Quote Originally Posted by Calmatory View Post
My only concern is not the temperature of the core, it is usually just up to the cooler, but also the power it draws and how much it heats the rest of the case.

Besides, I wonder why 125W TDP if the thing goes well below 110-115 W etc. Sure the lower temps with the stock cooler are better, but then again I'd rather have $10 cheaper product with 10 C higher temperature. Also lower TDP usually means lower power draw which means less excess heat and lower power bills, and it "saves climate"!

I do understand that the 45 nm with immersion lithography is a godsend for AMD when compared to their 65 nm process, and that leakage has been reduced greatly, but that does not help to convince me that the high TDP wouldn't mean high power draw, which means a lot of heat which means hot chip.
TDP is not really that important. It is mainly a specification for Heatsink designers and motherboard manufactures for a worst case scenario type of thing. Like a future CPU that may have ridiculous clocks/voltages

Put it this way, the TDP for my 939 Opteron 165 is 110 Watts. My whole system only was drawing 180-200 Watts of AC power full CPU and 3D Load, and my power supply is only around 72% efficient. That is 130 to 140 Watts DC. That is with the Opteron Over-Volted to around 1.45 volts, @ 2.6GHz and an ATI x1800 GTO.