x2 3600+ Benchmarks

[1Tanker]

Xbitlabs tests the upcoming x2 3600+. It loses very little performance versus the x2 3800+, and flat out burys the P915D. Looks like this could be AMD's best performance/$ processor, especially if they get the price down to ~$100.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/athlon64-x2-3600.html

I have to say that the P915D and 805D don't stand a chance against this CPU, and their sales will fall when this releases.

 

[ryokinshin]

very nice, but i think the e6400 will be the best buy for now, wat with its on par with the fx62, but as a budget cpu, that also has gaming power in it, the x2 3600 is a great buy

 

[1Tanker]

very nice, but i think the e6400 will be the best buy for now, wat with its on par with the fx62, but as a budget cpu, that also has gaming power in it, the x2 3600 is a great buy

I wish they had at least overclocked the 915D and/or 805D to see which has the most potential performance of the low-end CPU'S. The x2 3600+ still needs high-quality RAM to provide decent performance, if it is put against C2D...which it isn't really in the same class as.

 

[1Tanker]

not a knock on your post but this is so sad for amd. do a benchmark with such inferior chips and try to find a lower market. AMD get cracking and get a better chip!

Yes, i agree, but in reality, a lot of people do want to spend as little money as possible, without having a total POS.

 

[The_Abyss]

not a knock on your post but this is so sad for amd. do a benchmark with such inferior chips and try to find a lower market. AMD get cracking and get a better chip!

It might be sad at the top end, but this will be a high volume chip and it certainly looks good. Whether it can compete against the E6300 and E6400 given the ludicrous overclocking potential of these chips will be interesting. Of course, that's just the small enthusiast market - the OEM market doesn't really care about this.

Shame the review didn't overclock the E6300 as well for a fairer comparison, as the out-of-the-box E6300 walks all over the equivalent X2 3600+.

 

[1Tanker]

not a knock on your post but this is so sad for amd. do a benchmark with such inferior chips and try to find a lower market. AMD get cracking and get a better chip!

It might be sad at the top end, but this will be a high volume chip and it certainly looks good. Whether it can compete against the E6300 and E6400 given the ludicrous overclocking potential of these chips will be interesting. Of course, that's just the small enthusiast market - the OEM market doesn't really care about this.It's not really intended to compete with C2D, but the P915D, which it looks to be cheaper than, but destroys it at stock speed. I'd still like to see both of them overclocked and see how they compare.

 

[1Tanker]

totally oem wont care i think that this is part of the normal cycle amd gets slammed for trying to sell this just like intel got slammed for the past 3 years. what amd should do is make something better to sell instead of this

I'm sure they will when they can, but they can't even meet demand now...it might be really bad if they ever get to 65nm. :lol:

 

[Mind_Rebuilding]

its funny they cant meet cpu demand right now but they spent 5 billion getting ati and could have made another fab

NY new fab and Fab 36 / 38??????
They are building 1 fab, ramping 1 fab, going to re-construct 1 fab......

 

[Mind_Rebuilding]

Xbitlabs tests the upcoming x2 3600+. It loses very little performance versus the x2 3800+, and flat out burys the P915D. Looks like this could be AMD's best performance/$ processor, especially if they get the price down to ~$100.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/athlon64-x2-3600.html

I have to say that the P915D and 805D don't stand a chance against this CPU, and their sales will fall when this releases.

P-D 805 and 915 are attractive to OEM builders.

I just noticed some P-D 805 and 915 desktops in a shop in Hong Kong.

 

[BaronMatrix]

Xbitlabs tests the upcoming x2 3600+. It loses very little performance versus the x2 3800+, and flat out burys the P915D. Looks like this could be AMD's best performance/$ processor, especially if they get the price down to ~$100.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/athlon64-x2-3600.html

I have to say that the P915D and 805D don't stand a chance against this CPU, and their sales will fall when this releases.

I remember saying this also when I talked about the 5000+ and Dell.

 

[The_Abyss]

It's good that someone remembers what you say.

 

[ecosoft]

Hey Guys ... yer knockin' a brilliant AMD business decision here with talk about how the x2-3600 can't compete with any CD2. Guess what shitheads :roll: , the x2-3600 is TARGETED to the Chinese CONSUMER (not OC'er) market, and there are a ton more (new) consumers in China than ALL of the OC'er in the rest of da' whole damned world!

