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AMD's Phenom II 965, 3.4GHz, 140 Watts, $245
Vigile writes "While AMD does not have the muscle to push around the i7, they certainly have the ability to give the older and more common Core 2 Quads a run for their money. With the release of the Phenom II X4 965, AMD further attempts to dethrone the Core 2 Quad as the premier midrange CPU offering. While it may not be a world-beater by any stretch of the imagination, it certainly is catching Intel's attention in the breadbasket of the CPU market. The X4 965 is the fastest clocked processor that AMD has ever produced, much less shipped in mass quantities. While the speed bump is appreciated, the cost in terms of power and heat will make the introduction of the X4 965 problematic for some. Many of us thought that we would never see another 140 watt processor (as the Phenom 9950 was), but unfortunately those days are back. Still, AMD offers a compelling part at a reasonable price, and their motherboard support for this new 140 watt processor is robust."
read: if you didnt shit in a marble toilet this morning and start the day trying to figure out which of your sedans to drive to the office, you may find this chips introduction "problematic" from a pricing standpoint.
Good people go to bed earlier.
How is a $245, quad-core chip considered mid-range?
I don't see how this is news... It's the same technology on the other Phenom IIs, except with an overclocked multiplier and price.
Yeah, but you have to pay the "i7 tax" for a new $220+ motherboard. Core2Duo/Quads will happily plug into any $50 motherboard you (already) have.
moox. for a new generation.
It certainly appears that the Q9550 is in a sweet spot for low cost (including platform), power draw and performance.
love is just extroverted narcissism
You were running 95 watts at stock (2.83 GHz). You're way, way over that by now!
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
The difference is that the Phenom 2 965 is designed to run at this frequency, while you are overclocking your CPU. It's great when overclocking works, but not all CPUs may be able to do it (I cannot go to a store and buy this CPU thinking that I would run it at 3.4GHz - I may get a CPU that runs OK at the specified frequency but cannot be overclocked much).
And the power consumption isn't that big, my dual Opteron 270 PC probably uses more power (each CPU has TDP of 95W).
I don't know what wattage it's pulling, but the CPU temperature is holding very steady at about 38 Celcius, and the fans don't even seem to be working very hard for that. It's working great, and at those temperatures, it should do fine for years to come.
What wattage it's pulling is highly relevant, however. That's the amount of energy turned into heat, after all. Did you measure this while idling, during typical use, or at full load? 38 degrees while not doing anything special is not anything special. If you can keep a 140W processor at 38 degrees at full load, that'd be quite spectacular.
I know I'll be called a fanboy or something but I've been building AMD/ATI systems for the last ten years based solely on the fact that it isn't Intel/nVidia. I'm not going to pay $1000 for the top-of-the-line Intel chip anyway and I'd rather see AMD in business than Intel be the only big player.
-SaNo
Well AMD have started using an ACP number now that is a bit closer to what Intel's TDP definition was.
At a platform level it appears that the AMD solution is still more than competitive on power consumption with Intel's similar offerings (according to the review at Tech Report anyway), so I wouldn't worry too much about the 140W figure. Especially if you're going to add a fast graphics card anyway, which will eat even more.
The cost benefit curve in the consumer CPU space is strange. A 10% faster might be worth twice as much or be totally useless.
EX: Real time playback of HD movies. If your CPU can't do that it's a pain. However, if it can then extra speed is pointless for that task.