AMD is desperate to close the gap between it and Intel. The next important step is to transfer the quad-core architectures Barcelona and Agena to the 45nm node. We've reported about the desktop version Agena being tested multiple times, but now the first review has been posted. The test has been published by Chinese hardware site Hardspell.com, and they start by dissecting the processor architecture and move on to power consumption tests and benchmarks.
The previous information about an overall 12% lower power consumption seem to have been a serious understatement, at least during load where Phenom X4 9650 (2.3GHz) consumes 104.1W, while a Deneb (45nm) Phenom processor at 2.3GHz pulls 57.3W, even though Deneb has three times the L3 cache compared to Agena, 6MB vs. 2MB.
The bigger cache also grants Deneb some advantages over the current Phenom X4 processors. They're not substantial, but clearly noticeable in several applications, e.g. encoding and games.
They also did some quick overclocking tests and with a simple air cooler they easily reached 3.2GHz stable, which does confirm that there are at least some overclocking potential, especially considering this is a very early sample. Alas, the article is in Chinese, but Google translate let you understand at least certain parts of the article, but the pictures and diagrams are universal.
:: AMD Deneb 45nm review (Google Translate)
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