Remember, VOLUME makes $$$, not fanboyism sales, so until AMD gets their 65-45 nanometer processes sorted and in volume production (including the killer HT interconnect capabilities that'll open a whole array of add-on tech that Intel can't match with CD2 designs) AMD still needs to "butter their bread", so glomming a huge chunk of the newly budding Chinese market is EXACTLY what they need for the interim. I say hurray for AMD's business acumen

 

[dos]

Hey Guys ... yer knockin' a brilliant AMD business decision here with talk about how the x2-3600 can't compete with any CD2. Guess what shitheads :roll: , the x2-3600 is TARGETED to the Chinese CONSUMER (not OC'er) market, and there are a ton more (new) consumers in China than ALL of the OC'er in the rest of da' whole damned world!

Remember, VOLUME makes $$$, not fanboyism sales, so until AMD gets their 65-45 nanometer processes sorted and in volume production (including the killer HT interconnect capabilities that'll open a whole array of add-on tech that Intel can't match with CD2 designs) AMD still needs to "butter their bread", so glomming a huge chunk of the newly budding Chinese market is EXACTLY what they need for the interim. I say hurray for AMD's business acumen

I don't know if AMD will supply the X2 3600+ only to China market.But I know that we can buy this CPU today in Beijing for about USD120,and the X2 3800+'s price is USD 150.It seems that X2 3600+ is better.

 

[ethernalite]

Well, the X2 3600+ isn't going for $100. In fact, if I recall correctly, it's going for $149. Which suddenly make it less of a deal.

Also, it would have been fair for the review to include the PD945 in the review in addition to the 915, as it is actually priced closer to the X2 3600+ than the 915 ($163 versus $133 - $14 difference versus $16). The 945 is actually quite competitive against the X2 3800+ (remember, the difference between 915 and 945 is 600Mhz). It would have beaten the 3600 in most tasks (besides the games, anyway).

Of course, either way, the P945 is a bit more expensive, and it gets clobbered by the X2 3600+ when it comes to energy efficiency.

 

[qcmadness]

Well, the X2 3600+ isn't going for $100. In fact, if I recall correctly, it's going for $149. Which suddenly make it less of a deal.

Also, it would have been fair for the review to include the PD945 in the review in addition to the 915, as it is actually priced closer to the X2 3600+ than the 915 ($163 versus $133 - $14 difference versus $16). The 945 is actually quite competitive against the X2 3800+ (remember, the difference between 915 and 945 is 600Mhz). It would have beaten the 3600 in most tasks (besides the games, anyway).

Of course, either way, the P945 is a bit more expensive, and it gets clobbered by the X2 3600+ when it comes to energy efficiency.

x2 3800+ costs US$152
x2 3600+ would not cost US$149...

 

[ethernalite]

Yes but the official announcement said "with price cut to follow".
Its expected to be around $120 once widely available.

"Its expected to be around $120 once widely available" - according to whom? If you are going to make statements like that, please back them up. The linked article says $130 as the lowest likely price.

It seems rather unlikely that the x2 3600+ would dip below $140, unless they want to undercut their other X2 sales. At $140-150, it would already be very competitive versus current Intel offerings. A 915 gets killed by it, and the PD945 is more expensive and doesn't beat the X2 in games. Plus the whole energy efficiency thing.

 

[BaronMatrix]

Yes but the official announcement said "with price cut to follow".
Its expected to be around $120 once widely available.

"Its expected to be around $120 once widely available" - according to whom? If you are going to make statements like that, please back them up. The linked article says $130 as the lowest likely price.

It seems rather unlikely that the x2 3600+ would dip below $140, unless they want to undercut their other X2 sales. At $140-150, it would already be very competitive versus current Intel offerings. A 915 gets killed by it, and the PD945 is more expensive and doesn't beat the X2 in games. Plus the whole energy efficiency thing.


The idea is that this will be a system builders chip for several months. I'm sure that it will be amonst the early Dell systems at the end of next month. Lenovo will probably have some machines available for the US market in Oct.

It is the perfect entry level chip and should start to replace Sempron next year. When the 65nm chips start to come out, this will probably be one of them now. AMD could really make an X2 3200+, 3400+ too at 1.6 and 1.8GHz. They have basically cancelled ALL single core desktop chips, so these could be used for HTPCs and entry level boxes for Vista Basic Home.

AMD has done an excellent job of both preparing for their next upgrade and the price war.

I noticed someone else realized this will be A HEAVY VOLUME CHIP. They're right. Even at a sightly lower price than X2 3800+ it will be a real seller.The word a few months ago was that it would end up around $125 which seems reasonable since the most expensive Sempron is around $100 and the 3800+ is around $150

 

[1Tanker]

Shame the review didn't overclock the E6300 as well for a fairer comparison, as the out-of-the-box E6300 walks all over the equivalent X2 3600+.

