CPU, APU & Chipsets - Page 210

Some early benchmarking results of AMD's yet to be officially released Phenom II series processors have surfaced on the web which give a good indication of the expected performance characteristics.

A fellow by the name of coolice over at Malaysian tech site BreakTheLimit has somehow gotten hold of a Phenom II X4 940 processor and puts it through its paces at its stock speed of 3GHz in a wide array of tests, including Super Pi 1M and 32M, Cinebench R10, PiFast Multithreaded, WPrime 1.5, Aquamark and 3DMark06.

GIGABYTE's own Taiwanese technical marketing dude, Hicookie, has created a very in-depth guide which explains how to overclock an Intel Core i7 920 processor all the way up to 4GHz.

Though AMD's upcoming Phenom II (Deneb) series of 45nm processors aren't set to be launched until the opening day of CES next year (January 9), a few e-tailers seem assured of the launch pricing on the two models that will hit the market initially and they haven't kept it under wraps either!

Leaked documents have recently surfaced online which reveal AMD's 2009 desktop processor plans and also confirms the marketing branding name of the CPUs, Phenom II.

During Kirk Skaugen's keynote today at IDF in Taipei, Stephen Pawlowski hit the stage briefly to chat about a small little thing called Nehalem.

Intel's forthcoming Core i7 lineup of codenamed Nehalem processors are not due to go on sale till the second part of next month.

However, that didn't stop us getting our hands on an engineering sample Core i7 920 processor clocked at 2.66GHz (133MHz x 20) from a secret bunker hidden well underground... :)

We've talked a fair amount about Intel's Nehalem microarchitecure recently, but what of AMD's own foray into the 45nm CPU playing field?

Courtesy of this article from Expreview, AMD appears to be adopting a rather interesting branding method for its upcoming SKUs.

AMD's foray into 45nm CPUs is expected to set sail, at some point, during the remainder of this year. Those all famous engineering samples have been set loose again though, with the 45nm Phenom X4, codename Deneb, CPUs in 2.2 GHz and 2.3GHz flavours, being captured at ITOCP.

Here, the 2.2 GHz iteration, running with its 11.0x multiplier and a CPU-Z indicated core voltage of 1.224V, braves its shiny face for the camera:

As it is, AMD are really struggling to attract much interest in their underwhelming lineup of Phenom desktop processors. The only good thing they have going for them is the pricetag, making it easier for people on a budget to become a part of the quad-core crowd.

If they think that's what's going to keep them afloat though, they'd better re-think their strategy, and very soon. Intel are planning to close the gap entirely next quarter by releasing new entry-level Core 2 Duo and Quad processors that will be as cheap as chips!

Talk of a Core 2 Quad Q8000 lineup is getting stronger, with a Q8200 offering to kick it off which sits at 2.33GHz and contains 4MB of shared L2 cache on a 1333MHz FSB. The most hurtful aspect of this as far as AMD's Phenom range go, is the price. Several asian websites are reporting that the Q8200 will come in at a mere $203, just slightly above what AMD charge at the moment for its 2.2GHz X4s/2.4GHz X3s.

A Polish end-user by the nickname of MILANS has taken his AMD Phenom X4 9850 processor and overclocked it all the way to 3710MHz.

A report states that Pawe³ Milanowski (aka MILANS) only needed the aid of water cooling to take the factory clocked 2.5GHz all the way up to a world record speed of 3.71GHz, which is 212MHz bus speed x 17.5 multiplier.

He used a DFI LANPARTY DK 790FX motherboard with the CPU core voltage set to 1.48V.