AMD has had plans for launching a new family of power efficient processors in an attempt to fight Intel’s performance per watt marketing. That AMD offers performance that is good enough for most is pretty obvious and even if the power consumption of the Athlon 64 family if far from catastrophical, especially compared to what Intel’s NetBurstarchitecture is capable of, there is a pretty clear difference between them and Intel’s mobile Yonah processors are finding their way into more and more stationary systems. Not to speak of the Core architecture that will be launched with some very impressive power specifications. We have earlier reported about AMD’s plans for an EE-family of processors where the abbreviation EE is short for Energy Efficient. AMD has now officially announced its EE family that will appear on the market when Socket AM2 is launched.
The processors are developed for AMD’s new Socket AM2 platform and can be found in all segments of AMD’s processor series. In a press release published by AMD there is information about 11 different EE processors with TDP values at 65W and 35W.
| Processor: | TDP: | Cores: | Price: |
| Athlon 64 X2 4800+ | 65W | Dual | $651 |
| Athlon 64 X2 4600+ | 65W | Dual | $601 |
| Athlon 64 X2 4400+ | 65W | Dual | $514 |
| Athlon 64 X2 4200+ | 65W | Dual | $417 |
| Athlon 64 X2 4000+ | 65W | Dual | $353 |
| Athlon 64 X2 3800+ | 65W | Dual | $323 |
| Athlon 64 X2 3800+ | 35W | Dual | $364 |
| Athlon 64 3500+ | 35W | Single | $231 |
| Sempron 3400+ | 35W | Single | $145 |
| Sempron 3200+ | 35W | Single | $119 |
| Sempron 3000+ | 35W | Single | $101 |
AMD is really going out strong with its new efficient processors and AMD claims that its 65W EE models offers up to 37 percent better performance-per-watt while the Athlon 64 X2 specified at 35W offers up to 157 percent higher performance-per-watt. The Athlon 64 X2 3800+ with dual cores and a 35W TDP seems to be a real diamond in the rough here and even if the processor is more expensive than an Athlon 64 X2 4000+ (65W) this could become a very interesting option for e.g. HTPC builders or overclockers.
The TDP values may seem impressive already, but AMD claims that you will have a hard time getting even close to these. At regular use (SYSmark 2004 SE) the 35W X2 processor only consumes 14W.
AMD’s 65W EE processors will be called Energy Efficient Desktop Processors, while the 35W models will be called Energy Efficient Small Form Factor Desktop Processors. AMD’s new power efficient processors will be very interesting to compare with the regular models and those who are eager to invest in a more efficient model will have to get used to the fact that these will cost a few tens more than the regular ones.
