Power Consumption and Overclocking
Power Consumption
At idle the X4 980 does very well, and is among the lowest when it comes to power consumption. The cores are clocked down to 800 MHz with the voltage at or slightly below 1v.
Once things get cranked up a bit, then the power consumption of the X4 980 ratchets it up quite a bit. Note that it is still 10 watts less than the X6 1100T, but when fully loaded consumes as much power as the X6 1090T. The Intel i7-860 consumes 20 watts less at load, even though we are talking about two different motherboards. Consider the performance delta between the two, and then compare the power consumption. The i7 architecture is really, really impressive. But luckily for AMD, you tend to pay for that performance. Except in the case of the i5 2400/2500 series of processors.
Overclocking
This particular processor turned out to be very easy to overclock. I was able to get to 4.1 GHz at stock voltage and run stable. Increasing voltage to 1.5v allowed me to get to a stable 4.3 GHz. After that things got a bit tricky and unstable, even if voltage was further raised.
This is actually one of my best overclocks with a Phenom II X4, as my previous record was 4.2 GHz that was not entirely stable. Thermals did not seem to get out of control either when it ran at 4.3 GHz.
Josh, you just have to get a
Josh, you just have to get a new CLEAN case for these reviews moving forward 🙂
A clean case is a sign of a
A clean case is a sign of a dirty mind.
This has to be the worst
This has to be the worst product I have seen released recently. It was easily beaten overall for the testing done against the i7-860 and the i7-860 is A LOT slower than the new sandybridge i5s. When comparing price/performance AMD has terrible timing with this part – Microcenter is selling the i5-2500k for $180 and the i5-2400 for $150. This 980 could only overclock to 4.3ghz overall (8.6% increase) and people are easily overclocking i5-2500k to 5.0ghz (66% increase!).
Yeah, this was a strange
Yeah, this was a strange release from AMD. Just so hard to compete with those Sandy Bridge parts. Sweet deals from Microcenter though! The i5-2500K is a steal at $180. Makes you wonder what the internal thinking at AMD was. Perhaps they felt that with recent price changes they had to have something exist at their upper end so their ASPs didn’t suffer as badly?
I am done with AMD cpu’s till
I am done with AMD cpu’s till bulldozer, I had a couple of Phenom 2 build’s and the were “alright” then I found the i7 and never looked back moved to sandy-bridge, still not looking back. I am dying to give AMD my money , I am begging to give them my money but, I want performance, I think if they were even equal at the dollar per performance I would go with AMD just because they are the underdogs and I really want to see them grow.I am hearing good things I hope the bulldozer processors are not Phenom 2’s in disguise, if they are it could be the end of AMD, on a better note they make awesome GPU’s that is their saving grace.
Well, I think at least AMD
Well, I think at least AMD will be at parity with Intel for the most part. Though if the top end Bulldozer only matches the i7 2500K in performance, then AMD will certainly not be making boatloads of money per chip. I also think AMD had originally planned to have Bulldozer out sooner, but it looks like a few delays have hit it. We are now looking at (hopefully) July availability.
The one bright spot for AMD is that they are shipping Llano based processors, and we will likely see a glut of them come July/August. Should be a popular “back to school” product. CPU performance will not be anything fantastic, but the integrated GPU should be class leading for a long, long time.
I don’t think you were clear
I don’t think you were clear with the warranty information for the Asrock. As far as I can tell any p67/h67 board you buy today until June 30th will automatically have a 2 year warranty.
http://www.zoneandroid.com