Equivelent?? Dude they are not even in the same class OR price range however the benches kick but. Definately the best processor for the money right now.
I was very surprised to see the 3600+ at 2.6ghz outperformed the 5000+ at 2.6ghz and walked all over the E6300. Thats amazing considering it has only 512 total cache. I'll buy it for $100.Actually it's not really any suprise that it competes with the 5000+ (when O/Ced) as they are both running at 2.6GHz, and the 260 HTT makes up for the difference in cache. When comparing the x2 3600+ against the 805D or 915D, the difference in CPU price would be closed in purchasing a better HSF(805D), as the 805 would have to be clocked to 3.8 at least to compete with the O/Ced 3600+. That's pushing the stock cooling. The 915D probably is the better of the 2 when pushed to the limits through overclocking, as well as the 945D(more $). As i said, if they can lower the price to ~$100, they will have the better budget chip (with the caveat that AM2 needs quality RAM to perform decently).

 

[ethernalite]

I noticed someone else realized this will be A HEAVY VOLUME CHIP. They're right. Even at a sightly lower price than X2 3800+ it will be a real seller.The word a few months ago was that it would end up around $125 which seems reasonable since the most expensive Sempron is around $100 and the 3800+ is around $150

Well, according to the linked article, the 3600 just used the X2 512KB cache core.. which makes me believe that it isn't intended to be a high volume chip, at least for now. Once there is a seperate die core (maybe there will be, I don't know), then I can believe this is a high volume chip.

If the X2 3600+ was priced at $125, it would most certainly become a high volume chip. Which would be costly for AMD, especially without a new die. As a low volume product, it wouldn't be cost effective to invest in new masks for an entirely new chip.

The Semprons have a die size of about 82mm^2. This can be mass produced cheaply. A die size of 183mm^2 (the Manchester die size) is not so much so. Even a reduction to a die size of 164mm^2 would probably be worthwhile if it was intended to be a mass volume chip. Then again, because of AMD's DDR pads, it would probably require a complete redesign of certain parts, so maybe that is why AMD doesn't want to make a new die for it (and if that's the case, then it is probably still going to be a high volume chip and you can ignore everything I just mentioned previously).

I don't expect AMD to really drive the X2 (Sempron version) down to the budget market until they have 65nm up and running. Until then, it simply isn't cost effective for AMD to do so. 90nm dual core is simply too expensive. The only reason why Intel can probably pull off the sub-$100 805 is because of their two-die approach, and the fact that otherwise their 90nm fabs would be empty before they transition over to chipsets or a smaller process.

 

[corvetteguy]

It may be less cost effective than a sempron, but it will attract people from different markets that wouldn't normally consider sempron, but want a low cost chip. That would usually lead them to pr, or to a lesser extent,a single core, and a little 3800

 

[1Tanker]

i don't know why people on here have trouble realising we don' tmatter. when discussing things people on here always act like it is only what "we" buy that matters as if we keep these companies afloat. we don't.

AMD are providing what the market wants. cheap, powerful processors. i am just wondering though, if these chips are just others that haven't made the grade in some way and AMD are just trying to reduce loss as much as possible.

one final thing. could beerandcandy please **** off. you are one of the worst fanboys ever and make baron matrix look good. at least he seems to know what he is talking about when discussing the pros and cons of chips, you just make snide little comments.

I acknowledged this.

Yes, i agree, but in reality, a lot of people do want to spend as little money as possible, without having a total POS.

 

[1Tanker]

woops. shoulda said that it was a general comment but you knew what i meant.

Wasn't 100% sure, but i thought that.

 

[kukito]

I remember saying this also when I talked about the 5000+ and Dell.

How odd that BM has now become an advocate for Dell, when hardly anybody in this forum would even consider buying a computer from them. If all the 3600+ and 5000+ end up in OEM machines it won't do anybody here any good. BM is more concerned about AMD's profitability than anything else. He must either work for AMD or own a lot of its stock (in which case his fanaticism, however misplaced within this forum's context, is somewhat justified).

This looks like a very nice CPU for overclocking if it ever becomes available to users like us. It won't do anybody here any good if AMD sells them all to Dell. If it becomes available at MrsBytch's suggested retail price (or even a bit higher), I'll be the first in line to buy it to use in the Xmas build I'm planning for my parents' aging system. Using a cheap mATX motherboard (with an ATI chipset, of course), a leftover hard drive & DVD burner, I could probably do it for less than US$500.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3600+ US$100.00
ECS RS485M-M $60.00
Cooler Master Centurion RC-541 w/ 380 watt PSU $70.00
Corsair XMS2 1GB (2 x 512MB) DDR2 800 $94.00
Total $324.00

That still leaves me with $176 for the GPU/more memory. Not bad at all.