Question Do CPU steppings/revisions still matter?

[igor_kavinski]

During the P3/P4 era, I used to see a lot of reports about new steppings being released that would overclock better. How are things now? Do current enthusiasts constantly stay on top of new steppings (or revisions in AMD parlance) turning up for sale? Do some of you buy the latest stepping/revision and torture test it to see what's been improved?

 

[Mopetar]

They still exist, but I think the companies have just realized that people care about them enough that they've turned it into an official product release. Now we get mid-cycle refreshes that perform better than the launch products by a small margin.

There's not as much incentive to care since the extra performance isn't being randomly tricked out such that savvy customers can get a bit more by paying attention. I think a lot of this kind of enthusiasm has shifted to RAM just because getting a well tuned set of DIMMS can offer a lot more than can be had from a slightly better CPU given they're generally sold to boost to the max they possibly can out of the box and there's not as much room to play around with overclocks.

A lot of steppings are just cleaning up minor errata for the product and most of the performance gains are just a result of being manufactured more recently on a more mature process than through any changes to the CPU itself. Anything that's likely to be really substantial would require major design changes and a completely new set of masks. That usually gets pushed to subsequent designs.

 

[lata chaudhary]

Yes, CPU steppings/revisions still matter to some extent.