65nm Athlons Debut With Lower Power Consumption

TheRaindog writes "AMD has finally rolled out Athlon 64 X2 processors based on 65nm process technology, and The Tech Report has an interesting look at their energy usage and overclocking potential compared to current 90nm models. The new 65nm chips consume less power at idle and under load than their 90nm counterparts, and appear to have plenty of headroom for overclocking. An Athlon 64 X2 5000+ that normally runs at 2.4 GHz was taken all the way up to 2.9 GHz with standard air cooling and only a marginal voltage boost, suggesting that we may see faster chips from AMD soon."

It's a question of cores

[BadAnalogyGuy]

If you have only one core, you need to rely on the OS to not get in the way of running processes during task switches. With more than one core, processes can be split amongst the cores so that they do not need to be interrupted all the time by the OS timer interrupt handler. The more cores you have, the better you can scale up, even if the cores themselves are slower than a competing single core chip.

It's like driving down the highway in your train vs riding the rails in your Audi. Sure, you can try to drive the car on the train tracks for a while, but eventually the springs will break and your tires will pop and you end up walking to your final destination. But if you took the train, you'd probably tear up the road and it would take a while since you couldn't get much traction with the large metal wheels, but since you're carrying a whole lot of stuff in the train cars being pulled behind you, your bandwidth / time ratio is very favorable.

Interesting..

[joshetc]

considering my 3800+ X2 runs at 2.8ghz with 1.5V. 2.9ghz really doesnt seem like much for a higher end model.. I'm thinking they will need at least 3.1ghz or so overclocks on air to have much of a chance in most highend enthusiast rigs.

As someone once said...

[Anonymous Coward]

A bad analogy is like a leaky screwdriver.

Illegal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't overclocking illegal these days? Because of DMCA or something...

Good news, guys!

[Black Parrot]

Next time your class stud mentions his 9", you can counter by mentioning that your 6.5" consumes less power and gets the job done faster!

Re:I wouldn't overclock an AMD

[vslashg]

I've had bad experiences overclocking AMD processors (considering extended usage >6 months and at 100% load) with proper refrigeration. Unfortunately those processors tend do break (with no prior warning) eventually. What's a pity, since they overclock well.

They tend to break when overclocked, and yet they overclock "well"?

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Re:HTPC

[Ultra64]

right, because it's totally impossible for a computer to run more than one program at a time.
it's too bad video playing couldn't happen on one cpu while video compression happened on another.
someone should invent that. it could be called "Sametime Many Programs" or "SMP" for short.

Re:As someone once said...

[rbanffy]

wish I had modpoints...

Re:SMP

[Anonymous Coward]

Whooosh....!

OT

[Spaceman40]

We really need a "Whoosh" mod.

Re:I wouldn't overclock an AMD

[Anonymous Coward]

They tend to break when overclocked, and yet they overclock "well"?

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Perhaps he means 'well' as opposed to 'rare'.

I prefer mine medium.