AMD's Phenom II 965, 3.4GHz, 140 Watts, $245 273
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."
FAIL (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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219 dollars at newegg
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And motherboard?
At least before, motherboards for AMD CPUs were cheaper, often nullifying short-lived Intel's CPU price advantage.
Though power consumption alone turns me off.
Re:FAIL (Score:5, Informative)
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It has been fairly well proven that AMD is full of it in that regard. Just search and you will find lots of tests comparing the actual power usage and Intel always comes out on top.
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Re:FAIL (Score:5, Interesting)
Intel and AMD release different numbers for their CPU's power consumption. Intel gives an average and AMD gives a maximum. They're not comparible. In real world testing, the X4 965 uses slightly less power at idle and slightly more power at full load than a stock Q9550.
Sadly, that is incorrect.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/phenom-ii-x4-965_4.html#sect0 [xbitlabs.com]
While idle is comparable (Intel has a slight lead), full load most definitely isn't - 75% extra power consumption (which amounts to over 60W!) for the X4 965 over a Q9550 is far from "slightly more".
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It certainly appears that the Q9550 is in a sweet spot for low cost (including platform), power draw and performance.
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Speccing systems over the years, I'm amazed that people don't go more in-depth.
Every time I spec, I find that I can get an equivalently-performing AMD chip (plus motherboard and RAM and a nice, gigantic Zalman 9700-style heatsink) for ~$50 less than an equivalent Intel rig.
The Intel rig uses a stock HSF (meaning higher running temps and more risk) and still tends to cost ~$40 more each for the motherboard and processor. I've tried to see what I could do to get it to equal out, but there just aren't Intel bo
Re:FAIL (Score:5, Interesting)
Sadly, that is incorrect.
http://techreport.com/articles.x/17402/11 [techreport.com]
"Interestingly enough, the systems based on Phenom II quad-cores (including the X4 965) draw quite a bit less power at idle than our Q9550-based test system."
"That said, the X4 965-based system draws only 15W more than the Q9550-based one. The gap between the Q9550- and X4 965-based systems is thus smaller than the processors' TDP ratings alone suggest. [In full load]"
"By virtue of its lower system power draw at idle and its ability to finish the rendering task sooner, the Phenom II X4 965 fares better than the Q9550 in our two most important measures of energy efficiency."
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http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3619&p=8 [anandtech.com]
Re:FAIL (Score:5, Informative)
Tech Report tells a different story: ... A story that says that you can't necessarily compare like-for-like when using different motherboards.
Which is why X-bit Labs did this:
To get a better idea of the situation, we performed a separate Phenom II X4 965 power consumption test under heavy load when none of the other system components are taken into account. To be more exact, we measured the consumption along the 12 V power line connected directly to the processor voltage regulator on the mainboard. In other words, this measurement method didnt take into account the efficiency of the voltage regulator circuitry. ... and got 84W for the Q9550 and 147.6W for the X4 965. Granted, like they said in the last sentence, this doesn't take VRM efficiency into account, and it might as well be that those on the AMD motherboard were woefully inefficient and the CPU itself uses plenty less watts than measured. Still, this is 75% extra, and the VRMs cannot be the main reason for it.
They do similar measurements for graphics cards, too, because measuring total system power consumption from the wall can only get you so far.
I'd personally be more inclined to trust the Ukrainians.
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It doesn't take a lot of thinking to see that the Q9550 power draw is bunk. Their fully loaded system power for the machine was 208 Watts. Their Idle load was 120 Watts. Either the Q9550 processor supplies 4 extra Watts to the motherboard at idle or something fishy is going on there.
Nothing fishy going on. Power supplies and VRMs on motherboard have efficiencies below 100%.
If the PSU has 70% efficiency at 70W load, which isn't unheard of, it will draw 70/0.7 = 100W from the wall. If it has 80% efficiency at 180W load, it will draw 225W from the wall. The difference measured from the wall in the two scenarios is thus 225-100=125W, while the component load increased by 180-70=110W in this example, for a "mysterious" difference of 15W.
