As far as performance is concerned, AMD is lagging behind its competitor Intel. But few users other than gamers still care solely about performance. In this age of burgeoning energy prices, AMD has an ace up its sleeve: the world’s first quad core CPU that consumes as little as 65 W (TDP). In comparison, Intel’s smallest quad core absorbs 95 W (TDP), despite the fact that Intel is already using 45 nm technology and AMD is still at 65 nm.
In terms of power consumption, AMD’s platform as a whole — motherboard, CPU and graphics chip — is not bad either. Its performance is perfectly adequate for office work and entertainment, though not for games. The integrated graphics engine in the 780G chipset is capable of rendering Blu-ray movies in 1920 HD resolution under maximum CPU load without jitter via HDMI. With Intel, this is only possible with a separate graphics card, as a comparable platform is not yet available.
AMD still has difficulties with high clock frequencies. While Intel’s quad core easily touches the 3 GHz mark, AMD is barely capable of 2.5 GHz. The Phenom X4 9100e presented in this article operates at 1.8 GHz.
Compared to classic Athlon 64 X2 CPUs, the first Phenom models with the B2 stepping featured improved power efficiency, but due to a TLB error — largely irrelevant in practice — the maximum clock rate had to be limited to 2.30 GHz. The B3 stepping eliminated the error, allowing the clock rate to be pushed up to 2.50 GHz. As even the B3 update failed to provide a major boost to the clock rate of the Phenom core, AMD was forced to increase the core voltage. Thus, the Phenom X4 with the B3 stepping is characterized by an extremely high power consumption (TDP) of 125 W.
Nevertheless, Tom’s hardware test of Phenom X3 CPUs provides evidence that AMD is capable of reducing the Phenom’s power consumption by optimizing the production process. Using a core based on the B3 stepping, the voltage and current requirements are much lower compared to the quad-core models at the same clock rate.
The following sections will shed light on how AMD was able to set the bar at 65 W.
- Introduction
- Phenom 9100e in Focus
- Core Voltage: only 1.10 V
- Overclocking to 2.40 GHz: the Board Is the Limit
- CPU Power Loss: 63.9 Watts Under Full Load
- CPU Power Loss: 19.40 W While Idle
- System Power Loss: 141 W Under Full Load
- CPU Power Loss: Overclocking to 2.40 GHz
- System Power Loss: Overclocking
- Performance: 23% Slower than 6400+
- 27% Performance Boost through Overclocking
- 8.8% Slower than the Q6600 Despite Overclocking
- 9100e Power-Saving System: 127 W under Full Load
- Prices and Availability
- Test Setup and Utilized Components
- Benchmarks and Settings
- Unreal Tournament 2004, Prey
- Quake 4, Warhammer
- Supreme Commander, Serious Sam 2
- Cinema 4D, 3D-Studio Max 9
- AVG, WinRAR
- Photoshop, PDF
- Deep Fritz
- iTunes, Lame
- Sandra CPU
- Sandra Memory
- Sandra Multimedia
- PC-Mark
- 3DMark06
- Xvid, Pinnacle Studio
- Premiere, Mainconcept
- HDTV, DivX
- CloneDVD
- Conclusion: High Efficiency for Multi-Core Applications

It'd be interesting to add in a Intel mid to high range dual core and look at the power consumption and performance vs the relatively low clocked quad. Dropping the clockspeed so low would seem to give back most of the games from having 2 extra cores (and would be worse for SW that cannot use 4 cores).
My Q9450 VID = 1.1v, EIST drops VID to 1.0375v
C1 stepping, slawr l806a762
I bet thats gonna make it hard for the phenom to beat
Consider the fact that one can buy an e8400 or 8500 which uses the same power, can keep up with AMD's quad cores (even when they are over clocked), and also DESTROY this thing at gaming. WHY exactly would I buy this piece of crap again Frank ?!?!
I guess if I ran Cinebench benchmarks all day and did NOTHING else, then this cpu would look good.
People that buy quad cores are not going to care about 35 watts, they want to brag about speed OR get their work done ASAP, and AMD is crap for that right now !
Very impartial ... showing the strength's and weaknesses of the low power unit.
The overclocking limit of 2.4 would be interesting to explore further.
Can you elaborate on what settings you went to ... and the HTT frequency please?
Cheers,
Very impartial ... showing the strength's and weaknesses of the low power unit.
The overclocking limit of 2.4 would be interesting to explore further.
Can you elaborate on what settings you went to ... and the HTT frequency please?
Cheers,
I hope that statement was intended for this particular CPU only, or the fanboyism of this site just went up 10 notches to ludicrous stupidity.
1, If you're really going to run multithreaded apps 24/7 (or not much less) this processor is really perfect. This points to the fact, that K10 was really made for server segment: it is scaling very well in multisocked configurations, and at lower clocks it is very energy-efficient.
2, The biggest deficiency of the current dekstop Phenoms is that they are way too power-hungry. Maybe the SOI is to blame, as I've read the SOI process has a frequency tipping point after which the dissipation grows tremendously. Anyway, the situation seems curable, as this 9100e can be clocked to perform on par with 9750 yet consuming substantially less. That brings some hope for AMD.
Uh what about the fact that they SUCK (x4's) ?! This architecture is AMD's version of Netburst. This design sucks no matter how you try to spin it; here is hoping the next cores from AMD fare better. Where is the advantage in buying this piece of junk ? Maybe if I had a bank of servers, maybe...as far as any real desktop apps go, I'd be just as well of going core 2 duo as I would on this thing, winning in one benchmark doesn't impress me because I do lots of things with my desktop.
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/617/1/
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/05/14/intel-updates-gaming-notebook
Even if AMD have a slight lead now, they will be totally raped come Q3/08.
http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sspec=slap4