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Posted by Biscuit - Fri 12 Apr 2013 10:05
CAT-THE-FIFTH…. Why is this the first im hearing of this?

;)

Certainly interested to see if this requires a certain level of VRM control on the motherboard and what kind of power it guzzles. If they manage to get that kind of power in a sensible TDP it could be a beast of a chip.
Posted by benegerton1985 - Fri 12 Apr 2013 10:08
My FX6300 cost me £95 and with a small voltage tweak (up from 1.42v to 1.45v) will run at 5GHz. So what's the point?
Posted by kostya70 - Fri 12 Apr 2013 10:13
Like.
Posted by Biscuit - Fri 12 Apr 2013 10:22
benegerton1985
My FX6300 cost me £95 and with a small voltage tweak (up from 1.42v to 1.45v) will run at 5GHz. So what's the point?

This will run at 5Ghz out of the box, so there is potential for it to be overclocked even higher. This might have an interesting usage of resonant mesh clock technology to keep the power use down?
Posted by scaryjim - Fri 12 Apr 2013 10:29
benegerton1985
My FX6300 cost me £95 and with a small voltage tweak (up from 1.42v to 1.45v) will run at 5GHz. So what's the point?
A whole extra functioning module? ;)

Presumably this is just a carefully farmed top bin of silicon to try to give the brand some halo presence. OTOH, if they can get silicon that's guaranteed to run at 5GHz that's pretty impressive from a manufacturing POV. Limited edition, no doubt with a few extras (possibly a liquid cooling unit in the box?) to entice enthusiast AMD fans (and no, I don't mean fanboys) who want to push FX chips to their limits … probably worth $800 to a few people, and for a limited edition headline product that's all they need to sell :D
Posted by benegerton1985 - Fri 12 Apr 2013 10:31
Biscuit
This will run at 5Ghz out of the box, so there is potential for it to be overclocked even higher. This might have an interesting usage of resonant mesh clock technology to keep the power use down?

Fair point but what will it overclock to and is 5GHz out of the box worth it when you can easily get 5GHz by getting a standard FX8350 (around £150), some watercooling (Corsair H55 is around £50 at the moment, £200 in total a hell of a lot less) and changing a couple of settings in the BIOS? I understand that the whole point of this is for extreme users and overclockers but I doubt it'll have that much overclocking potential that is worth that amount of money, If it would overclock to 6GHz on air then fair enough but I doubt it!! Please prove me wrong though AMD :)
Posted by benegerton1985 - Fri 12 Apr 2013 10:32
scaryjim
A whole extra functioning module? ;)

No need to be pedantic!! I was making a point that my cheap Vishera chip can do it easily already ;)
Posted by Biscuit - Fri 12 Apr 2013 10:38
benegerton1985
Fair point but what will it overclock to and is 5GHz out of the box worth it when you can easily get 5GHz by getting a standard FX8350 (around £150), some watercooling (Corsair H55 is around £50 at the moment, £200 in total a hell of a lot less) and changing a couple of settings in the BIOS? I understand that the whole point of this is for extreme users and overclockers but I doubt it'll have that much overclocking potential that is worth that amount of money, If it would overclock to 6GHz on air then fair enough but I doubt it!! Please prove me wrong though AMD :)
Who knows what it will overclock too? The bulldozer chip currently has the record for highest clockspeed @8.5Ghz(ish) so it could be anything really.
At the price this chip has, i don't see it being aimed at people like me and you, who know we wont get any real benefits from the extra clockspeed. Its aimed at serious enthusiasts and people trying to break records.
Posted by scaryjim - Fri 12 Apr 2013 10:46
benegerton1985
No need to be pedantic!! I was making a point that my cheap Vishera chip can do it easily already ;)

Wasn't just pedantry - the extra module will draw more power and put out more heat, making it harder to run stably at higher clock speeds. IIRC the 8350 is rated as requiring 30W more heat dissipation than the 6300 at stock clocks, and that will increase exponentially with overclocking. Also, you may have simply got a particularly good sample of the 6300. These are guaranteed to run at 5GHz. That's very different from simply being able to.
Posted by kalniel - Fri 12 Apr 2013 10:56
benegerton1985
No need to be pedantic!!
I take it you're new around here? :p

I was making a point that my cheap Vishera chip can do it easily already ;)
Well yes, if you're happy to void warranty and run a CPU out of spec then good for your requirements. Other people have different needs so AMD are entitled to address theirs as well as yours ;) Top chips always command a vast premium, but presumably it's worth it to some people.
Posted by sykobee - Fri 12 Apr 2013 11:17
AMD realises that a halo product is useful, even if it doesn't sell in massive quantities.

