AMD 9950

TDP is the main restriction tho... 140W @ 2.6Ghz... sure the SB750 will make it clock higher... but the TDP... blow a power grid or too...

AMD will be better off with the low-power K8... would kill the Atom... concentrate with Deneb and 45nm...

It is implied that the Phenom 9950BE will run 3GHz at stock volts and standard 200MHz clock on a 790fx / 790gx with SB750.

That remains to be seen but if so ... I'd see the price going up from $300.

edit: Ouch! $235? Might be worth a roll of the dice ...

From what I've read the 9950be when matched with an sb750 based board is suppose to auto clock to 3ghz, which is likely why the tdp is so high, in fact it was suppose to launch at the same time as the sb750 did. And no, the desktop parts aren't rated with average power dissipation, they're still TDP.

Besides, I'd say about 75% of that TDP is from the IMC voltage. Kinda ironic that a lot of Phenoms problems seem to revolve around the IMC. In fact the higher IMC voltage is the reason that the 9850 uses much more power at the same clock speeds as the 9600be. On the other hand, maybe's us AMD fanatics will get lucky, and the SB750 will lower the amount of voltage that the b3 chips need to run stable. I know the 9600be I have sitting around could do 2ghz IMC, at 1.09v(1.1v VID), and that made a huge difference in how hot the cpu was running, wish I had one of those watt meter things to check all that stuff with at the time. So far all intents a purposes the b3's should be capable of doing that too.

http://www.hothardware.com/Article [...] ut/?page=2

It was owercloked with stardard AMD cooler... So expect better with real heatpipe tower...

I think it's obvious from some of the 'expert reviews' that some folks can't quite tap the potential of the Phenom. In some cases I doubt it's intentional but that 'legit' review almost made me spew my beverage. The cost of the ram on the Intel rig (4GB Corsair DDR3 1800) would be more than the MSI 790fx, Phenom 9950BE, Raptor 150Gb and Zalman cooler rolled together.

And DDR2 800 ? (Running at 742MHz if I figured my AMD wacky ram dividers correctly.) At least with DDR2 1066 they could have 1000MHz ram with the 1:1.33 divider ... (I guess they spent that ram money on the water cooling for the Intel rig - lol)