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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."
How do you suggest that one decode 1080i H.264 transport streams with AC3 5.1 audio? This processor may be slightly more than required, but not by much.
They used the same video card on the Intel test rig too. They're just trying to keep as many components as possible in common between the platforms so that the power draw comparisons are more useful.
Not too complicated really. As to why they chose that particular video card, I don't know, but I'd wager that the reviewer just had it on hand.
I overclocked the very first stepping of the first 500 Mhz Athlon to 700 Mhz and it has been running 24/7 for 6 years. Now, it is finally being replaced with a newer (AMD of course) system and I opened up the case for salvage parts and there...there was the overclocking board still attached to the 'Slot A' CPU and still working perfectly. I'd forgotten it was even there. So there's a 6-year data point on the overclocking/longevity scale.