Quote Originally Posted by JumpingJack View Post
It's still ambiguous.... you are quoting conditions under which it is derived which is bascially a load line, gODJO is quoting the definition (i.e. what it means by AMD's standards).

You could put the max voltage and clock on the CPU and run something as simple as solitare and call it a commercially relevant software. That would give you a completely different number than running say Prime95.

He is correct, unless it is specified what the thermally significant period is (is it one second, 10 seconds, 5 days??) and the load they are actually running (super pi 1M, solitaire, prime 95, spec FP rate?) there is no really understanding what AMD's methods were to establish their spec on TDP.

Another way of putting it... would you, BrowncoatGR, please repeat AMD's measurement to verify TDP and show the data to the forum? You can't, you don't have enough information.

This is not to say Intel is any better, they are just as vague....
You are correct of course. Neither company specifies how they actually calculate TDP(and i can't see why really. I don't see how this is sensitive data). Initially i interpreted that max to mean that while the conditions are met the CPU will never exceed the TDP. After reading it again i dont think that is correct. If you apply the first definition to the part that i quoted it makes the second statement a lot more ambiguous.
As for Intel i've been thinking that their high TDP rating of 45nm CPUs might be due to cooling needs of those CPUs and not that they lumped all their CPUs together like some ppl suggest. Couldn't a hotspot on the cpu cause Intel to conclude that the CPU needs better cooling than the chips actual thermal dissipation would suggest? Granted that's what heatspreaders are for but how effective are they really?