AMD 'Venice' Core Shows Big Drop in Power Needs

dtjohnson writes " Lost Circuits has carefully measured the power consumption of four recent Athlon 64 cores and has found that power consumption has been dramatically reduced in the new 'Venice' core from the relatively-low (compared to Intel P4) numbers of the original 2003 'Clawhammer' core to less than 30 watts under load and less than 10 watts for Windows at idle. This huge power reduction was apparently accomplished by a combination of 90 nm die shrink, Silicon-on-Insulator technology, and something called 'dual-stress liner technology' As Lost Circuits points out, power consumption worldwide has been exploding as more CPUs come online and the CPU power requirements increase so a significant power reduction will reduce the burden on electrical grids everywhere."

Comments

90nm

[Anonymous Coward]

"a combination of 90 nm die shrink"

No, the Winchester core preceding it was 90nm. There was no die shrink with Venice.

Still a great core, but this is a blatant error on the front page.

Re:Computing is not free.

[mmkkbb]

is this you?

Re:One more question about AMD

[Anonymous Custard]

Their Athlon 64 FX-5x line is unlocked, designed for the enthusiast crowd. Their Athlon 64 xx00 series is multiplier-locked, but you can still play with the FSB.

These findings are opposite to those of Xbitlabs

[tayhimself]

Xbitlabs found that Venice uses slightly more power than Winchester (the older 0.09u core) around a month ago. They tested cores at the same speed unlike Lostcircuits, and while LC is a good site, xbit is generally better. Not to mention the guy at LC blew up a few MBs before "finding out" how to do his measurements. Aslo Xbit is the only site I know that has an accurate video card power consumption database. http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/print/athlon6 4-venice.html