Also, don't forget that you can never only stress the
Re:FAIL (Score:5, Insightful)
You were running 95 watts at stock (2.83 GHz). You're way, way over that by now!
Re:FAIL (Score:4, Informative)
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Let's wait a month - and see price then. AMD drops prices for their CPUs quite soon.
Still, 140W is bit over the top. Considering that workstation market is dominated by Intel CPUs which have now lead in both performance and power consumption, the CPU have few niches left.
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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).
My Computer ... (Score:5, Funny)
.. can now double as still for my homemade vodka
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Brilliant! I was thinking grilled cheese sandwiches but that is WAY better.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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With $1000 enthusiast CPUs, the price isn't horrible by comparison.
Still, you can get Intel CPUs that'll run at similar clock speeds for similar prices (except use more electricity), and right now, Intel has the performance/clock ratio advantage over AMD.
So I wouldn't call it /expensive/ in the grand scheme of things, it's just not that impressive either.
Re:problematic for some: (Score:5, Interesting)
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I see your point there, but, for me at least, I eventually run out of "useful" things to do with my old pcs a while back. Router and NAS are handled by dedicated devices (both are running embedded Linux though so I can technically SSH in and still play with em). I've got 3 desktops (Mac, Linux, Windows), a 4th desktop for playing with stuff (currently running Syallable, though will likely switch to Haiku if they get a better installer available), a Windows laptop, and a MythBuntu based HTPC.
Honestly I jus
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Are you kidding? It wasn't THAT long ago that $245 bought you a budget CPU, and plenty of people without "marble toilets" had computers back then. Yes, it costs a bit more than the $50 budget chips that are available now, but I think you're exaggerating the impact of the price here. It's not that bad . . .
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drive? myself? Oh it was supposed to be a +1 funny post. Sorry.
is this for desktop or server ? (Score:2)
if it's a server class part, i think they'd do better emulating sun's T2 part. 8 multi-thread cores, a single FPU unit shared by all cores and some logic to improve encryption and networking. this with x86 support would give Xeon a run for it's money.
now, as a desktop part, i think it's idiotic as hell. a low power chip with a decent software stack to offload certain proccessing tasks - like video and audio encoding - to the GPU (wich they also make) would do much better in terms of performance per watt.
but
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It better extend it more than 3 times, even at that price!
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This is midrange? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is midrange? (Score:5, Interesting)
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You suck at pricing up intel kit, you can get a Core2Quad Q9550 and mobo for about $300, or an i7 920 for $350.
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huh? what planet do you live on to pay 350 for i7 920? i paid $199 for mine, given it was on a sale, but normal price for 920 are in the low 200 usd range.
here is a link:
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0302727 [microcenter.com]
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Yes, but if you're going for value for your buck, the Core2Quad Q9650 is as fast as this, uses that nice cheep DDR2 RAM, is cheeper than this AMD chip, and the mobos are nice and cheep too. So all together, AMD's looking pretty crappy atm.
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Yes, and then you need to buy a $150 mobo, he did after all state he was looking for mobo *and* CPU.
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Eh? I just paid CA$310 for an i7 920 and around the same for an LGA 1366 motherboard. I'd love to know what fly-by-night retailer you're getting stuff from...
--- Mr. DOS
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Midrange for servers?
Re:This is midrange? (Score:4, Funny)
Because it's between this [ebay.com]
And this [ebay.com]
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Don't let the quad-core bit fool you; that'll be low-end in a couple of years, no doubt.
Still, the chip in question is definitely at the upper reaches of "mid-range" in my book. I've just picked up the X3 720 model for my home machine, and that was stretching the wallet as far as I was inclined to.
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We've been waiting a decade for improvements in multi-threaded processing to take advantage of multiple cores.
Are you suggesting programmers are going to make the dramatic developments in the next couple of years that they have been unable to in the last ten?
Certainly I can see the number of cores increasing at the server end - it's straightforward enough to run one process per client. I'm unsure what's going to change o
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Multicore CPUs are more about what CPU designers can deliver than about what people can actually use.
Because the limiting factors in single-cpu performance have been memory latency and instruction-level parallelism for the last half decade, there has been very little progress in single-core cpu performance over that period of time.
