Some more info about AM2 processors @ X-bit Labs

Here's something of interest to y'all.

Another tidbit of information over at VR-Zone

AM2 power consumption chart @ Matbe



Looks good eh?

That TDP for the Sempron is almost freakishly low. I'm thinking that they should be able to be run with passive cooling fairly easily and without having to adopt underclocking/undervolting or use fairly massive heatsinks like the Ninja etc.

35W for a dual-core would be awesome - if it is not a mistake.

Hmm.. I see that isn't entirely correct. Those are another set of desktop CPUs. More here.



The "normal" AM2 dual-core processors will have 89W TDP, the single-core 62W and the high-end dual-core will be between 110W and 125W (or even more for the FX-64).

Just looking at the numbers makes me consider postponing my upgrade from Socket A. Not sure how many people are in the same boat I am, but if I waited this long to upgrade, I might as well wait a little longer for more details to come out. unfortunately I already decided on the parts that I want for S939. I guess I'll have to do a whole new round of component research for AM2 once they become available.

On the other hand though that period just before, and even just after, a new socket debuts can also be a good time to buy the newly "obsolete" but fully matured, widely available, and nicely discounted hardware. CPU upgrades become moot but how many people get more than 1 cpu out of a mb before it becomes obsolete one way or another anyway? I think it comes down to the RAM question: if you have existing ddr to use on the new board than now is as good a time to buy as any; but if you don't, and can wait, then then you won't be buying ddr that'll be rendered obsolete in a few months by AM2.

Then again ddr has never been as cheap as it is now allowing one to buy quite a bit of it on the cheap and make use of it fully on S939 (or S754) now rather than wait on ddr2 which nobody can say for certain what it'll cost after am2 comes out... so no clear cut answer I guess

Well, I'm thinking about the upgrade from a silence perspective. The X2 4600+ is the CPU I want to get. If I get one right now (S939), it will need a Scythe Ninja and a Nexus fan to keep it cool 'n quiet. On the other hand if wait for the AM2 version with only a TDP of 65w, then it may be cool enough to run passively with just the Ninja. But it will also mean that I will postpone my upgrade until Q3 '06. Hopefully, by then there will be a decent number of MB to choose from. More importantly, revised MBs will hopefully be available to squash any bugs from the first revision.

More info on Daily Tech


35W for an Athlon 64 X2 3800+ is impressive!

It was mentioned above
http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewto ... 389#245389

are the dual core turions socket 754 compatible?

i have a socket 754 and i would like dual core

No, they'll use a new socket called S1 (638 pins) and DDR2 RAM too.

thx - i was hoping to install dual core

eh, no real way of making the heat lower besides undervolting the chips at default.

Im thinking the debut aspect of am2 is going to be a heap of crap possibly and the processors out for it are just stepping stones until it can go 65nm and quad cores.

Huh? How about dynamic clock gating or transistors with high threshold voltage? As far as I know, these are techniques that are being implemented (or refined) in the rev F CPUs.

It's right there on my first post

pwnd

oops!

yeah well hm. i guess they are using Turion technology ?

I think the big deal here is AMD specifically optimizing a line of CPU's to run extra cool and so quieter. This will really become huge near year's end when 65nm debuts. A plus is that so far the AM2 stuff won't require new chipsets. Nvidia,Via,etc can evolve and refine what is working rather than start over and go through a period of bugs and bad drivers.

To be fair, both AMD and Intel are developing new products to meet these objectives. The strong portable and HTPC markets are very attractive to both processor vendors.

Those are the CPUs for the AMD Live! brand.

I'd agree. Finally there seems a reasonable prospect that in the not too distant future we will see chips which can be passively-cooled in stock form and which have been specifically designed for the desktop, with excellent performance.

So far we have had hot, powerful chips and cool, slow chips. Hopefully by this time next year we will have the best of both worlds: cool and relatively powerful desktop CPU's.

I think Intel looks more promising in the future as far as power goes. Even today, Yonah seems an excellent CPU for high performance and very low power consumption. Also a nice undervolted Yonah maybe a good candidate for passive cooling. There's also Merom too in Q3, I'm not sure if power will be lower than Yonah but performance will be higher.