There will be people who will want to brag about having a 5GHz computer with eight cores too.
Posted by Neostar - Fri 12 Apr 2013 11:53
Good to hear this as I've always liked AMD, lets hope it really delivers the performance though
Posted by Jimbo75 - Fri 12 Apr 2013 11:59
A 5GHz Vishera is a seriously fast CPU. Not sure it's $795 fast but it'll blow a 3770K away anyway.
Posted by AndyM95 - Fri 12 Apr 2013 12:17
Biscuit
benegerton1985
My FX6300 cost me £95 and with a small voltage tweak (up from 1.42v to 1.45v) will run at 5GHz. So what's the point?

This will run at 5Ghz out of the box, so there is potential for it to be overclocked even higher. This might have an interesting usage of resonant mesh clock technology to keep the power use down?
It still comes out the box at 4.2GHz, they're just guaranteeing that it will do 5GHz. Which is ridiculous as many 8350s will do 5GHz on air anyway.
Posted by watercooled - Fri 12 Apr 2013 12:27
AndyM95
It still comes out the box at 4.2GHz.
Really? The article doesn't state that, or are you referencing somewhere else?

I can't see them making a unique chip for this niche, limited-volume area so I also reckon it's probably just a cherry-picked Vishera bin.
Posted by mojothejester - Fri 12 Apr 2013 12:31
It's a good thing, enthusiasts will buy it, and if it is a great chip then it'll be a good starting place for following generation of chips. hopefully amd can bring the fight back to Intel :-)
Posted by Biscuit - Fri 12 Apr 2013 12:36
AndyM95
It still comes out the box at 4.2GHz, they're just guaranteeing that it will do 5GHz. Which is ridiculous as many 8350s will do 5GHz on air anyway.

Yeah we need a source for a claim like that, ether that or you need some new glasses :p
Posted by cheesyboy - Fri 12 Apr 2013 12:42
AMD have needed a proper flagship CPU to sex-up the lineup a bit. Pleased to see this, even if it is just a top-binned standard chip.

ps.
Nice exclusive from Hexus. Can't see this being reported elsewhere currently.
Posted by Ragga - Fri 12 Apr 2013 12:59
It would be interesting to see how many units of this AMD could sell :/, not sure if it would have the same performance as an overclocked 4,6,8300 series at 5Jhz
Posted by Hardware_Elite - Fri 12 Apr 2013 13:03
The reason they are shooting for 5GHz stock is to get more people on board with the idea the chips are better for gaming. They're not better but actually on par. But that's not all. Intel's chips are a lot more efficient, meaning that Intel's advertised 3.2 GHz would be faster than AMD's advertised 3.8 - 4.2 GHz. AMD is fine for gaming but the fact that a quad core i5 will blaze an octa-core is hilarious. There's a reason to spend more money on Intel, but hey, whatever, opinions right.
Posted by Jimbo75 - Fri 12 Apr 2013 13:06
Hardware_Elite
The reason they are shooting for 5GHz stock is to get more people on board with the idea the chips are better for gaming. They're not better but actually on par. But that's not all. Intel's chips are a lot more efficient, meaning that Intel's advertised 3.2 GHz would be faster than AMD's advertised 3.8 - 4.2 GHz. AMD is fine for gaming but the fact that a quad core i5 will blaze an octa-core is hilarious. There's a reason to spend more money on Intel, but hey, whatever, opinions right.

It has nothing to do with efficiency - the problem is the vast majority games are only using 2-2.5 cores so most of AMD's extra cores are lying around doing nothing much. If all games were fully using 8 cores the 8350 would murder the 3570K in most of them.

Intel is (a lot) more efficient in terms of power consumption however, but that's more to do with their process advantage, 22nm vs 32nm.
Posted by kingpotnoodle - Fri 12 Apr 2013 13:07
sykobee
AMD realises that a halo product is useful, even if it doesn't sell in massive quantities.

