I like the idea of manufacturers building AMD motherboards to a higher power spec. It seems warranted. Apparently when the Phenom BE is overclocked to 2.7GHz it consumes 150W (according to a power consumption graph found on Tom's).

Hopefully when AMD renders their CPUs on 45nm they'll be able to increase the efficiency of that awful MC/L3, which accounts for 50% of Phenom's power draw.

Worse performance than Intel with higher power consumption? Er, sounds like a winner.

I have been able to overclock an entry level Phenom with some impressive results. AMD performs well with the dominant Unreal 3 engine and HD encoding is very respectable.

140W, These 65nm Phenoms really do seem to be the modern equivalent of Prescott.

it would seem weird that a 100mhz jump would jump the wattage by 15.

they've go to be going higher than 2.6

Sounds like AMD management has dumped sensibility for desperation.
The enthusiast market is hardly adequate to pay their hefty bills and overhead.
Where's the 3 year old Torreza/coprocessor initiative?

Does AMD have a new CPU up it's sleeve to replace the phenom any time soon?

This nugget from this morning's Shortbread confirms the 9950 X4 product at 2.6 ghz, but more interestingly, it seems that AMD expects the enthusiast market to overclock well beyond 3.0 ghz using a soon-to-be-released chipset. Apparently the SB750 southbridge has some mysterous overclocking power?

"We've some secret things in the works that you'll here more about later this quarter; that will allow people to get significantly above 3GHz even with a Phenom X4 9850 Black Edition. These are things we're doing more at the chipset level and some updates to some chipsets coming soon. So watch that space; I've said too much already, but you'll see significantly above 3GHz performance from Phenoms for those who really understand and know what they are doing when overclocking."
[ http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?cid=2&id=2569&pg=4 ]

See also my SB700 thread here:
[ http://www.techreport.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=59454 ]

Edit: a 500 mhz to 1.0 ghz overclock would also easily explain the higher power envelope on this mainboard, I would say.

I'm happy they are putting out a faster chip but 140W is a bit crazy. Though just because a MB supports 140W doesn't mean the 9950 takes that much, could be a 10050 that does some time in the future.

So they mean 'blazing hot' as well as 'blazing fast'

I thought AMD was holding off on higher speed bins until they ramped up their 45nm process.