AMD's 12-core Magny-Cours leaked on eBay
The eBay auction offers four as-yet unreleased Magny-Cours Opteron processors - with no returns accepted.
The as-yet unreleased dodeca-cored processors have popped up on the auction site under the user account oakvillemehlvillecomputers, available on buy-it-now at an eye-watering $7,700 (£4,880) for a batch of four 2.2GHz processors - designed for quad-processor socket G34 server systems and offering 48 logical processing cores to the host operating system.
The chips have 6MB of L2 cache, split 512k per core, but also have 12MB of L3 cache and use quad-channel DDR3-1333 ECC memory in addition to several HyperTransport connection to link the chips. There's no further details yet on optimisations or core advancements, we'll have to wait for AMD to detail those.
As reported by MaximumPC, the seller has even made plans to offer a pre-built server based around the Magny-Cours chips, offering 48 cores and 64GB of RAM in a Tyan VX50 serer case for a massive $20,000 (£12,674) - pending the release of the quad-socket Tyan S8812 motherboard designed to take the processors.
What isn't clear is quite how the seller - who appears to specialise in high-performance computing equipment - has managed to get his hands on the AMD chips in the first place. Described as "the real thing" and "from [the] AMD assembly line" - along with, slightly worryingly, "no returns accepted" - there's no clue as to whether the chips are pre-release test versions or the finished article. With AMD having previously committed to a 1H 2010 release for Magny-Cours, it's not impossible that we could be looking at a more official release sooner rather than later.
Are you interested in a 48-core system for twelve grand, or is the latest in AMD's server line not as tempting as Intel's Nehalem EX? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
Previous Article
46 Comments
Discuss in the forums Replydo want
"No returns accepted" would be ringing alarm bells for me - unless they can guarantee they're genuine I wouldn't bother.
Why?
to see just how far they are ahead of AMD, then laugh.
New car.
Aw.. beat me to it :p
"No return accepted", ofc, how you gonna accept a return when you sold a regular Opteron photoshoped for eBay at the little price of $7000 :P
Must be a pain in the nuts and an Epic embarrasment when you find out out you just got a crappy regular opteron for that price :D
Given that we spent £2k at work for workstations with two Xeon E5520s, i.e. 8 logical processors, and 4GB RAM, spending 6x more on 48 procs with 64GB RAM makes it worthwhile
Does Intel have a 12 core CPU I haven't heard about?
im curious as to whether 12 phenom cores will outperform 6 gulftown cores with HT
That's an interesting theory.
Why? They are completely different types of CPU. Gulftown is mainstream sk1366, these 12 core AMD's are server designed for 2 and 4 socket G34 systems, the 2 will never be benchmarked against each other.
The closest thing AMD will have to a i7 competitor will be the 6 core Thubans.
gulftown doesnt just refer to mainstream i7 cpus - its the codename for the Xeons too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_future_Intel_microprocessors#Xeon_DP.2C_Six-Core
perhaps Beckton would be a better comparison.
But am I the only one that think that 64GB of RAM are not enough for 48 physical cores? I mean that's just not overkill enough for me. :p
no, that's what i thought at first, thinking 128GB would be more suitable for such a machine.
think about it, one of my university's remote access machine i regularly has 24GB for a Xeon i7 equivalent. and most of the time it's got more than 16GB used up with 2 or 3 cores being busy. so for a 48 core server, 128GB is still a bit low.
heck, even my own rig has 2GB for each core, and looking to upgrade to 16GB. that's just a gaming machine.
but technically you only have 1gb per logical core?
well there was an 80 core that they used for testing, like, 3 years ago IIRC?
http://news.cnet.com/Intel-shows-off-80-core-processor/2100-1006_3-6158181.html
Really? Why? I regularly multitask between high-end games and 'low end apps' like open-office or firefox, and I don't think I've ever seen memory usage over 3GB (yes, I'm 64bit) or any significant slowdown on my quad core system. Are you multi-tasking between instances of Crysis?!?
As to the 48 core situation, in theory I suppose you'd probably need over 64GB if you were running that many threads, but without real-world tests what theory worth?
i think it would be a great idea to phone the bloke go and see him and ask him to benchmark it in front of you so you know your getting your moneys worth!
please use uk ebay
try regularly multi-task between virtual machines. 8GB won't be enough and 64GB won't be enough for a many-user server.
Crysis is not the end of all, as CustomPC's latest mag shows, there's way more demanding stuff out there, such as graphical work station.
i know, i was only being pedantic :P
But still, i would like to see if intels 6/8 core nehalems are faster than a 12 core opteron.
im just going off the performance difference between the 4-core opteron and the quad core Xeons. according to CPC it was about 30-40%, so will the 8-core beckton be competitive with a 12-core mangy-cours?
http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/picard-facepalm.jpg
how would you even propose using 16gb on a gaming machine? I can't think of what game would even push 4gb to the limit right now. Sure on some special tasks like compliling or rending, or running virtual machines, but unless you want to be dual booted into 2 os's while compiling your next program AND runing crysis why 16gb? just to watch 10 of them sit empty.
memory is so cheap I do kinda want to make a virtual drive out of the extra gigs of ram. then I want to have a back-up macro so on boot it will load in a game. Insta boot ftw.
http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=183525
yes, imagine RAMdisk 8GB of RAMdisk plus 2 virtual machines plus enjoying any game. i've done similar thing with 2GB RAMdisk, 2 VM (for network users in another rooms who only has a laptop) and Sins of Solar Empire, but received out-of-memory message.
Oakville Mehlville Services sold these for over 8000 to an undisclosed buyer from germany
so the leaked Opterons are for real... OMCES contacted AMD to verify the sale was not breaching any clauses before the sale was final.... so there!
mark omces.com aka greencomputingpower.com
If you really had them, post screenshots and benchmarks to prove it. :p
Also, please don't advertise here, thank you very much.