There will be people who will want to brag about having a 5GHz computer with eight cores too.

Which in eBay seller speak means “L@@K 40GHZ !!11!!!! CPU” (bad units and the super annoying @@ thing intentional)
Posted by cheesyboy - Fri 12 Apr 2013 13:09
Jimbo75
It has nothing to do with efficiency - the problem is the vast majority games are only using 2-2.5 cores so most of AMD's extra cores are lying around doing nothing much. If all games were fully using 8 cores the 8350 would murder the 3570K in most of them.

Exactly. Need we remind ourselves of what we saw with multi-core optimised Crysis 3?
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?285105-Crysis-3-AMD-FX-CPUs-dominate-INTEL-left-behind
Posted by watercooled - Fri 12 Apr 2013 13:10
There are many games where far cheaper offerings from AMD outperform Intel's CPUs - plenty of games are now well-threaded. Clock speed is an utterly meaningless number by itself and has been for a long time now. There are better places than Hexus to troll, just FYI. :)

Edit: Oops, missed a few posts there.

Further, as has been covered numerous times on these forums, and proved elsewhere, CPU game benchmarks are often badly flawed and overly biased towards lightly/single-threaded CPU performance. Presumably, it's assumed these results scale perfectly up to playable resolutions and settings, but this is often not the case.

Also bear in mind, a 3570k is what, £170? A 6300 costs about 110, a 8350 about 155, both match or exceed the i5 in many newer games, even beating the £260 3770k in some. And that's ignoring motherboard cost and features.

The dual-core Intel CPUs aren't really worth bothering with for modern games.

Hmm, it seems I was wrong about the 3570k pricing, it's actually >£180 now.
Posted by zaph0d - Fri 12 Apr 2013 14:36
Bear in mind, with both the Nextbox720 and Profitstation 4 both using 8core Amd APU's that games will be heavily optimised for true multi-core and x86-64.
PC <-> Console ports will be much simpler so we'll get more games on the PC that run with similar resource levels to the consoles as opposed to now where the games require 4-8 times the power due to lazy port coding.

With this in mind the Centurion may just Rule gaming from Autumn onwards.
Posted by zap117 - Fri 12 Apr 2013 15:39
or you could just buy a <$200 cpu and overclock it to 5GHz…
Posted by Willzzz - Fri 12 Apr 2013 15:49
watercooled
Also bear in mind, a 3570k is what, £170? A 6300 costs about 110, a 8350 about 155, both match or exceed the i5 in many newer games, even beating the £260 3770k in some. And that's ignoring motherboard cost and features.

Which games?

A gamer on a budget is best off with an i5 3470 or similar. Cheaper and faster than an 8350.
Posted by watercooled - Fri 12 Apr 2013 16:16
Have you been following any related Hexus threads recently, or actually understand my post?
Posted by iamlorro - Fri 12 Apr 2013 20:55
hexus;
This so-called Centurion is guaranteed to run at 5GHz, on air

That's very impressive technology - Intel CPU's still require electri

Surprised that more isn't being made of that!
Posted by keithwalton - Fri 12 Apr 2013 21:31
Such a shame really that amd are down so much on clock for clock and core for core. It's needed though as where has ivy-bridge extreme got to, nevermind haswell extreme!
Intels fastest cpus are sandybridge based and haven't really changed for 18 months now
Posted by Biscuit - Fri 12 Apr 2013 21:46
Willzzz
Which games?

A gamer on a budget is best off with an i5 3470 or similar. Cheaper and faster than an 8350.

Eh? That's not accurate at all. Gamers are better with a 6300 and a 970 board if budgets are tight and they are playing more modern games.
Posted by watercooled - Fri 12 Apr 2013 22:03
iamlorro
That's very impressive technology - Intel CPU's still require electri

Surprised that more isn't being made of that!
Electricity-powered CPUs are so last year. :P
Posted by AndyM95 - Fri 12 Apr 2013 22:22
Biscuit
AndyM95
It still comes out the box at 4.2GHz, they're just guaranteeing that it will do 5GHz. Which is ridiculous as many 8350s will do 5GHz on air anyway.

