AMD's move to 65nm begins

[Steve]

Technically the move to 65nm began when they started planning it, but today is the day AMD issued a press release announcing availability of 65nm CPUs.

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=7386

[chuckskull]

Run much cooler, still cant get near intel for speed though. wonder how well the they overclock with the lower TDP's

[kalniel]

If it's anything like the 'energy efficient' AMDs, terribly

[madmobile]

save energy, save money to buy a big psu.
good stuff. When is it available for sale?

[Steve]

RTFA, there's a link in there

[ikjadoon]

If it's anything like the 'energy efficient' AMDs, terribly

"Terribly"? Would they not be equal? They can't be worse! It's the SAME chip, just ran at a lower voltage. You can make any X2 3800+ a "65W" version, just lower the voltage. (Small chance it might not be stable, but that is beside the point.) Or am I completely off base and somehow AMD screws with the overclockability?

Either way, I expect the 65nm products to OC about the same, maybe slightly better. Not worse, though.

~Ibrahim~

P.S. Don't tell me you were being sarcastic? Then I'd be really embarrassed.

[kalniel]

No, I wasn't being sarcastic, unfortunately.

The energy efficient versions of processors overclock far far worse than the normal voltage versions of the processors. Bumping the volts back to the non-EE setting still only gets you a mild overclock.

Now hopefully the 65mm chips will be better, but if they're combining the 65mm with a reduction in target voltage there is always the danger they'll do what the EE processors did.

[ikjadoon]

Ahh! Are you sure?

Neoseeker got a X2 4200+ EE to 2.79GHz. That is very nice, with a HTT of 310MHz. Surely you can't classify that as "far worse".

LINKAGE!

This way, Energy Efficient Athlon 64 X2 4600+ processor with the maximum heat dissipation of 65W could overclock only to 2.84GHz, i.e. its frequency potential didn’t surprise us. The regular CPUs of the same type with the 85W TDP could most probably hit the same mark during overclocking. In other words, our very first experiment indicated clearly that there will hardly be anything special about the overclocking potential of the Energy Efficient processors.

Yet, one could say I've misquoted. If you keep reading, it says "...too early to make conclusions...one more Energy Efficient...." They then test the X2 3800+ 35W version. They up the voltage all the way to 1.5V, but can only reach 2.55Ghz, a modest overclock. Seems a tad low, but not horrible, either.

In reality if you raise the Vcore of the Energy Efficient processor to the level of the nominal Vcore of a regular one, you will simply be able to catch up with the frequency of the regular processor, but not overcome it.

The only time they ever mention that it might be worse is in the conclusion:

As for their overclocking potential, which might be of specific interest to hardware enthusiasts, we have to upset you. Despite the expectations, Energy Efficient AMD CPUs cannot boast higher overclocking potential. They may even overclock worse than their “standard” analogues. Although their lowered power consumption allows you to raise the core voltage much higher, it doesn’t help to hit the extreme clock speeds.

Key word: may. As we have seen from the Neoseeker review, they might have gotten a "weaker" chip, I don't know. But I would NOT say they overclock "far worse". They overclock just as well, but maybe slightly less.

LINKAGE #2

~Ibrahim~

[kalniel]

Of course, I took some poetic license in my generalisations, but if review samples don't overclock that well I never have much confidence. When overclocking you really want lots of reviews saying that they overclock fantastically, and then there's just a chance yours might. If there's even a small number of poor results, it's such a small sample size that chances of you getting a chip that overclocks well are 'far worse' than for the non EE chips

[ikjadoon]

True, I see where you are coming from. I wish some more people would review them, so we could get a more accurate reading. The peeps on NewEgg have gotten similar results, 2.3+ on the EE 3800+. Who knows?

~Ibrahim~