There's also the thorny issue of price. Even today you could argue that Intel has the edge in the powerful, cool processor race with their Pentium M range; however the motherboards and CPU's required to assemble a desktop system based on these chips are often prohibitively expensive and I have no reason to think that Merom and Conroe will be any different in this respect. So if AMD can come out with an affordable, cool chip (and I mean <30W cool) it may not matter if it isn't a giant-killer in terms of performance, as long as it can run high-quality HDTV and other HTPC applications (which after all is the growth market for these kinds of chips).

I dont really think that amd needs to consider wattage for a good year. it is already shown that 65 nm for intel is just "a die shrink" and offers nothing in terms of heat reduction. It allows overclocking to be done more but nothing for heat. There is nothing to show that intels dual cores will outperform amd 939's, so yeah, no point for the enthusiast to switch everything around.

I bought a 4200 a few days ago, have to hook it up. I detect a lot of lackluster performance bumps for the next year or so, things that increase the speeds on things that no one needs speeds increased for. (like video compression, yeah, I do that all day long, cant get enough of it.)

The eyes are on ATI and Nvidia for gfx cards. they are the only ones that actually provide consistently better performance that is usable daily.

90%+ of the people in a business setting would do fine on a tualatin or athlon processor and 512MByte ram.

Wake me up when 40nm quad cores come out at 4.0 ghz for amd and they cost 300 dollars.

El~Jefe~ is right....

Except for the part about 65nm not decreasing power consumption on Intel chips. The 65nm Netburst CPUs got a pretty significant reduction and are now much closer to AMD. Admittedly, they're still quite a bit hotter, though.

Also, Yonah seems to be much cooler than Dothan per core and on the same frequency. The 1.3GHz ULV parts are supposed to use some 5W under load, which is fairly impressive.

click me but dont get burned


Look at this.

this is a major die shrink. 1/3 less just about.

check out the wattages. OUCH! dont let your kids near that. the wattages went down a small amount. they really didnt get much help. even tom's said the wattage pre-claim didnt hold up any. The netburst needs to die, and well, yonah kills it finally. The difference from 130nm to 90nm for amd was remarkable. Some may show bench marks on other sites of a this difference or that in wattage and performance, but take into account the undervoltability (new word?) of 90nm and now newer Venice/manchester builds, you have to say that it is a rediculous difference in wattage at load and at idle. Probably preaching to the choir here, but really I am just reflecting. While I do that, reflect on this link, new Tomshardware.com review. Sometimes they do an ok job.

AM2 reviewed finally

I miss it when I used to go out and buy the latest best featured Intel motherboard and the best low wattage intel chip. I havent seen those days since my ever stable and quiet 1.2 ghz tualatin. (for a lower price mind you, there was always banias and dothan to consider if I was wealthy)

Didnt someone do some theoretical testing of Conroe and Merom and decide that current AMD processors would beat it performance wise? I read that somewhere on here. I hope it isnt true, I would hate for only AMD to have the good chips, that would make for stagnant things.

I want 64 cores with nanotubes to fit into the size of a half dollar with 32 megs cache and consume 12 watts of power.

make me that someone.

For now we can see that my 2 day away prediction was correct! But I thought I would be seeing 10% increases in some areas of performance, not 1-2% LESS. They say that ddr2 800 will provide matching performance.

Jeez, that's what will make me spend 1000 dollars on new board, chip and ram, getting the same performance as I do now.


Well, we know that it cant be that bad, I mean there must be some umpf in the chip. Well, maybe not. Maybe they am2 will just be the same price as 939 and it will be a lure to those who are building new to get it all ready for multi-core. The lower wattage chips are of course a nice thing to see, however, couldnt we do that with an undervoltable motherboard to probably the same degree? I mean, some guys on here get dual cores down below 34 degrees during usage.

OH NOES! That awful Tom's review? You should've known better!

It's pretty flawed. For one, they use a old buggy AM2 processor (memory controller problems), then they use a "misterious" GeForce 6100 pre-production board with memory timings problems and to top it all they seem to be using the memory @ DDR2-400 and not DDR2-667.

It's been discussed at HardOCP.

There's not much point in having XXX number of cores if the OS or applications aren't written to take advantage of it. Also, CPU's are pretty small now; how big is a half dollar?