Yeah we need a source for a claim like that, ether that or you need some new glasses :p
Google is your friend :) http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Vishera-Piledriver-Steamroller-socket-AM3-Centurion,22015.html
Posted by Willzzz - Fri 12 Apr 2013 22:26
Eh?

The 5 most recent game benchmarks, you pretty much can't split the 3470 and 8350.
Plus the 3470 will win on anything older.

I just don't see why a gamer would choose an 8350 which will match the i5 performance AT BEST.

http://www.techspot.com/review/655-bioshock-infinite-performance/page5.html
http://www.techspot.com/review/648-simcity-performance/page4.html
http://www.techspot.com/review/645-tomb-raider-performance/page5.html
http://www.techspot.com/review/642-crysis-3-performance/page6.html
http://www.techspot.com/review/615-far-cry-3-performance/page6.html
Posted by Biscuit - Fri 12 Apr 2013 22:46
Willzzz
Eh?

The 5 most recent game benchmarks, you pretty much can't split the 3470 and 8350.
Plus the 3470 will win on anything older.

I just don't see why a gamer would choose an 8350 which will match the i5 performance AT BEST.

http://www.techspot.com/review/655-bioshock-infinite-performance/page5.html
http://www.techspot.com/review/648-simcity-performance/page4.html
http://www.techspot.com/review/645-tomb-raider-performance/page5.html
http://www.techspot.com/review/642-crysis-3-performance/page6.html
http://www.techspot.com/review/615-far-cry-3-performance/page6.html

You're not taking into consideration the cost of the chipset and the feature set at that price, plus you can over clock any of the FX series chips even on the lower end cheaper boards… Then add in the fact that AMD seem more keen to stick with the socket for the future so you have an easier upgrade path.
Not saying the 3470 is a bad option, I just struggle to see it as the best all rounder
Posted by watercooled - Fri 12 Apr 2013 22:51
AndyM95
Google is your friend :) http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Vishera-Piledriver-Steamroller-socket-AM3-Centurion,22015.html

They're talking about the 8350 at 4.2 GHz and saying how it improves over the 8150.
Posted by watercooled - Fri 12 Apr 2013 22:57
Willzzz
Eh?

The 5 most recent game benchmarks, you pretty much can't split the 3470 and 8350.
Plus the 3470 will win on anything older.

I just don't see why a gamer would choose an 8350 which will match the i5 performance AT BEST.

http://www.techspot.com/review/655-bioshock-infinite-performance/page5.html
http://www.techspot.com/review/648-simcity-performance/page4.html
http://www.techspot.com/review/645-tomb-raider-performance/page5.html
http://www.techspot.com/review/642-crysis-3-performance/page6.html
http://www.techspot.com/review/615-far-cry-3-performance/page6.html

Aside from choosing a single source, I see:
Negligible difference,
Negligible difference,
Non-CPU bottleneck/fps cap,
8350>i5, but still negligible difference TBF,
Negligible difference.

You can't look at 1-2fps framerate differences on one website and testing resolution and call one, significantly more expensive, CPU conclusively better in every way. They also exclude the 6300 from most tests, but it's a decently competitive CPU, especially considering its price tag.
Posted by Willzzz - Fri 12 Apr 2013 23:13
The 3470 is no more expensive at all, in fact cheaper as far as I can see.

I'm not saying it is better in every way, but it is no more expensive, just as good at modern games and will perform far better in established games.

The 8350 has no advantages at all, oh and about double the power consumption at load.
Posted by watercooled - Fri 12 Apr 2013 23:53
What about the ~£100 6300? And when you factor in motherboard cost and features?

And as for derping over something like 20W load power consumption again…
Posted by scaryjim - Sat 13 Apr 2013 00:03
watercooled
AndyM95
Google is your friend :) http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Vishera-Piledriver-Steamroller-socket-AM3-Centurion,22015.html

They're talking about the 8350 at 4.2 GHz and saying how it improves over the 8150.

Indeed; their comment on the 5GHz clock speed is:

whether that number is a base frequency or a Turbo clock is unknown at this point.
Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH - Sat 13 Apr 2013 01:59
Biscuit
CAT-THE-FIFTH…. Why is this the first im hearing of this?

;)


I mentioned it before!! :P

watercooled
They also exclude the 6300 from most tests, but it's a decently competitive CPU, especially considering its price tag.

