AMD today announced that it’s new B3 stepping 4x core (Quad) and B2 stepping 3x core (Tri) Phenom has begun shipping. The B3 stepping is a replacement for the B2 stepping Phenom which had the TLB bug.
What is the TLB Bug you ask? All AMD quad-core processors utilize a shared L3 cache. In instances where the software uses nested memory pages, this processor will experience a race condition. The erratum is a chip-level issue involving the TLB logic for the L3 cache that can cause system hangs in specific circumstances. AMD has a [bios] fix for the problem, but it degrades performance. AMD has stated publicly that the workaround can lower performance by as much as 10%, although one source characterized the performance hit to TR as 10-20%.
AMD has announced that there are 8 new SKU’s. 2 Tri-core and 6 Quad core variants.
X3 Core 8000 Series:-8400 (2.1 GHz @ 95w)
-8600 (2.3 GHz @ 95w)
X4 Core 9000 Series:-9850 (2.5 GHz @ 125w)
-9750 (2.4 GHz @ 125w) / (2.4 GHz @ 95w)
-9650 (2.3 GHz @ 95w)
-9550 (2.2 GHz @ 95w)
-9100e (1.8 GHz @ 65w)
All xx50 series are B3 stepping while the 9100e and Tri-cores are still B2 stepping, although this is likely to change quickly as B3 Tri-core are expected Q2 08.
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