The World's First 65 W Desktop Quad Core

[NateDawg80126]

Ill admit its an interesting article, but I would have to disagree on the second line of the article: "But few users other than gamers still care solely about performance". I can only assume that this is referring to people looking for an energy efficient chip, well I have worked for some time in the computer retail industry with HP, and never once have I been asked by a customer or employee how energy efficient a machine is. Sure there may be one or two of you here at toms that care, but many of those people are probably also going to slap a massive graphics card into the system also, so what does 65w vs. 95w matter when you have a GPU hogging up to 400w in some cases? If you want to save energy, put your machine to sleep when its not being used and trash a few old light bulbs, ENERGY SAVED!!!

 

[royalcrown]

Yeah there is more, but this site is for enthusiasts and not an IT trade mag.

 

[apaige]

Dudes, there's more to computing than overclocking CPUs and playing games with quad-SLI rigs…

 

[zenmaster]

On what planet does the Q9450 use more power than the Q6600?
Not mine?

I would recommend THG check their results, since clearly their testing is returning incorrect results.

 

[Casper42]

Does CPU-Z not reflect real world as far as voltage goes?

Page 3 says stock voltage is 1.10v
Page 4 says "We were able to overclock the Phenom 9100e ... to 2.40 GHz without increasing the core voltage." and then the screen shot with CPU-Z shows 1.280v

 

[retro77]

[citation][nom]question1[/nom]Just a quick question... at 1.8GHz is this chip even competitive with a higher speed dual core (even when considering 4 core vs 2 and considering multi-core optimized applications)?It'd be interesting to add in a Intel mid to high range dual core and look at the power consumption and performance vs the relatively low clocked quad. Dropping the clockspeed so low would seem to give back most of the games from having 2 extra cores (and would be worse for SW that cannot use 4 cores). [/citation]

Think of it in terms like this: You have a 4 lane highway versus a 2 lane highway, cars on both are moving at the same speed. What one will allow more cars to pass by in a given time?

 

[clintonedward]

This is perfect for anyone who is running a SOHO server where it has to run 24/7 and don't need powerful processors.

For laymen, ie. people who use computer to chit chat, watch movies, listen to music, email, edit Word/Excel, and often installs a lot of programs running in the background like Antivirus, Screen Saver,... then this CPU is also fantastic.

For game, I never think a quad core is a good choice. With the same amount of money, I would rather buy a 2-core with the highest clock speed.

 

[Guest]

Think of blade servers ... this is where K10 fits really very well. Anywere else it does not seem to make any sense.

One thing puzzles me anyway : the integer performace compared to K8. Look at the Sandra ALU CPU benchmark. That one scales perfectly with number of threads. And yet, per core (!) performace of K10 is BELOW that of similarly clocked K8. That's beyond my comprehension, given a long list of would-be enhancements of K10 compared to K8, listed here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_K10#Characteristics_of_the_microarchitecture

 

[wild9]

Anyone else having problems reading the comments section? The text is all over the place.

(Win XP Pro + SP2)

 

[wild9]

[citation][nom]Rachotilko[/nom]Think of blade servers ... this is where K10 fits really very well. Anywere else it does not seem to make any sense.One thing puzzles me anyway : the integer performace compared to K8. Look at the Sandra ALU CPU benchmark. That one scales perfectly with number of threads. And yet, per core (!) performace of K10 is BELOW that of similarly clocked K8. That's beyond my comprehension, given a long list of would-be enhancements of K10 compared to K8, listed here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_K [...] chitecture[/citation]

Always take Sandra benchmarks with a pinch of salt, especially the integer math. It is a largely synthetic benchmark that does not reflect real-world performance. You can see this by running two different CPU's at the same core speed..their performance would be similar.

 

[qurious69ss]

This chip runs at only 1.8Ghz. The q9300 runs at 2.5Ghz and is 95W so Intel could release a 1.8Ghz chip if they wanted to that would also be 95W.

