A newly released “AMD Athlon 64 Processor Power and Thermal Data Sheet” document claims the new 90nm chips have Thermal Design Power of 67W under full load, and about 21W in the so-called “Cool’n’Quiet” mode under minimum load with about 1.00GHz clock-speed. AMD’s 130nm chips devour up to 89W at full load and about 22W under minimum load at 800MHz.
Intel’s Pentium 4 chips code-named Prescott made using 90nm strained silicon process technology gained power consumption over 130nm Intel Pentium 4 products internally called Northwood due to higher number of transistors inside the new chips and as a result of certain fabrication process-related effects.
Sunnyvale, California-based chipmaker still advices its mainboard partners to equip their platforms with CPU power circuitry able to provide around 105W to microprocessors. AMD’s top Athlon 64 FX-55 chip currently consumes 104W under maximum load; it is unknown which 90nm chips may devour that much energy, but AMD claims that its dual-core desktop chips that are supposed to hit the market in 2H 2005 will fit into infrastructure aimed at current 90nm products.
Recommended: Click here to Update all your outdated drivers