 0

By sj420 on 11/13/2007 1:14:16 PM , Rating: 0

Any company that puts a time-limit on their R&D isn't looking for the most efficient, best design.

They are looking for time constraints, because they want their money fast. This is how intel functions.

I am glad AMD is scurring now but I really want to see what they can do. I never liked the dwindly 2.2GHz. 3.0GHz to that is like a kick in the face. I don't want to be running 2.8GHZ max air when someone else is running 4GHZ air and spent less then I did. Wtf is with that.

Anyway, any techie would look at the actual chip, the layout, and the design of the chip. A true multi-core chip basically means the cores aren't just glued together like with intel (which creates a lot of crosstalk latency on the FSB amoung other design choices by intel). The true-multi-core design is 4 cores actually designed on one die. Not four chips/cores glued together. People can correct me if I made any mistakes but that is what I have read. Intel doesn't care about design, just speed and lapping more of it onto their current design. AMD actually went through and designed based on logic and efficiency with room to improve and add future technologies (Like on die memory controller). After all they were apart of intel before but intel didn't like the engineers ideas/plans so that team left and formed AMD.

Anyhow, I am really straining for AMD to pull through and kick intel in its corporate ass.

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RE: Did you notice?

By Master Kenobi

(blog) on 11/13/2007 2:34:27 PM , Rating: 2

Unlikely. From an advancement standpoint Intel has it right. Glue two dice together and market it as a quad core while your R&D team is working on making a native quad core. This lets you say you have Quad Core, and it does perform better, allowing you to compete better. This is what Intel did and it's working. It also simplifies manufacturing since if one dice is bad no biggie, you lost 2 cores, if 1 native is bad well shit there goes 4 cores.

If AMD had been smart they would have quickly slapped together two X2's and called it X4 or X2-2 and said hey we have Quad Core just like Intel, all while working on the Native Quad in the labs. Intel's marketing did a good job of showcasing for heavy duty environments where quad cores can really make the difference and AMD did not challenge them for quite some time now, this let Intel sell systems while AMD said "well wait and we should have something out etc...." that stopped when AMD kept moving their release dates and people said screw it and went with Intel solutions.

From a corporate standpoint if they drop new chips on January 1st and we have immediate availablility from the OEM's then we can assume we will be able to deploy them in a working state sometime in March/April timeframe at the earliest. We need to get a few test machines, see if they really are all that and a bag of chips. Build an image, test it, put in purchase order for several hundred or whatnot, and start deployment. Had we waited for AMD we would still be without even a test platform, right now we can on the drop of a time deploy a quad core Intel system. AMD is still flapping in the wind.

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RE: Did you notice?

By Chaser on 11/15/2007 11:46:24 AM , Rating: 2

Speculation. I can remember the predictions that AMD graphics were swirling in the toilet.

The product is on it's way. And if history is any guide AMD has a legacy of being an enthusiast, end user, CPU designer/manfacturer first.

So lets let that wind bring Phenom in then let the experts evaluate/benmark it before we announce that "native quad core" is just marketing hype. Does anyone remember the pre Athlon days? But AMD leap frogged over Intel then with enthusiasts despite resounding doom and gloom negativity at that time.

An AMD "win" would benefit just about everyone that reads this forum. I for one believe AMD is capable of returning to very competitive state where gamer's will only want "AMD inside" yet again.

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RE: Did you notice?

By murphyslabrat on 11/13/2007 4:56:51 PM , Rating: 3

FYI, AMD did not come from Intel, both Intel and AMD were off-splits from Fairchild Semiconductor. Ironically enough, both split off within a year of the founding of the company. Somebody was treating their employees like toilet paper.

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RE: Did you notice?

By KristopherKubicki

(blog) on 11/13/2007 3:16:48 PM , Rating: 1

There's not just that one statement. I've got a few transcripts to analysts that were not published that confirm what I just stated.

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RE: Did you notice?

By Le Québécois on 11/13/2007 3:37:58 PM , Rating: 2

Well, in your other post you said:

quote:
Henri Richard has already told a bunch of media

So I was assuming you were referring to what was published to the media(more precisely Dailytech) and not some unseen "transcripts to analysts".

I do believe you, it's just that I had no other sources from Henri Richard saying that.

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RE: Did you notice?

