Phenom II 965 link to newegg

[imported_Scoop]

Originally posted by: KingstonU
Many people are speculating 3.8GHz before the end of the year at this rate, and 4GHz at least for the peak that Phenom II will reach during 2010 before being replaced with bulldozer in 2011 (hopefully).

If yields continue to improve at this pace and another revision (C3 cause current is C2 IIRC) next year it is possible that 4GHz can be kept at the 140W spec isn't it?

So what is gonna be the requirements for 4Ghz Phenom II X4? 32-bit operating system?

 

[lopri]

I very much doubt we'll see 4.0 GHz SKU on a 45nm node. It may be possible for AMD to release 3.6 GHz SKU in the future, but without the fix of 64-bit bug and yield improvement it means little for enthusiasts because regardless of what you buy the limit is going to be the same. (3.8~4.0 GHz for 64-bit, 4.0~4.2 GHz for 32-bit)

AMD can(should), however, improve PII's on-die memory controller and L3 cache. Right now PII's on-die memory controller is still stuck at 2.0 GHz because of its power/thermal characteristics. There is an apparent binning going on there because AMD's high-end server CPU's sport 2.2 GHz IMC at even lower TDP's. If AMD can somehow figure out a way to raise the frequency of IMC within the power/thermal envelope, that'd give PII a healthy boost especially on AM3 platform with DDR3.