Yep.
Posted by Willzzz - Sat 13 Apr 2013 10:16
watercooled
What about the ~£100 6300? And when you factor in motherboard cost and features?

And as for derping over something like 20W load power consumption again…

Sure, if you are on a really tight budget then the 6300 is OK, but it is slower than the 8350 and thus slower than the 3470.
It's 7fps below the 3470 on the only direct comparison above, bringing it below 60fps.

If you don't take a Z77 board, the motherboard is no more expensive than a 970 motherboard.

While I'd love to believe that the 3470 is 20w at load and the 8350 40w at load, they just aren't.
The 3470 is 96.6 and the 8350 is 195.2w.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6396/the-vishera-review-amd-fx8350-fx8320-fx6300-and-fx4300-tested/6
Posted by Biscuit - Sat 13 Apr 2013 10:30
Willzzz
Sure, if you are on a really tight budget then the 6300 is OK, but it is slower than the 8350 and thus slower than the 3470.
It's 7fps below the 3470 on the only direct comparison above, bringing it below 60fps.

If you don't take a Z77 board, the motherboard is no more expensive than a 970 motherboard.

While I'd love to believe that the 3470 is 20w at load and the 8350 40w at load, they just aren't.
The 3470 is 96.6 and the 8350 is 195.2w.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6396/the-vishera-review-amd-fx8350-fx8320-fx6300-and-fx4300-tested/6

Price is no more than a 970 but you get less features and no overclocking.

Also anand openly admit:

(the Crosshair Formula V is hardly the lowest power AM3+ board available)
These are platform readings, it's worth taking that into account. The readings different review sites have got have been quite different depending on which site you like at.
Posted by Willzzz - Sat 13 Apr 2013 11:12
I'm not saying there aren't perfectly good reasons to get an 8350, but for a typical gamer on a budget you just don't need fancy motherboard features, you aren't going to have RAID SSD or SLI/CF.

If you have an i5 there's not really any need to overclock for games, they downclocked their 3770k by 1Ghz and it still beat the 8350 at stock. I'm mean I know overclocking is “cool” but it not actually that useful in a practical sense. Plus there is still a cost associated with it. Too many people act as if overclocking is “free” but often these people have spent huge amounts to achieve their overclocks.

OK so let's assume a really efficient motherboard and take 20W off, it's still 80W extra for the 8350 platform.
Posted by anselhelm - Sat 13 Apr 2013 14:20
But wouldn't anyone willing that spend that much cash just go for Intel instead?

Don't get me wrong here, I'm a fan of AMD and want to see them get back to their glory days, going toe-to-toe with Intel, but Intel has a significant advantage in terms of efficiency, power usage and general speed. AMD has price. If you take away AMD's price advantage, then what does it have as an incentive to buy it?

If this is 5GHz within a 95W envelope, then that'd be amazing. Heck, even within 125W it'd be okay, but I can't see that happening and at that price, you'll have to have to a very specific use for it (or a lot of spare money) to get a real advantage from that chip over a similarly priced or even cheaper Intel setup.

Stick to what you do best AMD and keep the price advantage and the low-middle range APU market.
Posted by watercooled - Sat 13 Apr 2013 16:32
Willzzz
Sure, if you are on a really tight budget then the 6300 is OK, but it is slower than the 8350 and thus slower than the 3470.
It's 7fps below the 3470 on the only direct comparison above, bringing it below 60fps.

If you don't take a Z77 board, the motherboard is no more expensive than a 970 motherboard.

While I'd love to believe that the 3470 is 20w at load and the 8350 40w at load, they just aren't.
The 3470 is 96.6 and the 8350 is 195.2w.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6396/the-vishera-review-amd-fx8350-fx8320-fx6300-and-fx4300-tested/6
You're comparing power consumption under heavy video encoding load, where the 8350 happens to be substantially faster than any i5. Power consumption under gaming load is NOT the same. As has been mentioned already, platform power consumption tends to be far more significant than CPU power for modern CPUs, which is usually in the low single-digits when gated.

