Slashdot Mirror
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."
I'm running a Q9550 at 3.4 Ghz right now (with the ability to go much higher) and mine only uses 95 watts.
AMD has a long ways to go to get back in the game. I can't imagine craptacular ideas like purchasing ATI are helping.
.. can now double as still for my homemade vodka
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
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?
AMD and Intel are just running on its fumes. Silicon (Si) is inherently limited by its inorganic composition which means it produces lots of heat especially when it is on the Web. All the smart engineers at the secret R&D labs are working on organic computing: solving the paradox of user interface versus wattage by harnessing the power of bacteria to create a new paradigm of information that is multi-dimensional. Instead of "processes" and "treads" and "HTML" we will have gases and sugars dancing to the rhythm of our wildest imaginations. And one more thing... you will not need your eyes any more since the two-dimensional "screen" and "paper" metaphor will be replaced by a revolutionary direct access to pure consciousness. Buy my book.
UNITE with the Campaign for a Free Internet because today, our future begins with tomorrow!
When it comes down to processor comparisons, I see very little compelling about this new AMD proc. The i7 920 is going to outperform it at most things, uses less power and is only 35 bucks more. Eventually for those of us always-on users, even the 10 watt savings of the i7 is going to kill the slight price advantage.
The only thing I see interesting here is the fact that you have more commodity boards to choose from, could do a slower upgrade (re-use your ddr2!) but this isn't any different than the currently line of quad proc amd chips, many of which can be had for cheaper and use less power.
Come on, AMD, you can do better.
That is why we have our computers in the cold basement, heat down there is good year round.
Wait what? This also serves as a penile extension??!!?? I"ll take 3!
Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
I've had a Core 2 Duo E4300 running at 3.0 ghz for almost three years now and I haven't found a reason to upgrade. Friends with quad core report no increase in speed or performance, and the only thing that would encourage me to upgrade is a more smp friendly OS but the offerings from Microsoft (Vista and Windows 7) have been pretty poor lately.
So are we done with the mhz battle? Is ~3ghz the breaking point? We've had Xeon 3.0GHz cpus for over 5 years now. That's a long time to not see a jump in speed, what happened to "doubling every 18 months"? We should be around 24ghz by now.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Beckton, the 8 core / 16 threads Nehalem CPU will be out in Q1 2010.
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/opinion/1050976/intel-bunch-fun-cpus-moves-2010
If you're referring to Moore's law, it's not a doubling of speed every 18 months, it's a doubling of transistor counts. Clock speed has never been part of that equation, no matter what intel's late-1990s marketing department would have you believe.
Article shows that performance is roughly equivalent beween the Q9550 and Phenom 965, with the AMD part enjoying a slight advantage if you look at all the benchmarks together. This while costing $30 more and consuming more power.
Would be interesting to see a comparison of the i7 920 with the Phenom. I'm guessing the 920 would outperform, which is what you'd expect since you're paying $30 more.
I recently completed a home-build with this very CPU. Sure, the chip was the single most expensive piece, but with NewEgg combo deals and shipping discounts, I got the entire machine for about $600, including a smashing new case, plenty of RAM and disk space, extra USB ports and two disc burners. That's mid-range in my book.
I'm sure some of you hardware nerds will smack me down for one reason or another, but as a starting point I just installed the AMD factory CPU cooler it came with. 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.
My $0.02 on the very rare occasion of having first-hand experience with the actual hardware in the story.
You shall see a cow on the roof of a cotton house.
Now if I could only efficiently recirculate air from my 150 sqft office to the rest of the house, I wouldn't need a furnace...
If you have a furnace (or forced air system) see if you can turn on the fan only. The return(s) in the room should pull the heat out of the office to the other rooms. That is if you have a return in the office, a good system has a return (even a small one) in every room. My house built in the mid 1950's has small returns in every room.
The newer batches of the Q6600 (2.4 GHz stock, by the way) are terrible overclockers -- you'll have to buy one of the older ones off of Ebay to have any chance of getting it above 3.2 GHz (even experienced overclockers had tons of trouble with the newest Q6600's).
Just get a Q9400 -- it's both faster, cooler, and has more overclocking headroom.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
no.
in a multi chip module (MCM), intel calls it a Multi Chip Package (MCP).
It's two single chips of 6 cores each in one package.
It is two chips in one socket.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
I wouldn't need a furnace...
How would better air circulation eliminate the need for your P4 system?
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
I've been a Linux user for several years and prior to that I was a Windows junkie. Back then, when I upgraded my hardware I never had to do a reinstall of the OS ( XP ) or applications. I don't know if that's what you intended but if not here's a tip :
Say your system files/data are stored on a single hard drive, ( this also applies to the multiple hard drives ) then, before you do anything with regards to a hardware upgrade, such as changing the mainboard, go into the device manager and replace all your system specific devices with the generic Microsoft equivalents. Now, after you've built the new system install your system drive and you should be able to boot up in a generic VESA display mode in which you can allow Windows to autodetect the new hardware and/or in which you can manually install the new system specific drivers.
Always worked for me.
Cheers,
jdb2