AMD Phenom II X3 On Linux

[Apopas]

Second hand sever boards? An Opteron is going to cost three or fours times the price.

There are new low power consumption Phenoms on the way. Intel have a low power Quad as well, but it is not always easy to find someone to sell you one.

Getting way off topic now.

cheers

Hehe, indeed. Thanks very much for the information

[Ole-Martin Broz]

did you read my post?

core i7 920 clocked @ 3.6ghz doesn't cost anymore than one clocked at 2.66, outside of a better cpu cooler, which considering this is the same system used to benchmark the core i7 @ 3.6ghz a couple weeks ago, was likely already installed...

I didnt manage that on a stock cooler, testing 2 diffrent boards, and 3 diffrent cpu's, did quite easy with a 60 usd cooler, in fact 3.7 ghz.

same test with amd 3.9 ghz on a quadcore, well....

Thats not impressive, however a 3.6 ghz 720 BE or 710 is cheap, motherboard is also cheaper.

Still with 3.6 core i7 920 vs a 710/720 BE clocked at 3.7-3.8(stock cooler), doesnt change the fact that pricing is the same?

Core I7 is great though, but I5 will be better( in terms of price )

[MetalheadGautham]

How easy is unlocking the 4th core ? What is the effective TDP ? Is it 125W as the Phenom II X4 920 or is it still 95W like the Phenom II X4 925 or Phenom II X4 8xx series ?

Whats the probability of getting a Phenom II X3 710 which can have a core unlocked ?

[curaga]

Difficulty - it's enabling one option in bios

[xianthax]

I didnt manage that on a stock cooler, testing 2 diffrent boards, and 3 diffrent cpu's, did quite easy with a 60 usd cooler, in fact 3.7 ghz.

same test with amd 3.9 ghz on a quadcore, well....

Thats not impressive, however a 3.6 ghz 720 BE or 710 is cheap, motherboard is also cheaper.

Still with 3.6 core i7 920 vs a 710/720 BE clocked at 3.7-3.8(stock cooler), doesnt change the fact that pricing is the same?

Core I7 is great though, but I5 will be better( in terms of price )

if the point of the article was to compare processors on a bang for the buck scale why include the i7 920 at all? why not compare against an equally priced intel part?

[TheK]

The new Phenom IIs are 45nm chips, way better than the Phenom Is. Lower idle power usage than an i7, slightly higher at max load. The argument about the Intel chips finishing video rendering quicker therefore being even more efficient is a load of crap unless your computer renders video all day long. Most people's computers idle most of the time only ramping up for short periods.

Well, the i7 totally sucks at idle power consumption (with about 95W f?r a whole "office configuration"-system highest value on the market; about 25W above the second and about the double of a modern dual core).

At about 70W you can find the first Phenom generation. The Phenom II sits at about 60W idle, which is the same value than intels first quad core, the Q6000-Series (65nm) and btw. (nice to show the progress over the last years!) a Pentium 4-641 single core.

Most other CPUs, you can currently buy, idle at about 50W or below; including _all_ 45nm Core 2 Quad!

Better values only get the modern single core CPUs (AMD Sempron, intel Celeron) and a few dual cores, as AMDs 4x50e series - and of coz the intel Atom.

If you go to the load power comsumption, technical differences are a lot smaller, the number of cores is here by far the most important value: single core with below 75W, dual with up to 100, quad with up to 150. Exceptions: Pentium 4-641 90W, i7 and Phenom I both up to 200W.

please remember, that all values are at default clock; OC (esp. extreme OC) can result in _by far_ higher values.

[MetalheadGautham]

Difficulty - it's enabling one option in bios

Nope. I mean the difficulty of finding a store with the batch of CPUs which has been CONFORMED to be unlockable.

[Kano]

Well I think there is only one variant, so all are unlockable, but not all have got a working 4th core.

[Raven3x7]

Well I think there is only one variant, so all are unlockable, but not all have got a working 4th core.

Yup. You only need a mobo with ACC(for Ph2) and a good chip. All chips are unlockable certain batches have more good chips than others. Mine works fine with all 4 cores