Hardware All About Ivy Bridge

All seems excellent to me.

I'm particularly excited about manually adjusting the multiplier from within Windows, not from an overclocking standpoint, but an underclocking standpoint.

I can finally clock the CPU right down when I'm just browsing the web, saving on power and heat!

 

Interesting that it still seems so far away, given that Asus have already released a bios update for my board : http://support.asus.com/Download.aspx?SLanguage=en&m=P8P67+PRO

Bios Ref 2001 - Enable support for Next Gen 22nm Processor

 

The questions:
Same amount of electrons move at smaller amount of space creating the same amount of heat as before. How about overheating?
If the total length remains 22nm, 3D or 2D, were does the efficiency advantage comes from? Yes it's smaller, but it moves the same amount of electrons doesn't it?

 

I am in the market for a Ivy Bridge board for a 24/7 Super-NAS. Personally I need a board with a full PCIe 16x slot for a super-beefy multiport SATA card. AMD's Fusion chipset only has a PCIe 4x slot which doesn't cut the mustard I need that uber-low power consumption as well!!

 

There is actually less electrons as the smaller transistors need less power to operate.
It is more efficient because the 3D nature of the transistor means there is a larger surface area the gate is in contact with the silicon substrate. This means the transistors require a lower voltage to switch on and switch on faster when a voltage similar to levels used by the older 32nm planar transistors is used

 

I'm happy to see that Ivy Bridge will have the same protection system that the Vax had in 1977.

Renee

 

Sandy Bridge CPU multiplier is limited to 63x, it's the BIOS that sets the lower limit in the 50's. IIRC the highest I've seen SNB verified is 59x.