Yes they had been working on agena for a couple years as well, and TLB kinda crushed it in most peoples eyes, even after that issue was fixed the chips still ran quite hot and the 750SB ACC solution was put into the mix. But still the chips ran quite hot even though they were expected to do clock higher and run much cooler.
I tend to agree with UJ's assessment of "better to promise less and deliver more" so they don't have another Agena fiasco, but then again you have to consider it could just have been a way to get the jump on Intel. Intel really wouldn't have reason to blink at another 140w chip by AMD regarded mainly as a die shrink of Agena, but they might have something to say about a
- 50-60w 3ghz cpu with 20%+ ipc
- clocks easily to 4ghz on air with 90-100w TDP putting power consumption at half of their 3.5 ghz cpus.
- 5ghz+ clocks attainable with water, higher with cold
- Backwards compatible with existing platforms, making a serious upgrade $200-300 instead of $800-1000 whether it's for gamers, servers, workstations, or power minded consumers
- Already will support the next round of motherboards with DDR3, so the few hundred buck you spent on your cpu will last you longer than 4 months.
As pretty much all of the phenom II's have been rated at 125-140w i tend to think it was in preperation for the 6 core desktops, which seem more likely to hit closer to that mark
Then you have the mobile angle to consider. Could be the mobile barton days making a come back. 60w may be high for a laptop part, but drop the voltage to .7-.8v and clock down to 2ghz and you're looking at more like a 25-35w part that is high performing and battery friendly. As i can do 3.3ghz at 1.0875v i tend to think the voltage could be dropped a fair amount below that to stay at 2ghz or clock raised at my estimated volts.
Intel won't have much of an answer to that, can you picture a nehalem making it into a laptop anytime soon? Perhaps an atom chip catching up with performance? Wow, even as i typed that my sides hurt from laughter. :D
@sundancerx
Yes i love the irony of the good luck i have when my black cat is near while i overclock. He must feel bad about almost killing the chip ;) As amusing as it would be to have Intel spin it to give credit to the kitty, i half expect the intel labs will start keeping their own animals near when testing chips. I can see the advertisements now.
A shot of a gerbil wearing a tiny sweater reading "Intel", with "Intel inside" in friendly font below. ;)
But thank you for the applause if i'm not mistaken that alone puts me at top Air clock speed, stable or not
