No AMD Phenom II X4 960T

[edgedemon]

From Fud...

AMD has notified the press that AMD Phenom II X4 960T, known for its "unlocking" to six-core capability, will not reach retail/e-tail, but will rather be an OEM-only part.

The dream of having a six-core 45nm Thuban for the price of quad-core has been shattered by AMD, and honestly we can't blame them as AMD got a lot of bad publicity due to problems and issues with some users that have previously unlocked the X3 CPUs, even though AMD was very clear that unlocking is a risk that users take up on themselves.

The idea is that AMD will probably ship the Phenom II X4 960T to OEMs which will bundle it with motherboards that lack the unlocking feature.

http://www.legitreviews.com/news/8025/

 

[Martini1991]

Good on them imo.

 

[HeX]

TBH it's not a major loss, for the price the 960T would no doubt retail at you could have prolly picked up a 1035T or a 1055T and clocked it without the risk of it not unlocking.

 

[drunkenmaster]

Fud constantly mis understands everything so I wouldn't put too much notice in it.

Firstly you can get OEM chips from stores like OCUK anyway, so being OEM rather than retail doesn't make it automatically unavailable to us. Secondly, it seems to have been put back to Q3 anyway, which suggests two things, firstly, yields must be pretty fantastic to both have a hex core at 125W ratings anyway, but to be stockpiling failed hexcores so slowly you don't think there will be enough chips to release a new part for several months.

Though that does suggest that like the 555be, most will infact unlock because most 555BE's are "locked" purely because they need to sell more duals than quads, rather than having loads of failed cores to sell.

But As Hex said, the price of the lower end quads will likely be the same/lower than a higher end quad, as you'd probably see a Hexcore with 2 cores disabled at 3.4/3.6Ghz.

Overclocking the HT is soooo easy on the latest memory controllers/mobo's that 350Mhz is pretty damn easy and unlocked multipliers/black editions/top of the range chips are completely unnecessary.

I would think the hex cores are fairly expensive though, and with plenty of quad cores that are cheaper to make easily available, theres no real need to make a cut down version widely available. A P2 native quad core will obviously offer more profit at the same price point as a hex core cut to quad core, so theres very little need for them.