The AMD Spider platform: Series-7 chipset, Phenom CPU, HD38x0 GPU

INTRODUCTION

The computer industry is a funny place. One company can be on top for several years, just to be toppled and relegated to the back of the pack within months. In some ways that is what has happened to AMD and ATI. Once these two separate companies were the top dogs; the kings in their respective fields. While NVIDIA struggled with the GeForce 5 ATI shined with the Radeon 9x00 chipsets. And while AMD won the heart of most enthusiast users with the Athlon 64, Intel struggled to offer the same performance/price ration with their P4.

Today things look a lot different. NVIDIA and Intel have products that simply offer a lot more value that AMD, especially in the CPU-segment.

Between the 14th and the 16th of November I flew over to Warsaw, Poland, to get introduced to AMD’s new set of components codename Spider. The Spider platform consists of new GPU’s, new CPU’s and a new chipset and is AMD’s answer to both Intel and NVIDIA’s latest offerings. Is it enough? Read on and find out.

THE SPIDER IS HERE

The Spider is the codename for the whole CPU/Chipset/GPU platform from AMD. It is however not something that AMD will market out towards the consumers. They did hint that some computer builders might use the Spider name in their marketing but it is nothing that AMD will push. I personally think it is a pity as the spider image they are using is quite cool.

The idea with the Spider platform is to be able to offer a complete set of products that are guaranteed to work the best together. This however does not mean that each separate component only works with other AMD products. In fact, AMD also talk a lot about being open and that we will see motherboards using competitor chipsets that will support CrossfireX, just like we have Intel-based motherboards today that support Crossfire.

The Spider platform consists of 3 different components:

Chipset
The new Series-7 chipset lay the foundation for the whole platform. It will have 42 PCI-Express lanes, Multi-Monitor CrossfireX support and also support the new AMD Overdrive software.

CPU
We’ve waited a long time for these but finally it is time for AMD to release their new Phenom Quad-core CPU’s. These CPU’s are “true” Quad-Core designs, have shared L3-cache as well as HyperTransport 3.0.

GPU
Last but not least AMD is releasing two new GPU’s; the HD3850 and the HD3870. These GPU’s are ready for Quad-CrossfireX, have support for DirectX10.1 and have on-chip UVD.

On paper the Spider does seem to have some serious bite to it but what about the reality? Well, it was kind of a mixed bag to be honest.