Recently, I've been reading about the low heat dissipation of the Winchester chips with great interest. It's getting towards the time where I'd like to get a new system and after some half-arsed attempts to silence my current Shuttle system, I've decided to look into building a properly quiet system this time.
Ideally, I'd like a CPU with pretty decent performance so I'm not too keen on permanently underclocking the chip itself but I'd be happy enough with an Athlon 64 3000 or 3200. With this in mind I've been reading the various threads about undervolting the CPU to reduce heat dissipation. I remember back in the heyday of the AthlonXP when the Mobile versions came out offering the same speeds as the regular chips but at reduced voltage. I understand that the A64 Mobile chips should function in a similar way but at the moment I'm interested in what people are currently achieving. Is anybody currently undervolting their A64 (especially the Winchesters) yet running at stock speeds and if so at what voltages will the chips themselves run? If I remember correctly, the 90nm Mobile A64s are due to run at 1.2v - does anyone have success with their desktop chips running at this voltage? Any feedback will be gratefully received!
(as an aside, I'm actually wondering if there is actually any real difference between the standard and Mobile A64s or are they just 'cherry-picked' for the 'best' chips as I believe was the case with the AthlonXP mobiles? I noticed in Anand's review of Winchester that there was a small interview in which it was confirmed that the die-size of the standard and Mobile 90nm A64s was identical and I'm assuming this means cherry-picking is indeed occurring!).
Undervolting 90nm Athlon64s
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