Temperatures
For quite some time now, Athlon CPUs have always had relatively low heat output, but the BE-2350 is by far the coolest running CPU we've seen to date from AMD. Temperatures below are in degrees Celsius.
Our Zalman CNPS9500 was running at 2600rpm when we recorded the temperatures for the CPU.
Overclocking
In order to overclock the CPU, we had to swap motherboards as the MSI K9AGM2-FIH does not allow any overclocking for the CPU. We used the NVIDIA 590 SLI based MSI K9N Diamond and pushed the CPU to a FSB of 235MHz using a Zalman CNPS9500. We were hoping to do a little better, but we were unable to achieve stability at anything higher than 240MHz. We did POST at 240MHz, but Windows would fail to load. At 235MHz, the total system power draw was 182W which in part was increased from the change in chipset.
Final Words
There are a few notable areas that deserve some final comments, but to start, the AMD Athlon X2 BE-2350 we've covered today ushers in the next wave of low wattage chips. At a peak of 45W, this is a remarkable feat for a desktop CPU that can do more than just power an OS and run some office apps.
Heat, or lack thereof, was a non issue as expected. The AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor 5000+ we have allows us to use our Zalman CNPS9500 at low fan speeds and it does take some time to kick into full speed mode. The BE-2350 never got hot enough for the fan to hit its threshold for full speed. What this means in the real-world is that you can build a silent, or near silent system without compromising on basic performance.
On that note, the AMD Athlon X2 BE-2350 performed exactly as we expected today. Unlike other low power consuming chips where clock speed is severely compromised, the BE-2350 performs as a similarly clocked previous generation X2. Performance-wise, this is exactly what AMD intended, but using a lot less power than before. Comparing it to the AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor 5000+ Socket AM2 (65W), it did trail in all of the benchmarks but there is a 500MHz frequency difference between the two. Coupled with our MSI K9AGM2-FIH, we did not experience any dropped frames in FFDShow while viewing a DVD we were up-converting.
It's important to put into perspective what we're looking at today. If you're looking to build a high-end gaming PC or some sort of high-level video editing workstation, this processor isn't going to be for you. The intended market will be corporate workstations and the silent PC or HTPC market. We have a forum thread going on debating the benefits of energy efficient processors and energy bills. Unless you're a home user who leaves their PC on 24/7, you probably won't see much in the way of savings, but this won't be the case for cubicle farms. With dozens, maybe hundreds and thousands of PCs on 24/7, a strong case can be made for energy efficient computers.
Moving forward, today's launch isn't only about saving energy and changing a name. The BE-2350 is part of AMD's development of the standard. The goal is to optimally design small form factor systems to consume less power and generate less noise. With a CPU that requires less power, this is part of the equation. The design is intended to be backwards compatible with ATX which will mean their board partners will not need to redesign the wheel.
As we said at the start, power consumption often plays second fiddle to sheer performance, but for an office drone, you don't need an expensive, power hungry quad-core for word processing and spreadsheet editing. It isn't the best choice for a multi-thousand dollar gaming computer, but the BE-2350 is fast enough for home DVD authoring and handles HD viewing just fine. It also does so for less than a c-note which will make it appealing to a lot of people who will need an energy efficient CPU.
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