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> "FX-9590: Eight “Piledriver” cores, 5 GHz Max Turbo "

Ridiculous name. Maybe if they put a 'Go faster stripe' on the top of the chip people will believe it goes even faster!



The name is FX-9590. It has 8 compute cores. AMD's internal designation for this generation is "Piledriver". They've chosen to name their high-end compute family after construction equipment (their previous were named after racing tracks). 5 GHz Max Turbo is also not part of the name, it is a description of its performance. It's "baseline" performance is probably something like 4GHz or something (pulling out of my ass). The Max Turbo refers to that using their thermal management system, they can peak at least one of their cores to 5GHz for some period of time. The "Max" is in there because there are intermediate turbo speeds for varying thermal situations and CPU loads.


I really wish CPU vendors would simply name their products after relevant benchmarks. E.g. 'Intel PassMark 14490/135W'. Or 'AMD PassMark 9140/125W'.

Sounds nearly as fancy, makes the same amount of sense to the layman, and saves the rest of us a bit of time.


AMD used to do something like this back in the K5 era. Instead of advertising megahertz, the processors were sold based on a "performance rating" which attempted to match them up to equivalent Pentium chips based on a set of benchmarks.

So a K5 PR-200 was actually a 133MHz chip, but it could match or exceed a Pentium 200MHz in some well-selected benchmarks.


There is no such thing as a _universally_ "relevant benchmark". They will never agree on a testing suite since performance varies too much. They have no reason to believe the test manufacturer is impartial.


When you're done convincing them, can you convince the GPU makers as well? It's crazytown over there.

At least the network switch makers have a sort of internal consistency, though you still have to learn individual vendors' styles.


The CPU has different clock speeds depending on how much it is being used. The upper limit is set by thermal and power constraints. If you're using all the cores, the limit is relatively low. If you're only using one or two cores, the power management system will clock them higher. Since the higher clock speed is only available under certain workloads, it's called "Turbo".


Oh I appreciate all of that. But in combination with all of the other superlatives, it's frankly ludicrous.

AMD Exec 1: "Hmm, which superlatives can we use to sell this 'slightly more powerful chip'?"

AMD Exec 2: "Err... hmm... how about... ALL OF THEM?!"

AMD Exec 1: "Do you know, you're a freaking genius!!"


The "turbo" is probably there because of the amount of air that must flow through the radiator.


"FX", "PileDriver", "Max", "Turbo" ??? Whats next? obviously, "Super", "Mega", "Ultra", "Extra"?


You sir, should be in marketing. If you put a glistening racing stripe on the packaging, I'd make a guess you'd get 10% more in sales.


"piledriver"? Good grief! What are the next models called? Doggy Style? Missionary?


It was a wrestling move before it was a sex position. And the wrestling move was named after an actual tool to drive piles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pile_driver


It's a sex position? Kids these days and their newfangled terminology.

Still, it seems unlikely that no one had ever snickered about the phallic symbolism of the construction equipment of the term's original usage.




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