Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[pgerassi]

Wbmw:

Temperatures are not measured in Celius or Fahrenheit, but Kelvin or Rankin. So its not a 20% increase going from 50C to 60C, but only a 3% rise going from 323K to 333K. A 100W TDP rise on a good cooler is only 20K rise. So a 60W TDP rise we were talking about translates to a 12K rise or about 4%. Even if you cube it, that's only 12.5% rise for a 30% clock boost.

You also forget that AMD is using a thicker oxide than Intel and have at each process generation so far and thickness is a exponential effect. A 10% greater oxide thickness translates at the same voltage and temperature into an 0.5 to 1 order of magnitude decrease in gate leakage. Thus AMD tends to have a higher percentage of dynamic power of the total dissipation than Intel.

Lastly, since AMD uses worst case for its TDP ratings, temprature doesn't vary at maximum. This removes temperature effects as far as AMD TDP ratings go.

Pete