AMD launches Opteron 3300 and 4300 lines

Single socket, single die, data center focused

Dec 3, 2012 by

AMD - logoAMD is putting out two new server lines, the Opteron 3300 and 4300 families. There are nine chips in all being released, along with one new data point.

There are six Opteron 4300s coming out with between four and eight cores, clocks between 2.2 and 3.5GHz, turbo up to 3.8GHz, and TDPs between 35W and 95W. Prices start at $191 and hit a high of $501, interestingly the low power, 4-core 4310 is near the high end at $415. I guess data centers will pay for energy efficiency after all.

Lower down the stack are the three 3300 chips with four or eight cores, but no six. Clocks range from 1.9 to 2.8GHz, but turbo still tops out at 3.8GHz. Wattages drop a bit to 25 at the low end, 65 on top, and prices start off at a mere $125. All of the new chips have 8MB of L3 cache. The full spec sheet looks like this.

The specs for the 9 new Opteron 4300 and 3300 CPUs

All the specs, and nothing but the specs other than a few lines

What’s the difference between the 3300 and 4300 series? Easy, the 4300 supports two sockets, the 3300 line only one. The 3300 line is also slower and supports only two DIMMs per channel vs three on the 4300. Otherwise the both chips are a single die version of the larger 6300 line. Effectively the chip is half of it’s bigger brother and the 3300 system halved again on the socket side.

So what’s the new data point? Both of these lines support the new 1.25v DDR3 memory spec, and according to AMD, they are the only x86 CPUs to do so. That may not sound like much over a 1.35v DIMM, but on data center scales, it makes a massive difference. If Romley needs anything more than a BIOS update to match this feature, it will be a major AMD advantage in the data center market.

Since the 3300 and 4300 lines are effectively Opteron-ized versions of Vishera, these chips should support the same thing, but we haven’t seen anyone try it. Overall, it looks like AMD has a product that is priced to sell, IE they know the calculations that the data center buyers make, and are pricing their product to hit that TCO point. If they got the numbers right, these chips may not excite you, but they should sell decently.S|A

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Charlie Demerjian

Roving engine of chaos and snide remarks at SemiAccurate
Charlie Demerjian is the founder of Stone Arch Networking Services and SemiAccurate.com. SemiAccurate.com is a technology news site; addressing hardware design, software selection, customization, securing and maintenance, with over one million views per month. He is a technologist and analyst specializing in semiconductors, system and network architecture. As head writer of SemiAccurate.com, he regularly advises writers, analysts, and industry executives on technical matters and long lead industry trends. Charlie is also available through Guidepoint and Mosaic. FullyAccurate