Intel's Pentium Extreme Edition 955: 65nm, 4 threads and 376M transistors
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 30, 2005 11:36 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Power Consumption and The Test
When we went to go measure power consumption on our Pentium EE 955 platform, we were met with some extremely troubling results. Not only did we not see the power consumption figures that we originally saw with Presler and Cedar Mill a couple of months back, but power consumption was actually higher at 65nm than it was at 90nm. We contacted Intel and were assured that the problem had to do with an issue with our motherboard and a new motherboard is en-route to us now. When we do receive the new motherboard, we will take a look at power consumption once more to get an idea of the final state of Intel's 65nm power consumption, but until then, we don't want to draw any conclusions based on what we've seen.
The Test
When we went to go measure power consumption on our Pentium EE 955 platform, we were met with some extremely troubling results. Not only did we not see the power consumption figures that we originally saw with Presler and Cedar Mill a couple of months back, but power consumption was actually higher at 65nm than it was at 90nm. We contacted Intel and were assured that the problem had to do with an issue with our motherboard and a new motherboard is en-route to us now. When we do receive the new motherboard, we will take a look at power consumption once more to get an idea of the final state of Intel's 65nm power consumption, but until then, we don't want to draw any conclusions based on what we've seen.
The Test
| CPU: | AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ (2.4GHz/1MBx2) AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (2.0GHz/512KBx2) AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 (2.8GHz/1MB) Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 955 (3.46GHz/2MBx2) Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 840 (3.2GHz/1MBx2) Intel Pentium D 820 (2.8GHz/1MBx2) |
| Motherboard: | ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe Intel BadAxe 975X |
| Motherboard BIOS: | ASUS: Version 1013 Dated 08/10/2005 |
| Chipset: | NVIDIA nForce4 SLI Intel 975X |
| Chipset Drivers: | nForce4 6.70 Intel 7.0.0.1020 |
| Memory: | OCZ PC3500 DDR 2-2-2-7 DDR2-667 5-5-5-15 |
| Video Card: | ATI Radeon X1800 XT |
| Video Drivers: | ATI Catalyst 5.13 |
| Desktop Resolution: | 1280 x 1024 - 32-bit @ 60Hz |
| OS: | Windows XP Professional SP2 |
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Betwon - Friday, December 30, 2005 - link
NO.The speed is still very slow for AMD--latency 101ns. Even it is slow than the latency of RAM(5x ns -- 8x ns)
With so large a latency, we don't find any benefits for those apps which communicate frequently between 2 cores. But it will hurt the performance.
The best way for core-communication -- share L2 cache. The latency of yonah will be very low, much faster than AthlonX2 and Presler.
mlittl3 - Friday, December 30, 2005 - link
Not to mention the crossbar switch would not be possible if the dies were separated. Remember AMD did dual-core the right way by bringing the memory controller on die and using the crossbar switch to switch memory communications between the two cores with little latency. If the dies were separated the crossbar switch would have to be moved off die and that would make the whole point of on-die memory controller, well, pointless really.ricardo dawkins - Friday, December 30, 2005 - link
S939 AMD chip when these chips are phasing out by M2 and the like or i'm crazy ?Calin - Tuesday, January 3, 2006 - link
Because you can still find good processors for socket 754. Socket 939 will become the "value" or "mid-range" socket for AMD, and not the premier one (like it is now). New chips will come to socket 939, but the top of the line will be the new M2 - so a new 939 now is a good investment, that should be upgradable in a couple of yearsGriswold - Friday, December 30, 2005 - link
Would you rather recommend presler when the next big thing will yet again bring a new socket?ricardo dawkins - Friday, December 30, 2005 - link
Are you dead sure Conroe will need a new socket ?...LGA775 is with us for a few more years..stop spreading FUD. BTW, I'm not a intel fanboy but I read a lot of news.coldpower27 - Friday, December 30, 2005 - link
No your correct, there are images of the Conroe processor showing that it pin out is LGA775. I predict most likely we will ditch LGA775 when Intel ditiches NetBurst FSB technology in favor of CSI in 2008.JarredWalton - Friday, December 30, 2005 - link
Conroe should be socket 775, but it appears that it will require a new chipset - possibly 965/Broadwater, but it might also be something else. I am almost positive that 945/955 *won't* support the next gen Intel chips, which is too bad.michaelpatrick33 - Friday, December 30, 2005 - link
The power draw numbers from other websites are nothing short of frightening for Intel. They have closed the gap with AMD's current X2 4800 but at double the power draw. It is getting ridiculous that a 65nm processor uses more power at idle than a competitor's 90nm draw at full load. Conroe is the true competitor to AMD in 2006 and it will be interesting to see the power numbers for the FX-60 and new AMD socket early next year.Spacecomber - Friday, December 30, 2005 - link
I thought that part of the big news coming out in prior reviews of this chip was its overclocking potential. Not that anyone would necessarily buy this processor in order to overclock it, but it was suggestive of what the core was capable of.Unless I overlooked it, overclocking wasn't mentioned in this article.
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