Rory Read orders FX parts refresh for AMD in October

Given that they are up against Intel, with the Tick-Tock processor delivery schedule and more FABs than McDonald's got buns – you have to give AMD credit for trying. AMD's CEO has ordered the launch of a faster range of FX processors before Halloween's night is out.

Is it trick or treat time for AMD shareholders?

While the new ‘Vishera' processors will be more than 5% quicker than their present counterparts, the AMD sales and marketing teams will be wondering if they can also bring the new products to market at the same or lower price than the current batch of chips.

Industry insiders have been saying for quite some time that AMD's problem is less about the actual product – and more about how it places its stack next to Intel's.

Pair the FX 8120 with a cheap mainboard, then overclock it to 4GHz or more, and you have the recipe to take Core i3 out the back door for a complete pasting.

Put the same CPU in with a £150 mainboard, get it compared to the overclocked Intel ‘k' processors, and you're gonna be accused of bringing a knife to a gun fight.

Available within 2 weeks, the new FX 8350 is rumoured to be clocked at 4GHz already and is supposed to deliver a boost of around 10% in benchmarks that are thread/core aware – like Cinebench.

If the early numbers are correct, then a 10% increase in core speed is yielding an almost 19% increase in Cinebench scores. Again, we need to stress that these early numbers have NOT been announced by AMD directly, but – if true – then that means a significant improvement in the underlying processor itself.

Price-wise, we think the new FX chips will be competitive, but can AMD control their partner pricing for mainboards?  We discussed this situation with a few people in the UK channel and were led to some interesting price-comparisons. Here's a chart we created from the information provided. It uses pricing from the main online retailers like Aria and Overclockers.

KitGuru says: We sound like a broken record, but let's try anyway. It doesn't matter what AMD engineers do with the cores and clocks, if the actual mainboards that are made available are so expensive that the CPU + Board combo moves into ‘K' space.

Comment below or in the KitGuru forums.

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