By KristopherKubicki

(blog) on 11/13/2007 3:50:01 PM , Rating: 2

Hmm, let me see if I can dig up some of those reports. A lot of stuff that was reported to those analysts is buried in financial stuff, but definitely published.

I should have specified that we didn't republish it, but that info has been published elsewhere. There's kind of a lot of stuff that gets published in weird corners of the Internet that never make it to any headlines.

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RE: Did you notice?

By JumpingJack on 11/16/2007 4:59:08 AM , Rating: 2

I have seen this same quote, but not sure it was Richard or not who said this...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/17/amd_rivas_...

quote:
“If I could do something different, I wish we would have immediately done a MCM - two dual cores and call it a quad-core,” said Mario Rivas, an EVP at AMD, during a recent interview in Austin, “because, I guess, the market sucks it up.”

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RE: Did you notice?

By crystal clear on 11/14/2007 2:09:51 AM , Rating: 2

Here are some statistics-

The Top 500 supercomputer list has been released. AMD has lost some ground this time around, but with Barcelona not yet available in quantity that is not suprising.
A total of 354 systems (70.8 percent) now use Intel processors. This is up from six months ago (289 systems, 57.8 percent) and represents the largest share for Intel chips in the TOP500 ever. The AMD Opteron family, which passed the IBM Power processors a year ago, remained the second most common processor family with 78 systems (15.6 percent), down from 105 systems (21 percent) six months ago. 61 systems (12.2 percent) use IBM Power processors, down from 85 systems (17 percent) six months ago.

http://www.amdzone.com/

30th Edition of TOP500 List of World’s Fastest Supercomputers Released, Big Turnover Among the Top 10 Systems

http://www.top500.org/blog/2007/11/09/30th_edition...

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RE: Did you notice?

By GlassHouse69 on 11/14/07, Rating: -1

RE: Did you notice?

By TomZ on 11/14/2007 9:00:56 AM , Rating: 2

1. What support for "true multi-core" is Windows lacking?

2. What other OS has those features that Windows is lacking?

In other words, shut up damn troll!

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RE: Did you notice?

By boogle on 11/15/2007 4:19:39 AM , Rating: 2

quote:
AMD has yet to prove directly, or through third-party benchmarks, that "true multi-core" means anything to the product besides being an item in an marketing bullet list.

I agree, I've tried to see what makes AMD's native 'Xcore', well... native. It's still literally two distinct CPUs, they don't share units, or anything much else for that matter. The only difference I can find is they share L3 cache (which won't improve performance that much, given multithreading usually operates on its own memory anyway) and have a crossbar.

If anything, I imagine their boasting about native is literally just 'we managed to get 4 whole CPUs onto the same IC'. Which is a great achievement - but it's not exactly vastly superior.

Now if AMD managed to make a truely multicore design where units can be borrowed from other cores and the cache is unified at all levels I will be very impressed. The advantage of this design of course, is that potentially single-threaded apps could be sped up to a certain degree through implicit multithreading (if a calculation needs 4 FPUs to execute in one cycle - and you've got 4 free FPUs...). Would be ludicrously complicated though.

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RE: Did you notice?

By maven81 on 11/15/2007 1:26:01 PM , Rating: 2

It will mean something if they take 2 4 core CPUs and slap them together. That would allow them to be first to market with an 8 core CPU. I'm sure they would eat crow for following the intel "glue" approach, but conceivably they could do this before Nehalem comes out and intel does this themselves.

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RE: Did you notice?

By omnicronx on 11/16/2007 9:55:17 AM , Rating: 2

quote:
AMD has yet to prove directly, or through third-party benchmarks, that "true multi-core" means anything to the product besides being an item in an marketing bullet list.

Performance is not the real issue, its the ability to expand beyond four cores easily. Although Nethlem is a native 4 core design, AMD seems to be one cycle ahead of intel, this could still give AMD the leg up.. I hope...

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$320 and $320?

By jsv35 on 11/13/2007 10:10:30 AM , Rating: 2

Is it supposed to be $280, $300, and $320? Those are pretty nice prices assuming they perform on par with Intel offerings.

RE: $320 and $320?

By Master Kenobi

(blog) on 11/13/2007 11:33:22 AM , Rating: 1

Yea, except they don't :D

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RE: $320 and $320?

