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65nm Athlons Debut With Lower Power Consumption

Posted by kdawson on from the less-of-the-same dept.

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."

6 of 151 comments (clear)

  1. HTPC by tedgyz · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The little gem in this story is the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ EE SFF 2.0GHz. At 35W, that sounds like a perfect CPU choice for a super-silent HTPC.

    --
    "No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
    1. Re:HTPC by Neon+Spiral+Injector · · Score: 4, Interesting

      OK, I'll give you that. But the HD H.264 requires a huge ammount of CPU to decode. My current dual 1.6 GHz Opteron system can't do it in real time. Doesn't even come close.

      So I was thinking the same thing about this new chip. It sounds pretty close to what I was wanting.

  2. Nice but a little slower. Surprise! by IPFreely · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Anand has a nice review of these new processors, including performance comparisons.

    The surprise is that it was a little slower than it's 90nm counterpart. They chased it down to the cache latency going up from 90nm to the 65nm part.

    Other than that, it looks good.

    --
    There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
  3. Re:It's a question of cores by KingArthur10 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Concerning your analogy: I was thinking more along the lines that a train runs on a single track and sometimes has to be held up for another train to use the same track. They have some track switching, but most operations are serial. A car on the highway might not be allowed to go as fast as a train, but it's got four lanes to maneuver through. A bunch of cars will reach their destinations faster than a bunch of trains because the trains have to share single tracks often.

    --
    I came, I saw, She conquered.
  4. Take my advice....please by OneSmartFellow · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If you are about to buy a AMD chip, ensure you buy a AM2 version, this is becuase non-AM2 versions do no support low level Hardware Virtualization (which means that XEN - and competitiors - can only operate in a paravirtualization mode)

  5. A major disappointment for whom? by John+Jamieson · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Whenever AMD or Intel moves to a new process, they do not expect much from the first cores(they are happy if they get as many cores from a wafer as they did before-which if my sources are correct, Intel didn't do, and AMD has).
    A lot of people forget that when Intel moved to 65nm, the new chips were slower in many ways, and the clock speeds were lower than the top end 90nm P4's.
    By industry standards these AMD 65nm chips are a SUCCESS.

    My only beef with the 65nm Athlons is that I cannot buy one at newegg, or order one from DELL. In my world, if I cannot order a PC with one, or buy it at newegg, IT IS A PAPER LAUNCH!