AMD Athlon 3800+ 35W TDP Online Source

victorpst · Post by **victorpst** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 7:40 am

I am on the lookout for 35W TDP version of AMD Athlon 3800+ CPU.

Does anyone know of any online store selling these (in US)?

LAThierry · Post by **LAThierry** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 8:29 am

Many of us looked for this mythical CPU a year ago when it first surfaced. I say mythical because we've not had any success in finding it. or were sent the wrong chip once we placed the order (either a 95-watt ADA3800 or a 65-watt ADO3800, never the actual 35-watt ADD3800) See one of many forum posts like this one

Stop dreaming about this chip unless you're ready to give $400 to $600 to a snake oil merchant.

Instead, consider the 65 watt version, especially the 65nm Brisbane version of the 3600 or 4000 which at idle behave very well, and cost about 10 times less than the mythical chip above. Consider underclocking and / or undervolting them to achieve (be mindful in your selection of motherboard)

Depending on your application, you can find a very capable single core 45w processor with 1MB of L2 cache in the Athlon LE-1600 2.2GHz ($46) and LE-1620 series 2.4GHz ($50). If you want dual-core, the newer 45w BE-2300, BE-2350 and BE-2400 will set you back about $79 to $99

If the whole ADD3800 fiasco has turned you off AMD, many consider the entry level E2140 or E2160 dual core chips from Intel. If your budget is much higher, the newer Intel Core 2 Duo 8x00 series looks extremely promising for low wattage and high perf.

frostedflakes · Post by **frostedflakes** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 9:57 am

Yup, you can get a 3600+ Brisbane for about $60 last time I checked, and by undervolting it you should be able to reduce TDP by roughly 50%. For example, mine was able to do 0.975V stable (1.3V is stock). Based on what others have posted 0.975 to 1.0V seems to be the norm for these chips. This undervolt should correspond to a TDP of ~32w, and actual power consumption is probably in the 25-30w range.

Or if you're willing to spend a bit more on a CPU you might check out the new Intel E8x00 chips. They'd probably have similar or lower power consumption than the 3600+, but would offer significantly better performance.

victorpst · Post by **victorpst** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 8:07 pm

Thankyou for the information.

Mariner · Post by **Mariner** » Sun Jan 27, 2008 4:27 am

As an example, my PC has the following spec:

AthlonX2 3600+ 1.9GHz @ 1.0V
2GB memory
120GB 2.5" disc
Laptop DVD writer

Power draw of the system at idle is 33W and full load is just 53W.

I certainly agree with frostedflakes that this CPU is a very good choice for a low-power system.

The new 45nm Intel chips also look very interesting.

frostedflakes · Post by **frostedflakes** » Sun Jan 27, 2008 10:00 am

That's pretty impressive, just out of curiosity what PSU are you using? PicoPSU?

Mariner · Post by **Mariner** » Sun Jan 27, 2008 12:39 pm

frostedflakes wrote:That's pretty impressive, just out of curiosity what PSU are you using? PicoPSU?

It's the 120W DC-DC board + AC brick which comes with the Silverstone LC-19 case.

Motherboard is an ASRock ALiveNF4G-DVI which also seems to have a pretty low power draw. In a couple/few months, I expect to replace this with a new motherboard using either the new AMD 780G chipset or one of the new NVidia chipsets which have video decode engines.

greenix · Post by **greenix** » Sun Aug 24, 2008 5:41 pm

Mariner wrote: Motherboard is an ASRock ALiveNF4G-DVI which also seems to have a pretty low power draw. In a couple/few months, I expect to replace this with a new motherboard using either the new AMD 780G chipset or one of the new NVidia chipsets which have video decode engines.

A couple of months... that is now

I've build a system based on AMD 3800++ 35Watt plus picoPSU, 2GB RAM, 2 WD GreenPower HDD's of 1TB each. Mobo is M2A-VM.

Problem: it keeps rebooting after ~5 minutes of Memtest86 (from CD). I have to find out what goes wrong (I know it is picoPSU or CPU, mobo combination, the rest are used good working components) but a more energy efficient mobo is welcome. Have you found out a good alternative?

Melluk · Post by **Melluk** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 3:09 pm

It's available in Germany. If anyone is still interested.
http://geizhals.at/eu/a348367.html

lowpowercomputing · Post by **lowpowercomputing** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 9:55 pm

Melluk wrote:It's available in Germany. If anyone is still interested.
http://geizhals.at/eu/a348367.html

I've seen them too. Actually considering getting one to see if it undervolts to even less. (This would replace my yet-to-arrive Sempron in my yet-to-arrive Abit AN-M2.) However, reading that most people who supposedly bought this CPU received the 65W version instead puts me off a bit.

greenix · Post by **greenix** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 10:29 pm

lowpowercomputing wrote:I've seen them too. ... However, reading that most people who supposedly bought this CPU received the 65W version instead puts me off a bit.

What you want as a AMD ADD3800IAA5CU.

ebug-europe.com delivered it at a reasonable price (in particular shipping costs make the difference). They offered what I asked for, checked s/n on the die.

AMD Antwerpen has no clue about delivering to NL+BE, AMD HQ is not replying mail about the continuity of delivery of this ancient low power high performance cpu.

Now, going on chasing for a nice mainboard: anybody any suggestion about a low power board for the 3800 35 Watt?

Asus M2A-VM
Biostar TA690G AM2
ASRock ALiveNF4G-DVI
...?

lowpowercomputing · Post by **lowpowercomputing** » Tue Aug 26, 2008 4:00 am

greenix wrote:What you want as a AMD ADD3800IAA5CU.

I know, that's what the dealers state as well but judging from the posts above this might not always mean you're really going to receive this particular CPU, but its 65W counterpart instead.
Reading some of the ratings on the German dealers' sites, however, it seems they are indeed shipping the 35W model.

greenix wrote:Now, going on chasing for a nice mainboard: anybody any suggestion about a low power board for the 3800 35 Watt?

What about the GF7025-based Abit AN-M2? Pretty low power and also what I'm getting to pair with my Sempron LE-1150 (and maybe another CPU later).

And according to this thread the BE-2400 (G2, 65nm) underclocked to 2GHz undervolted further and consumed less power than the X2 3800+ EE SFF, doing 2GHz at 0.912V, all on an Abit AN-M2.