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AMD Phenom II Available To Distributors This Week
jdb2 writes "Fudzilla reports that AMD's Phenom II is already available to distributors, and will be available to sell to consumers in the week of the 29th of December. The Phenom II is AMD's consumer version of its 'Shanghai' 45 nanometer SOI process Quad-core Opteron chip and will reportedly ship in 3 and 2.8 gigahertz flavors corresponding to the model numbers '940' and '920' respectively. This first release will be packaged as a Socket AM2+ part which only supports DDR2 memory. The following month AMD is reportedly going to release a new '9x5' series of Socket AM3 versions which support DDR3 memory — these will be backward compatible with Socket AM2+ . This may be an inflection point for AMD if the Shanghai architecture lives up to the performance numbers from preliminary reports and if so it will no doubt also be a welcome belated Christmas present for the already salivating hordes of Tech Junkies."
You can get a good AM2+ motherboard for under $100. DDR2 is cheap, and the price point for these CPUS is looking pretty good.
I doubt that they will beat an I7 but they may offer a great bang for the buck. Even before these came out AMD offered the best value in the good enough category.
You would be hard pressed to find a better value than one of the BE X2s on a 780G motherboard for an average user.
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TDP != power usage. it might draw that (or more even), but its not necessarily drawing that on average.
It's the max expected under normal conditions for thermal dissipation.
Let me remind you that the Prescott was 103 Watts (@3.2GHz) for *ONE* *SLOW* core. :)
Any comparison between that Netburst crap and today's processors from both companies is absurd.
That said, Intel is currently ahead in the game in both max performance and TDP, so Phenom is good for existing AM2+ upgrades or for more "budget conscious" scenarios. For the sake of all of us I hope AMD catches up (I am old enough to remember CPU prices from when Intel had no competiti).
In any case you should be more worried about the current graphics cards that tend to require twice the power of the CPU...
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Always remember AMD measures power consumption differently from Intel, AMD's number is more like a max envelope value while Intel's numbers are a type of average.
These guys found that a 45nm engineering Phenom II drew 24W less than a 9600 under load.
We have both Phenoms and C2Qs at work and I don't notice any difference in the noise. Maybe I would at home where it's quieter.
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Though still not perfect, you'd have to compare Intel TDP numbers to AMD 'ACP' numbers. Intel screwed with the point of TDP for marketing purposes and they have the leverage with OEMs to pretty much do as they damn well please, even if it makes OEM life harder.
Secondly, the Core2 isn't comparable in featureset. Notably, it requires a memory controller on motherboard which tends to have a significant amount of power in and of itself. So you'll have to jump to Core i7 parts, which currently advertise a 130W TDP, presumably largely in part due to bringing the controller in.
Thirdly, the current gen phenoms even include 65W parts at reduced clock. I would not doubt that, if not at launch, shortly thereafter lower-wattage parts will come out. Even if not, underclocking may be an option.
All said and done, AMD has something kind of compelling in various ways. I don't think it will take back the performance lead, but Intel is taking some hits in trying to get an equivalent architecture together. Will have to wait for AM3 to have complete apples-to-apples benchmarks for i7 and Phenom II, but I don't think it will be that much closer than it is today.
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Old Biostar boards were junk. This generation looks much better engineered. But hey, if you don't like the Biostar 790xx, get whatever vendor you like in a 780xx. It still meets your originally-stated requirements. And, as a matter of fact, yes, I have breadboarded machines from scratch. Mine weren't for a grade. You? As to my support for AMD, it is a mix of reasons. Yes, some of it is supporting the underdog. But some of it is, as the underdog, AMD has to offer better value in order to compete against chipzilla. And with the Phenom II, they are moving up into the midrange desktop market again.
This may be an inflection point for AMD...
An inflection is where the 2nd derivative of a function changes sign ie the curvature is zero.
I think the summary meant minima, that's where the first derivative is zero if the curve is smooth. That would mean it changes from going down to going up.
Err, no shit sherlock. :) You probably mean no offense, but I've been studying advanced mathematics ( at the graduate/doctoral level now ) for over a decade.
Anyway, I meant inflection point.
If you take AMD's health as a function of time , say , h(t), then for the past year or more the derivative has been negative, and growing more negative. If the Phenom II launch is indeed the catalyst for an AMD "turn around", then naturally the derivative h'(t) will reverse sign and begin to increase. This represents AMD's "putting their gears into reverse" and "stepping on the gas" -- they have to dissipate their accumulated downward momentum in order to eventually gain positive, increasing momentum.
jdb2