By jlanders646 on 11/13/2007 12:32:44 PM , Rating: 2

@ the tru multi core design. Isn't the new Intels "true" multicore and only give an average of 2% of the current offerings? Its too early I need a nap.

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RE: $320 and $320?

By Master Kenobi

(blog) on 11/13/2007 2:36:15 PM , Rating: 2

Penryn is still two dice on a package and its just a shrink to 45nm. Some minor changes were made but its mostly a shrink. Intels true multicore (Nehalem) isn't scheduled for launch until June/July 2008.

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RE: $320 and $320?

By JumpingJack on 11/16/2007 4:28:27 AM , Rating: 2

Your 2% estimate is pretty much off.... it is more around 5 to 10% ...
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc...

quote:
Titles like Oblivion and Bioshock see absolutely no performance increase, while Crysis gives us a mild 3.7% performance boost. Half-Life 2: Episode Two and Unreal Tournament 3 enjoy a 5.1% and 6.4% increase respectively, while World in Conflict and Quake Wars are both at around 9%.

If general apps is of concern:

quote:
3dsmax shows a 5% increase, Cinebench 8%, Lightwave 6% and Photoshop CS3 has a healthy 10% performance boost in store for us. Without a doubt encoding and 3D/image manipulation are the real strengths of Intel's Penryn architecture.

So while 5-10% improvement at the same clock is not earth-shattering, it is not insignificant either. The biggest boost will come with SSE4, where 20% and higher can be had in multimedia apps, and SSE4 does have instructions for gaming if ever they are compiled for SSE4. Who knows.

Nonetheless, to answer your question, no it isn't true only give an average of 2%... it is higher than that.

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RE: $320 and $320?

By clovell on 11/13/2007 3:11:29 PM , Rating: 1

I thought I remembered reading that Phenom and Penryn trade blows between Integer & Floating Point operations?

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RE: $320 and $320?

By Chaser on 11/15/2007 11:59:20 AM , Rating: 2

Your source for this Kenobi? Mind sharing your Phenom benchmarks with us?

Nothing personal but sometimes your baseless speculative remarks cast a bad light on the otherwise credible comments other official contributors post here.

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RE: $320 and $320?

By JumpingJack on 11/17/2007 12:32:57 AM , Rating: 3

quote:
Your source for this Kenobi? Mind sharing your Phenom benchmarks with us?

Phenom slower clock for clock...
http://www.xcpus.com/forums/cpus-mainboards-chipse...

Phenom slower than a FSB crippled Q6700:
http://www.ocworkbench.com/2007/gigabyte/GA-MA790F...

Phenom does not overclock well:
http://my.ocworkbench.com/bbs/showthread.php?%20th... (from the author of the original OCworkbench article).

This in fairly good agreement with such reviews as:
http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?cid=...
http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/13224
and of course Anands predictions: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...

Simply put, for CPU bound workloads (i.e. most all desktop applications), the Conroe architecture is faster clock for clock, Penryn even more so.... this is not accounting for the clock delta's as AMD cannot even hit 2.6 GHz.

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RE: $320 and $320?

By JumpingJack on 11/19/2007 11:03:00 PM , Rating: 1

Well, now it is official, now you know....

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...

And the dozen or so other reviews around the net... visit any mainstream HW review site if you wish.

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RE: $320 and $320?

By DeepBlue1975 on 11/13/2007 12:36:20 PM , Rating: 2

2.5ghz quad core penryn is supposed to sell for $266, according to the latest Intel's roadmap.

So:
1- Phenom will have to be faster than penryn and draw less power.
2- AMD Phenom's motherboards will have to be at least $60 cheaper than the ones for Intel, with all and similar feature sets.

As for what I've seen of Barcelona on the net, and what Penryn can potentially do, I guess AMD's hard times are not anything close to over yet.

I hope I'm mistaken, though. This area of computer industry desperately needs competition to push further technological development and / or to drive prices down.

I still remember that once upon a time we had 4 players in the consumer CPU industry, with some interesting offerings and some madly bold moves.

(AMD, Cyrix, Intel, Mac's CPUs...)

Technology is getting great, but the market and the industry itself as a whole is becoming really boring, with breaking technology advance news sparse and between, and all of them coming from 1 or 2 players.

