LeonardoWake up and smell the glaciersEagle River, AlaskaIcrontian
edited November 2008
The slowest system—cooled with a heatsink and fan—managed to reach just under 4GHz with a 1.55V core voltage.
Hey, not too shabby! 1.55 vCore. What's the default voltage? I haven't kept up with AMD CPU tweaking, but 1.55 seems pretty high. That's not necessarily a criticism, as "just under" 4GHz on a new 45nm part is not bad. One could say that in this case, using an engineering sample CPU doesn't mean much as the processor was probably hand picked. Well, maybe not. Engineering samples are usually pretty close to the final, release versions.
We'll see, but this looks encouraging for AMD. Had this been a demonstration put on by AMD a year ago, I'd just write it up as a PR stunt, without merit. They've been much more open lately and are generally quiet rather than misleading if there is nothing positive to relate.
Brian has tried to contact AMD for more information. Hopefully when our contact gets back to his office from the event we'll get a bit more news to share. I'm honestly surprised to see 4GHz right now. Perhaps all the small fixes and the die shrink do make a difference?
About freaking time AMD. Can't wait to see some benchmarks. I'm thinking Intel will still have a slight advantage, clock for clock, but hopefully this will bring it within a 7% range.
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LeonardoWake up and smell the glaciersEagle River, AlaskaIcrontian
edited November 2008
AMD will not be the champ in the next year or so, but if the production runs are like this engineering sample, AMD is definitely back in the game.
I can take a 7 to 10% hit. With a good overclock that can be over come. But when you are talking 15 to 20%, that's a whole other ballgame. The server chips look promising, If these do as well than AMD will be a truly viable upgrade path.
Hopefully intel will drop their prices a bit to force AMD to release these chips at a better price point. Then again, Maybe AMD will go after intel like it did with nvidia and start off at a good price point like they did with the 4850's and 70's.
It is positive to see this kind of headroom, regardless of the applied voltage. Anyone who has tried overclocking an AM2 Phenom will tell you just how frustrating it can be. This is likely the reason we never saw anything over 2.6GHz on 65nm.
If AMD wants to compete, they're definitely going to have to get those clock speeds up!
BuddyJ
Dept. of PropagandaOKC Icrontian
Comments
We'll see, but this looks encouraging for AMD. Had this been a demonstration put on by AMD a year ago, I'd just write it up as a PR stunt, without merit. They've been much more open lately and are generally quiet rather than misleading if there is nothing positive to relate.
Hopefully intel will drop their prices a bit to force AMD to release these chips at a better price point. Then again, Maybe AMD will go after intel like it did with nvidia and start off at a good price point like they did with the 4850's and 70's.
If AMD wants to compete, they're definitely going to have to get those clock speeds up!
Mhz Is King.
Also, I originally thought the article title was "Pentium II to 4+Ghz."