AMD outs 40W quad-core Opteron EE with HT3
updated 09:00 am EDT, Wed April 22, 2009
AMD Opteron EE
Hoping to compete on energy over speed, AMD today launched a new take on its pro-level processors in the form of the Opteron EE. The processors, which AMD claims are the lowest power quad-core x86 processor, are a functional match for the latest Opterons but use just 40W of average power; the use is less than the 55W of the already modified Opteron HE and far less than the 75W or more of full-power Opterons. The chipmaker considers the EE ideal for blades, rackmount servers and other systems which are often part of densely packed clusters.
In terms of synthetic benchmarks, AMD sees the Opteron EE as using 13 percent less power than an HE while active, but a 62 percent improvement in speed over a previous generation processor.
Two processors make up the initial line and include both the 2.1GHz Opteron 2373 and the 2.3GHz Opteron 2377. Either can work in dual-socket systems for as many as eight cores on a given platform; availability hasn't been announced but should be near-immediate.
AMD also announced new HE, SE and processors with HyperTransport 3 support.
