We've seen a distinct trend over the last year or so toward "green" technologies, or at least, the marketing of them. Everywhere you look there is some sort of new claim that Product X will save energy and money for consumers. We think this may be a "chicken and the egg" scenario though, since we're not sure if consumers are driving this trend and companies are jumping on the bandwagon, or if marketing efforts are creating the hype and consumers are buying into it. Either way, we do think it is a positive trend nonetheless, and as long as it continues then we're happy.
AMD, through its ATI arm, has been heavily investing in more energy-efficient chips for its graphics cards, as we've seen with their latest generation 5000 series cards, but their core CPU products have not been quite as successful in a push to reduce power consumption. Their flagship processor, the Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition was released at 140W, a level considered by many to be far too high. Today marks AMD's response, as their flagship CPU now comes in a 125W version, still considered to be at the upper limit of "acceptable" but an improvement nonetheless.
With this new stepping comes a few other enhancements as well, some that should pique the interest of enthusiasts looking for higher overclocks at lower voltages for the AMD platform. Let's take a look at the new 125W chip and see what it brings as a result.
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Phenom II X4 for $99: Unlocking the X2 555 BE
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