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65nm Athlons Debut With Lower Power Consumption
TheRaindog writes "AMD has finally rolled out Athlon 64 X2 processors based on 65nm process technology, and The Tech Report has an interesting look at their energy usage and overclocking potential compared to current 90nm models. The new 65nm chips consume less power at idle and under load than their 90nm counterparts, and appear to have plenty of headroom for overclocking. An Athlon 64 X2 5000+ that normally runs at 2.4 GHz was taken all the way up to 2.9 GHz with standard air cooling and only a marginal voltage boost, suggesting that we may see faster chips from AMD soon."
Duh, all athlon 64 dual cores to date are clock for clock nearly identical though. This means clock speed does matter. I can't believe you got modded up for making such a shitty assumption on a "geek" website.
According to the AnandTech article you referenced, saying that "it looks good" is a bit of an overstatement. Here are a few quotes from the article:
"It's clear that these first 65nm chips, while lower power than their 90nm
counterparts, aren't very good even by AMD's standards."
"Performance and efficiency are still both Intel's fortes thanks to its Core 2
lineup, and honestly the only reason to consider Brisbane is if you currently
have a Socket-AM2 motherboard."
In every single AnandTech benchmark, Intel wins in both raw performance and performance per watt. And if raw power consumption is important to you, the winner was a 90nm AMD SFF part. In no case was a 65nm AMD better at anything.
The article does point out that a mature 90nm process is being compared to an immature 65nm process and thus future steppings are bound to be better. However, this doesn't change the fact that the current crop of AMD 65nm parts are a major disappointment.