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RE: $320 and $320?

By SeeManRun on 11/13/2007 8:38:52 PM , Rating: 2

Don't forget that the Phenom should be a drop in replacement for anyone currently running an AM2 motherboard. I was seriously considering just going to an Intel quad, but the price of the motherboard just makes it too expensive. Am hoping AMD can perform significantly better than an X2 clock for clock, and it should be for encoding purposes, and new game engines.
Counting the days.

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must be a slow news day..

By kattanna on 11/13/2007 10:37:44 AM , Rating: 1

when the box of the product gets its own story

wow..

RE: must be a slow news day..

By glennpratt on 11/13/2007 11:00:48 AM , Rating: 2

This is a blog post...

wow..

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RE: must be a slow news day..

By HVAC on 11/13/2007 11:00:54 AM , Rating: 4

Coming up next!

An interview with the graphic artist who made the decision as to font size of the "64" on the AMD packaging!

Stay tuned.....

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RE: must be a slow news day..

By Sulphademus on 11/14/2007 3:21:27 PM , Rating: 2

Im'a need my reading glasses to see that.

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RE: must be a slow news day..

By BernardP on 11/13/2007 11:23:52 AM , Rating: 4

The news behind the news is that it's not the Phenom processor that has been delayed for so long. All along, numerous technical problems regarding the box had to be solved, which delayed the launch of the processor.

This box is a major technical challenge for AMD, because it is the first one using the 24 folds-by-inch corrugated cardbosrd process.

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RE: must be a slow news day..

By BernardP on 11/13/2007 11:25:30 AM , Rating: 5

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AMD

By Master Kenobi

(blog) on 11/13/2007 10:09:21 AM , Rating: 2

The box art isn't bad, its definately an improvement over the old black and orange (or green).

RE: AMD

By AmberClad on 11/13/2007 12:21:42 PM , Rating: 2

But what exactly is the box art? A stylized paper airplane? A ghost traveling at supersonic speed?

And for that matter, I'm still wondering about the green Opteron donut.

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RE: AMD

By Le Québécois on 11/13/2007 12:35:32 PM , Rating: 2

Looks like a comet.

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RE: AMD

By Alpha4 on 11/13/2007 12:55:39 PM , Rating: 2

I figured as much as well. But you can almost make out a tail-fin like on a V2 rocket.

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RE: AMD

By sj420 on 11/13/2007 1:23:21 PM , Rating: 2

Actually I like the box art. It is a big improvement over the last design.

All it is is a graphic made in a program like photoshop, and slapped onto cardboard. Wow, big deal. The point is what it displays.

It could be anything, a plasma beam. Energy cannon? The Buster rifle from Gundam-Wing? Who knows. It is cool though. I just want to know what the thing inside the box can do- after being proud of it (after installation and boot) you display the box in Victory!

...and come on, there is a group of people that like the way the box looks. Hell I compared my 360 box to a dreamcast box, but actually its even smaller (and me liking green - I liked the green swirl). The box in some cases (if you notice when you buy something retail or online) is listed as a reason of purchase, its basically a catchy advertising schmeel; Meant to catch a customers eye so that they pick it up, look at it and see if they want it. In most cases, if the GFx team did good or the product is good, it will be purchased simply because of the box art.

Think about a few years ago, going into an electronics store to buy a PC game, or any game for that matter.

What do you look at? The box art, the thing that was whipped together by GFx artist and slapped onto paper, slipped into your game box (~box art) that is meant to serve a purpose. To give a description, detail in picture and text. I guess price point is a good thing too because when you put one of those "On sale!" stickers on something suddenly its buyable.

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RE: AMD

By peldor on 11/13/2007 2:20:24 PM , Rating: 3

Reminds me of someone blowing into a handkerchief.

But then "AMD SnotRag - It blows the competition away!" probably wouldn't be an effective marketing campaign in the long run.

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RE: AMD

By Griswold on 11/15/2007 1:50:47 PM , Rating: 2

You must have an obsession with snot if you see that in this logo.

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RE: AMD

By Griswold on 11/13/2007 2:02:08 PM , Rating: 2

Lets hope this comet doesnt melt in the heat of the battle that is to come.

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AMD's secret packaging!

By Etern205 on 11/13/2007 6:45:07 PM , Rating: 3

According to VR-Zone, they have discovered a secret package!

