Turion vs Sonoma

[Mariner]

Here is a first look at Turion.
http://xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=55174

If the figures in that link are representative of what most of the Turion chips can achieve then I think we have an excellent competitor to Pentium M.

Personally, I'd be surprised if the chip they show is one of the 25W TDP cores as the standard voltage appears to be quite high for this - 1.6GHz at 1.4v. It seems much more likely that this will be one of the 35W chips. That said if it is one of the 35W cores it is the fact that it can still run at 2GHz with 1.056v is very impressive (at this overclocked speed with lower voltage the dissipation would be less than 25W). Lots of assumptions there.

I'm assuming the San Diego/Venice desktop chips will be capable of relatively similar clocks and low voltages which is good news for silent and cool PCs!

 

[Tim]

Personally, I'd be surprised if the chip they show is one of the 25W TDP cores as the standard voltage appears to be quite high for this - 1.6GHz at 1.4v. It seems much more likely that this will be one of the 35W chips.!

It is, the package clearly says "ML".

ML = 35W TDP
MT = 25W TDP

 

[swaaye]

My mobile Clawhammer 130nm can do 1.25v at 1.8Ghz (RMClock tweaking). AMD should be able to really get that voltage down today, I'd hope, with the newer steppings and 90nm. 1.4v seems pretty unlikely as that's simply stock for a 90nm desktop A64.

Turion makes a lot of sense, if it's a bit unfortunate. AMD should have been more agressive with voltage with the original mobile A64, because there is obviously headroom in these chips, even 130nm. Now down the road they had to come up with a new brand because re-spec'ing A64 now would not bring it into the limelight over power savings. A64 could probably have challenged Banias if AMD had really pushed hard.

Turion64 is exciting though, and I'd bet these chips have even more room to drop voltage below what I'd assume is going to be more around 1.2v or less stock. And dual-core is certainly something that could be added to the line when they bring it to desktop. I wonder when S939 will finally go mobile? Darned laptop form-factor and circuit design issues. But, hey, they've stuck i865 dual-channel into notebooks!