Wattage increase from new E0s (85W-92W now)

Anyone know what gives with the increased wattage from the E0s? My guess is that its due to a longer pipeline cause by:

A) AMD manually tweekeing it
B) Addition of SSE3

Im not really sure what could cause it but something definatly seems amiss. Any ideas?

probably a slightly different layout, more transistors or whatever technology they are using... probably no one arounmd here will know without reading the blueprints for the chips.

Ed brings up the comparison of Presscotts vs the A64s heat, and says one is intolerably hot while the other is just very hot.

But to me the heat issue is relative.

Maybe 3 years ago a presscott would have been intolerably hot, but now its just hot. Leaving the A64s as average or cool by comparison.

The heat is on, and its time to update whats hot and whats not.

LOL. I know that! I remember when i first got an Athlon XP (it was a 2000+). Man, was it BROILING hot compared to what i had before! (only a Slot A Athlon 800!). But now, this athlon 3200+ is broilin' hot compared to that... but i know its considered "very cool" when compared to the latest Prescots or Opterons.

I wonder how the Athlon 64's will be with this (less cache, smaller processor). Also, i think the turion is looking bleek. There is no way they can compete with an even higher power consumption.

amd rates TDP according to the maximum Theoretical TDP for their entire lines of cpu. plenty of hardware review website has done TDP test and found that athlon64 actually consumes much LESS power than their TDP rating and runs much cooler.

amd's honest method of TDP rating serves as guide line for motherboard manufacturers to design hardware up to specification and compatiblity for amd's entire lines of cpu including dual cores

unlike intel's dishonest method of TDP rating,which caused motherboard manufacturers and their customers so much headache and problems

The thing that struck me first wasn't the wattage, oddly enough it was that the chips not only use strained silicon, but the 1000mhz HT instead of the usual 800Mhz HT.

People that buy Opterons usually don't do two things. First they don't Overclock them, and Second they don't worry about the latest and greatest hsf since they use them in servers anyway.

The article strikes me as interesting nonetheless. Once the dual core cpu's come out, the wattage won't be an issue as much I would think.

Dylruss said:

People that buy Opterons usually don't do two things. First they don't Overclock them, and Second they don't worry about the latest and greatest hsf since they use them in servers anyway.

Click to expand...

Indeed. While the article is relevant, it cannot allow us to draw a conclusion on AMD's E-stepping desktop solutions. Simply put, AMD's workstation chips are deisgned for different purposes; hence, there very well could be a few architectural differences between the Operton and vanilla Athlon 64. When it comes to the processors that we're interested in, it's going to be more of a wait-and-see thing.

deception``

Sentential said:

Anyone know what gives with the increased wattage from the E0s? My guess is that its due to a longer pipeline cause by:

A) AMD manually tweekeing it
B) Addition of SSE3

Im not really sure what could cause it but something definatly seems amiss. Any ideas?

Click to expand...

I don't think that they have lengthened the pipeline in this stepping change, nor would a longer pipeline necessarily produce more heat. I think that the most likely cause of the increased power consumption is the change to the process technology (moving to strained silicon and all the related tweaks).