Both these problems won't find a solution any time soon, so don't expect the cores of your 64-core CPU of 2015 to be much faster than the cores of today.
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Are you suggesting programmers are going to make the dramatic developments in the next couple of years that they have been unable to in the last ten?
Yes. Ten years ago SMP was not common. These days it is. Don't let complexity vs performance gain confuse your sense of direction. Without a doubt, there is an ever increasing push to take advantage of multiple cores, where it makes sense to do so. Already more and more games attempt to break audio, graphics, physics, loading/caching into multiple threads of ex
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Re:This is midrange? (Score:4, Insightful)
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$200-$400 seems to be Intels "mid range", so they are probably comparing it to that.
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Q6600 (Score:2)
I have my sights set on the intel Q6600 (2.6(?)ghz quad core2)... as soon as the price dips below $175. It's been the same price since Dec 2007, but it overclocks to 3.4ghz on the stock cooler and dissipates only 95w, meaning it plugs into pretty much any C2Duo motherboard. For now though, my 2.4ghz core 2 duo is fast/powerful enough to do anything, including run folding@home while running TF2 + 20 windows of firefox with 5-10 tabs each.
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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 [archive.org]. That's a long time to not see a jump in speed
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Agreed.. I remember winning a 3.2 Extreme Edition CPU 4-5 years back or something like that. My 2 year old C2D I've been able to overclock to 3.2, but the Mhz battle is truely dead, at least for now.
Not that it's a bad thing, CPU's are way more efficient and still faster then the CPU's 5 years ago, but it was fun watching the battle. AMD isn't much more then a whimper right now.
Re:Q6600 (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Sorry, that CPU will never decrease in price. It will be phased out while remaining at its current price. I recommend combing EBay and Craigslist for a used one if you are convinced this is what you want.
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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.
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Does the q9550 do virtualization though? The q6600 does.
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Don't stop him. He's on a roll.
The era of the silicon chip is gone. (Score:3, Funny)
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.
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Buy your book or smoke your weed? If that later produces that output I'm buy'n!
More cores? (Score:2)
Anyone know when we should expect the first CPUs from either Intel or AMD that have more than 6 cores?
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Intel already has the 6 core Dunnington CPUs out since over a year now. The new nehalem based 6 cores are due Q4.
Thanks, but I'm specifically asking about > 6 cores.
I'm doing some work regarding scalability of certain algorithms on multi-core systems, and if a new CPU with even more cores is just around the corner, I might delay a hardware purchase until then.
Re:More cores? (Score:4, Informative)
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 [theinquirer.net]
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Thanks.
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Talk to Intel - if you're doing something that might help them sell multi-core chips, they might bung you a pre-release chip for free/cheap.
Failing that, is using more cores per die very different to using multiple processors?
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AMD has 6 core Istanbuls in production now, and will have a 2 die 12 core MCM version Real Soon Now.
Do you mean a total of 12 cores in a single chip package?
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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
i7 920 130watt - $280, x4 965 140 watt - $245. (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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Yeah, but the i7-920 requires a mainboard with triple channel memory and a quick path interface. They're more expensive than the AMD board, making the price comparison a bit more difficult.
That said, i bought an i7-920, i think it's the better choice - so far, i haven't been disappointed. We have a few new servers with 5540 Xeons, and they're absurdly fast.
Re:i7 920 130watt - $280, x4 965 140 watt - $245. (Score:4, Informative)
You can get an i7 920 for $200, so not only is it faster and lower power, it's also cheeper.
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0302727 [microcenter.com]
Re:i7 920 130watt - $280, x4 965 140 watt - $245. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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You can get hold of S1366 mobos for about $140 these days. Still pretty pricey, but no where near as bad as they were recently.
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The re-birth of the BTX form factor (Score:2)
Finally, the BTX form factor will be reborn. So long have we been complacent with the temporary trend of cooler running chips there is finally the need for the BTX form factor to extend beyond the Dell desktop.
