Friday, July 10th 2009
AMD Staring at 140W Barrier with Phenom II X4 965?
Two of AMD's biggest setbacks with the 65 nm Phenom X4 series were 1. the TLB erratum fiasco with the B2 revision of the chip, and 2. the virtual TDP wall it hit with the 2.60 GHz Phenom X4 9950, at 140W. At that wattage, several motherboards were rendered incompatible with the processor because they lacked the power circuitry that could handle it. The company eventually worked out a lower-wattage 125W variant of the said chip, and went on to never release a higher-clocked processor based on the core.
MSI published the complete CPU support list of its a new BIOS for the 790GX-G65 motherboard a little early, revealing quite some about unreleased AMD processors. At the bottom of the list its the Phenom II X4 965. This 3.40 GHz quad-core chip will succeed the Phenom II X4 955 as AMD next flagship desktop offering. Its TDP is an alarming 140W. Alarming, because this is a chip with a mere 2 unit bus multiplier increment over the Phenom II X4 940, the launch-vehicle for AMD's 45 nm client processor lineup. There are, however, two things to cheer about. RB-C2 is not going to be the only revision of this core, future revisions could bring TDP down, or at least make sure clock-speeds of future models keep escalating, while respecting the 140W mark. A future variant of Phenom II 965 could come with a reduced TDP rating. The list interestingly also goes on to reveal that AMD will have a 95W version of the 3.00 GHz Phenom II X4 945.
Source:
HardwareLuxx.de
MSI published the complete CPU support list of its a new BIOS for the 790GX-G65 motherboard a little early, revealing quite some about unreleased AMD processors. At the bottom of the list its the Phenom II X4 965. This 3.40 GHz quad-core chip will succeed the Phenom II X4 955 as AMD next flagship desktop offering. Its TDP is an alarming 140W. Alarming, because this is a chip with a mere 2 unit bus multiplier increment over the Phenom II X4 940, the launch-vehicle for AMD's 45 nm client processor lineup. There are, however, two things to cheer about. RB-C2 is not going to be the only revision of this core, future revisions could bring TDP down, or at least make sure clock-speeds of future models keep escalating, while respecting the 140W mark. A future variant of Phenom II 965 could come with a reduced TDP rating. The list interestingly also goes on to reveal that AMD will have a 95W version of the 3.00 GHz Phenom II X4 945.
184 Comments on AMD Staring at 140W Barrier with Phenom II X4 965?
The same can be said of modern CPUs. X58 motherboards and HSF are designed to power and cool a Core i7 965. That way, they can use the same motherboards and HSFs to run 950s, 940s, and 920s. The specification may have to be changed for Core i7 975 and then again, might not. It depends on changes between the two and whether or not they over rated the TDP on the Core i7 965.
as for the 140W thing that is a max TDP most of these chips will never hit that. hell my 65nm 9150e downstairs is rated at 65w TDP it doesn't even pull 40w right now.
Its a DDR2 controller with DDR3 "Extensions"... so maybe it won't work... they used alot of shared silicon on the PII's IMC.
Nothing that can't be changed through some creative engineering from the guys over in India. (the engineering team that developed Phenom II)
Which also leads me to say this- I just bought 2x Istanbuls for $18/each (shipping) direct from AMD as ES's with unlocked multi's to test out their maximum thermal load limits. Will be fun I guess destroying them... *cries*
Considering at stock I can run just under a volt .975 including my vdroop it shold be labeled a 80W TDP chip, and I only need a couple extra tenths to make stress testing stable at this speed, if I back it off 100Mhz I can run 1.45vcore and it will be stable.
Personally I can run GTA4 at max res and high settings with no issues, and it didn't cost through the nose like a comparable Intel platform woudl have cost, and the 940 was a drop in replacement for my 9850BE, and I can run newer chips in this just fine, and the supposed loss from not having DDR3 is almost nonexistant. Plus the option to Xfire, with four cards.......
Besides, AMD's market-share will plummet if they come up with AM3-exclusive chips. Nobody with decent AM2+ boards will continue using AMD because an upgrade-path end requiring you to buy a new board and memory. AMD retained a lot of market share banking on the backwards-compatibility of these processors.
Yes, Istanbuls are worthless at least for the client platform. No wonder they're giving away their ESes for scrap prices.
outside of falcon northwest, alienware and voodoo who uses black edition or extreme edition cpu's? this chip will never be in the mainstream market. the companies that will use these chips will put them in higher end boards such as alienware who will use an asus M4A79 series board.
and AMD has officially spec'd K10 45nm to run 1.5v stock and unofficially announced 1.55v is safe on good air cooling
just check newegg under the phenom 955
But if AMD says 1.5V, who am I to argue?