 

[qurious69ss]

They could release a 65W chip if they down clock their chips down to 1.8Ghz is what I meant. They just don't see a market for this, but if AMD does start selling these chips expect to see Intel flood 65W quads running at 1.8GHz

 

[Guest]

there is one little problem: VID. today, they are q6600 G0s with VID so low as 1.1875 (mine is from the first g0 series, @VID:1.2875). and also there are some overclockers, who have energy efficient functions enabled, so 6x400@1.163 goes well (this happens, when you clock yours to 9x400 and cpu is idle). oh, and btw, mine does 9x333@1.260 24/7 (and yes, it's prime stable).

this CPU is intresting, but intel keeps lowering theyr CPUs VIDs. so, it's slow on default, it's a good overclocker, and only suitable for multicore apps. for the price of an q6600, which is far more faster, and hell, if you get one with a low VID (and when you buy a new one novadays, you'll get one with relatively low -under 1.225- VID), it will consume more, but not with mutch. but its efficiency ratio will be much better.

on the other hand, if the 780 chipset is the perfect for you, and when you get one cheaper than a 9850BE, this could be a good deal. we got the first low cost energy efficient quadcore system, its weird, but for its purpose, its good.

 

[royalcrown]

We need intel quads on 780 chipsets...lol

 

[spongebob]

Second sentence in the article: “But few users other than gamers still care solely about performance.”

Interesting… anything to back that claim up?

 

[spongebob]

[citation][nom]royalcrown[/nom]but this site is for enthusiasts[/citation]At one time perhaps, but no longer

 

[Guest]

Hmm... so the 780G chipset saves ~17W at full load over the 790FX, so assuming the same power savings occur at idle, this phenom system idles @ 77W on a 780G, and the X2s near the 5000+ mark idle @ 60W?

There's something off about those #s since a budget system I recently built for someone else using a Gigabyte780G MB, a 5000BE X2(stock speed), 9600GT, 2 sticks DDR2-800, an older IDE HDD & DVD drive, and a generic 350W PSU idles @48-49W (measured at the wall socket) in XP w C&Q on.

Their #s are supposed to be with a 8800GTX?! Don't those things eat like 50-60W idling and 200W full tilt? How do they arrive at their power consumption figures in this article?

 

[cabose369]

at Best Buy Canada we have this cpu in one of the HP Slimline pc's. The pc overall runs a fair bit cooler than the other Slimlines, due in large part to the fact that this processor runs cooler and consumes less power.

 

[eko86]

lol @ 1.8 of course u could do that low of a wattage.

I apreciate, somewhat, the try for competition. but every single newer model from amd, is quite pathetic. kinda nice to see "better" models coming out, but they are ever so lil in difference, why even bother.

atleast intel, even if they come with newer models ever so quick, they have something big to offer as a new feature and or improvement.

 

[amdfangirl]

Whoa AMD still uses a FSB (p4) OMG what century are we in?

 

[Guest]

6 core 65w for intel
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Dunnington-dual-quad,5463.html

 

[modtech]

Wow! I never expected to be surprised by a phenom. Imagine how freaking awesome the 45nm edition would be! Can't wait to get my hands on of these. Now if they'd just increase the cache and unlock the multiplier for gamers.

 

[spongebob]

George OuAMD's "new" low-power quad-core 9100e is a buggy gimmick

 

[spearhead]

it preforms good enough for gaming. despite it might be a bit slower it uses alot less power and also delivers quite alot overclocking potential with reasonable pricetag. but since i would mainly use it for intensive multi tasks and gaming then if i would go for amd i would consider the phenom 9850 BE with the unlocked multiplier which offers preformance simular to that of the Q6600 and still has a reasonabable overclock potential. not as high as the Q6600 has tough but gets along. the wait is for the Q9450 to drop in price soon then it will be the best value out there with its large 12mb cache and overclock potential.

 

[Guest]

AMD needs to pull those clock up to beat intel which they don't seem to be dong for now....