It's the second picture.
or the 11th post. XD

http://forums.vr-zone.com/showthread.php?t=203681

RE: AMD's secret packaging!

By Tyler 86 on 11/14/2007 2:56:57 PM , Rating: 2

You mean to refer to this?
http://forums.vr-zone.com/showpost.php?p=4511635

That's just not right...
Perfect, but lame... xD

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RE: AMD's secret packaging!

By Etern205 on 11/14/2007 6:39:26 PM , Rating: 2

You can't tell the differences from the thread that I've link to?

Honestly when I first that box art, my first thing about that "flying comet" or whatever you called it.

To me it looks like a condom blasting into outerspace.
It's Trojan Man!

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For 50 dollars

By Regs on 11/14/2007 3:32:03 PM , Rating: 2

50 dollars for every 100 MHz increment, the box art better have a pic of life on mars.

RE: For 50 dollars

By wordsworm on 11/14/2007 10:56:54 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
50 dollars for every 100 MHz increment, the box art better have a pic of life on mars.

Hmm... I can see that basic arithmetic still plagues you:

quote:

AMD's 2.2GHz Phenom X4 9500 will retail for $280, the 2.3GHz Phenom X4 9600 is priced at $320 and the 2.4GHz Phenom X4 9700 will come in slightly higher at $330.

. 330 (2.4 GHz)
- 280 (2.2 GHz)
= $50 for 200 MHz

Now, let's compare that to Intel:

Q6700 (2.66GHz) $565
Q6600 (2.40GHz) $277
= $288 for 266 MHz.

Wow! AMD, what a bargain for that extra 200 MHz!

I know my board has been itching for a CPU upgrade. Phenom looks like my Christmas present to myself. Woot!

My prediction (perhaps worth 2 cents), Phenom X4 9700 will outperform Q6600 by about 3-5% stock clock.

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RE: For 50 dollars

By Regs on 11/15/2007 4:43:21 PM , Rating: 2

Now compare a Q6600 (2.40GHz) $277 to an $320 and the 2.4GHz Phenom X4 9700 .

Ok, I know you can't now but I have my doubts. May I also remind you that Intel has a ceiling of 3.0 GHz while AMD is still at 2.4 GHz.

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RE: For 50 dollars

By JumpingJack on 11/16/2007 4:31:44 AM , Rating: 1

The comparision is coming... but don't hold your breath, if rumors are true... AMD will only allow their bench data to be released on launch day....

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/1...

I wonder if we will see the chorus of disclaimers stating "Well, it looks like it is on par with a Q6600, but these were systems not under our control and provided to us by AMD, we will need to get HW in labs to make the final conclusions..."

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Phenom to battle with Penryn? No way.

By Roy2001 on 11/13/2007 2:01:23 PM , Rating: 1

It won't even beat Conroe.

RE: Phenom to battle with Penryn? No way.

By iFX on 11/13/2007 4:08:28 PM , Rating: 2

How do you know?

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RE: Phenom to battle with Penryn? No way.

By JumpingJack on 11/16/2007 4:32:50 AM , Rating: 2

There has been a few leaked benching runs on the net that show it slower clock for clock... slower by between 5 to 20%.

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The box? What?

By iFX on 11/13/2007 3:57:37 PM , Rating: 3

Give us the damned CPU already!

:-O

By Ihmemies on 11/14/2007 6:13:22 PM , Rating: 2

*fap* *fap* *fap*

What AMD claims

By Chaser on 11/15/2007 12:06:49 PM , Rating: 2

From AMD.

"With the true quad-core design offered by the upcoming AMD Phenom processors, cores communicate on the die rather than through a front side bus external to the processor – a bottleneck inherent in other products that are packaging two dual-core chips to form quad-core processors. Additionally, AMD’s Direct Connect Architecture on-chip ensures that all four cores have optimum access to the integrated memory controller and integrated HyperTransport links, so that performance scales well with the number of cores. This design is also highlighted by a unique shared L3 cache for quicker data access....."

I'm not a CPU design genius but I believe this claim is credible. We shall see.

"Spreading the rumors, it's very easy because the people who write about Apple want that story, and you can claim its credible because you spoke to someone at Apple." -- Investment guru Jim Cramer