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It'll be a true rebirth - Dell hasn't used BTX motherboards for quite some time now. I'm not holding my breath however.
hard comparison to make (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
that's only $35 less... (Score:2)
...than I I paid for my i7 920, which is currently running at 3.5GHz without a hiccup.
Now the *motherboard* was considerably spendier ;-)
The deciding factor in Phenom vs Core2 (Score:2)
I'm trying to pick components now for at least 3 new boxes, and here's my take: All the processors are bloody fucking fast. They're all way faster than what I need. What really matters to me are drivers for low-powered IGP chipsets.
Intel X4500HD vs AMD/ATI G780. Who will get their damn xvmc drivers working first? That is all that matters, and yet it determines what motherboards I'll end up using, therefore CPUs too.
It'll be a damn shame if I cheese out and go with Nvidia. If I have to buy from them jus
AMD vs Intel (Score:5, Insightful)
Space heaters (Score:2, Funny)
That is why we have our computers in the cold basement, heat down there is good year round.
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It's nothing special, just a higher binned Phenom II.
Considering you can get an i7 920 for $199 at microcenter, this seems kinda useless since the i7 will overclock better and run much faster.
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Yes, but the chip doesn't compete with the i7 at all. It competes with the Core2Quad Q9650, which has plenty of cheep boards out there.
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I already have:
my Quad Q6600 + 22" monitor
my C2D MacBook + 24" monitor (Dell UltraSharp furnace)
my AM2 X2 + 2x 19" monitors
my P4 3.06 533Mhz FSB (forget which series the chip is from) + 19" monitor
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...
Re:AMD... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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I wouldn't need a furnace...
How would better air circulation eliminate the need for your P4 system?
38 C ain't that hot (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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But this is the customer line they are looking for. We currently use 6 computers with Phenom II 940's onboard at this time for data analysis. When comparing these with Intel computers the cost would have been much higher. What we found repeatedly during matrix calculations was that the performance vs cost just wasn't a contest.
I am really really beginning to wonder how much calculation stress people put on their computer in this mid-range market, because I hear and see all of these bench
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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.
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At that temperature it's cooler than my dual Opteron 270 setup which runs at ~60 degrees on full load (when the room is at 21 degrees).
Re:38 C ain't that hot (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah. Intel's TDP definition is different from AMD's. AMD reports the maximum wattage the CPU can burn at full load. Intel reports a "typical" number.
If this was an Intel CPU the number would be something like 90W or 95W for the very same CPU.
Anyway, everybody knows that. You can't trust vendor's numbers. Just do your own checking with a power meter.
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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.
Re:38 C ain't that hot (Score:4, Interesting)
I really don't understand why anyone would buy the Phenom.. At $245 it's $46 more expensive than the Core i7 920 [microcenter.com] and performs significantly worse. [cpubenchmark.net] The 965 isn't listed there, but 955 is, and it's passmark rating is 3,571 while the i7 920 is rated at 5,440. And that's not even considering the fact that you are using triple channel memory access versus dual channel, etc..
Granted, you can get AM3 motherboards cheaper than X58 boards, but Intel is coming out with more consumer i7 chipsets very soon.
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Besides the quality of life features you get with a quiet lower power chip, there are ongoing cost savings. You're saving 75 watts per hour, 1800/day, and 657,000/yr over the 140 watts for this chip. Assuming 10c per kW hour, that's $65.70 per year in electricity costs you aren't paying. If you run your system for three years, you save $197.10.
NOTE: I'm assuming the wattage figures for both chips are the peak levels of course, although idle speeds for both are likely lower and the difference between powe
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Check behind the footrest of your La-Z-Boy recliner.
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Sort of.
For high resolution gaming, ie with SLI video cards @1920x1200 or 2560x1600 you really need the latest and greatest, a 3.6-4.0ghz overclocked CPU is a must or else it bottlenecks the SLI Videocards.
For people doing HD Video/Audio work, having a fast processor is also necessary.
For anyone doing Scientific/Engineering computing, faster is always better as you can never get too fast the simulation will just get finer.
For anyone doing 3D Rendering, again faster is always better because the faster your p
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What are you doing here?
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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