And you're basing your gaming benchmarks on a single table from a single website.
Posted by HalloweenJack - Sat 13 Apr 2013 18:26
Willzzz
Sure, if you are on a really tight budget then the 6300 is OK, but it is slower than the 8350 and thus slower than the 3470.
It's 7fps below the 3470 on the only direct comparison above, bringing it below 60fps.

If you don't take a Z77 board, the motherboard is no more expensive than a 970 motherboard.

While I'd love to believe that the 3470 is 20w at load and the 8350 40w at load, they just aren't.
The 3470 is 96.6 and the 8350 is 195.2w.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6396/the-vishera-review-amd-fx8350-fx8320-fx6300-and-fx4300-tested/6

anandtech has 3 paid up intel employee`s as MODs (1 is a super mod) , they also have a paid up employee on the staff.


ergo - take EVERYTHING they say with an intel bias.
Posted by Willzzz - Sat 13 Apr 2013 19:13
Oh yeah Anandtech are biassed… That's always what people resort to when they have no proper argument.

And actually most of the benchmarks are from a completely different website and from 5 different tables, I could come up with more but I feel that would be rather pointless.

Multi-threaded games 3470 = 8350
Lightly-threaded games 3470 > 8350

Does anyone actually dispute that?
Posted by watercooled - Sat 13 Apr 2013 20:09
Somewhat. But it's nowhere near as cut-and-dry as that.

Again, you listed a load of charts from the same website, most of which were inconclusive, one of which was clearly completely GPU-bound, and one which, based on your definitions, actually contradicted your point (in reality, the difference is of course well within error margins). The clock-for-clock comparisons are all but irrelevant when comparing the two as they are based on vastly different microarchitectures and were never intended to run at the same clock speeds, for many reasons.

From experience, it's more like old single-threaded and/or inefficiently-coded games (e.g. Skyrim with its use of the antique x87 code path), generally IVB performs better, but these also tend to be games where CPU will never realistically be a bottleneck, with a few exceptions of course.

Lightly-threaded games, it depends on the game and the depth of threading really. E.g. for games with some amount of multithreading but where it tends to be unbalanced, it's a similar story to above. However, for games with deeper and more balanced threading, things see to even out as can be seen by many new games which run happily on reasonably modern quad or above CPUs, but chug on even newer dual-cores.

More heavily threaded games, which are of course becoming more commonplace, tend to have PD CPUs performing exceptionally well considering their price point. For example, Crysis 3, which also really doesn't seem to like anything less than four cores. The new consoles should also make things interesting here.
http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Crysis-3-PC-235317/Tests/Crysis-3-Test-CPU-Benchmark-1056578/
http://pctuning.tyden.cz/multimedia/hry-a-zabava/26363-crysis-3-test-naroku-nejkrasnejsi-hry-soucasnosti?start=6
The second site claims the i7 is running at 4.5GHz but I assume it's a typo. For demanding games, multi-threaded engines are only getting more common. Essentially, most modern games I know of which are CPU demanding tend to be fairly well threaded. Those which are only lightly/single-threaded are generally less CPU demanding overall, so will hit other bottlenecks first - e.g. while some sites like to test games at 800x600 and rant about the 270 vs 300 fps difference, it's truly unimportant for the real world.

Edit: That turned out a fair bit longer than I intended…
Posted by PowerPie5000 - Sun 14 Apr 2013 12:31
A 5GHz FX chip? I bet the power consumption will be on an epic scale and it still won't keep up with chips from Intel. GHz isn't everything these days and $795 is a joke.
Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH - Sun 14 Apr 2013 13:13
This is another chip like the TWKR Edition which is probably very leaky and meant for high clockspeeds,especially the record attempts.
Posted by AGTDenton - Fri 19 Apr 2013 18:49
I thought oooh this could be a turning point but then came the “to be made available in very limited quantities” and now I'm totally unimpressed again.
Posted by WritersBlock - Mon 29 Apr 2013 01:11
Hmmm, not dated 1 april.

I have no faith in AMD being able to produce a new chip able to compete with a decent i5, never mind an i7.

So it clocks at 5ghz, let's see what that allows it to do, and how much noise and heat it produces.

Seriously high cost.
Posted by mikeybinns - Mon 10 Jun 2013 19:17
I think this is more of a marketing ploy more than an actual sale product. not many people could afford that price for their CPU let alone the extra gear needed for it.