AMD Athlon X2 7850 Black Edition CPU

100Mhz faster?. wow! Thats like amazingly incredible fast compared to the previous fastest processor. Its so fast you don't even notice it. Its that fast!

Yay! this comment thread does work!

Explain something to me as I'm genuinely curious: Why does the AMD 7750's (and subsequently the 7850) power consumption vary in your reviews? In your AMD 955 article the 7750 has an idle/load power consumption of 103/147W (http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2009/04/23/amd-phenom-ii-x4-955-black-edition-cpu-am3/11) but in this article it's up to 128/186W. Save for the motherboard used everything is the same so what's different between the two reviews?

The motherboard has been changed after the old one died - everything was re-run on the new board.:)

I'm pretty sure the top result on the Far Cry table should say "E5200 OC", not stock. It would be quite paradoxial of you fine folks to get such different results at the same core frequency... :D

When you overclock a X3 8750 BE CPU to 3.4 GHz. (1 GHz. increase) with relative ease, you just can't believe supossed to be professionals barely overclocking a 2.8 GHz. CPU with the same architecture only to 3.1 GHz. Do you know what I mean?
Common now, there is no way X2 7850 overclocks below 3.3 GHz. Do your job properly and don't deceive people!

Above post is incomprehensible.

Originally Posted by zagortenay
When you overclock a X3 8750 BE CPU to 3.4 GHz. (1 GHz. increase) with relative ease, you just can't believe supossed to be professionals barely overclocking a 2.8 GHz. CPU with the same architecture only to 3.1 GHz. Do you know what I mean?
Common now, there is no way X2 7850 overclocks below 3.3 GHz. Do your job properly and don't deceive people!

Whow, wait, deceive people? Lets break this down: the AMD 65nm architecture and B3 core as a whole is limited no matter what speed you buy. The 8750 might do 3.3GHz, but we couldn't benchmark at this speed - the same thing happened with the 7850 BE - we topped out at 3.3GHz. However we could benchmark at 3.1GHz - slightly faster than the 8750.

As for the HTT clock - maybe our motherboard isn't very good, but any kind of HTT-multiplier combination caused no-POSTs. However I chose this Biostar board because CustomPC says it is an excellent overclocker and has previously achieved a very high HTT?! I don't know - maybe a BIOS issue with the dual cores perhaps, but you dont need to clock the HTT when it's unlocked anyway.

Our conclusion still stands - buy the 7750 for £50 instead - they both have the same overhead.

The most I've ever seen anyone get from a 65nm B3 is 3.5GHz, heavily overvolted but still "air cooled".

Originally Posted by Tim S
The motherboard has been changed after the old one died - everything was re-run on the new board.:)

I understand that but why the huge difference in power consumption? Surely the new motherboard doesn't add an extra 20W at idle.

Originally Posted by Ryun
I understand that but why the huge difference in power consumption? Surely the new motherboard doesn't add an extra 20W at idle.

Rich is probably best placed to confirm this, but MSI's boards have had very good energy efficiency at idle (I'm not sure if the board we were using exhibited this, but it's certainly a trend we've seen with any MSI board using DrMOS technology).

Originally Posted by Ryun
I understand that but why the huge difference in power consumption? Surely the new motherboard doesn't add an extra 20W at idle.

Good spot!

After much back-reading it maaaaaaybe partly due to the motherboard and partly due to how they handle the disabled cores. I shall have to email AMD and ask but if we look at the E5200 number from the 7750 review last December and 7850 review from this month they are almost identical.

Hi guys,
I'm a newby. I have a AMD 5400+ BE with Zalman CNPS9700 cooler and its been running OC for months now at 3219 MHz on a Asus M2N32-SLI deluxe with 4Gig of ram and Asus 9600GT/512 card. Its so stable at this level & is great for CAD work. Cores run around30 up to 40/45 for 3D render. I don't feel any need to step up to X2 7850 or even an X4 CPU as yet.