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AMD Phenom II Energy Efficient CPUs tested

by on15 July 2009

Index




Here the first CPU-Z screenshots of the 705e and 905e. If you will use this CPUs without tampering anything on your mainboard it will manage to keep temperatures below 30°C in idle-mode. So, not only do the new CPUs use less power, but they also let you use them without the need for high-end coolers to keep the temperatures in check.

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For overclocking you need to increase the virtual FSB. Of course we use high-end boards which can easily exceed 300MHz. The most interesting part was to check how much voltage is needed to match the bigger brothers 720 and 955BE. Our Triple-Core needs no change from its 1.175V VCore to work stable with 2.8GHz, while the 905e needs 1.225V to run at 3.2GHz. The only downside of this locked CPUs is the increased voltage in idle-mode when overclocked, as you can see with the 905e which exceeds 1.000V. 

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Of course we checked the limits of both CPUs and both reached stable 3.50GHz. While this may not sound that much, in perspective this is a huge 1GHz increase with standard air-cooling and very moderate voltages. To do a good overclock you should use good modules, the AMD limit is about 1600MHz. The 705e managed to run stable with 1.350VCore while the 905e needs 1.400VCore. Please note, each CPU is different, but we are confident the frequency can be reach on any of this CPUs while VCore may vary.
 
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With the amazing MSI board, we could run power efficient Cool'n'Quiet while still overclocking.

For HTPC use with very small cases also under-voltage is an interesting point. The triple-core runs stable with only 1.000V, while our quad-core needs  1.050V, a neat effect is the lowering of the idle-power as well, at least on the 705e, while the 905e was still above 1V, because the under-voltaging did not allow for 0.01V steps, which will hopefully fixed soon.
 
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Last modified on 15 July 2009
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