Does AMD's Athlon 64 X2 6000 Have Any Kick Left?

[pschmid]

A new Athlon 64 X2 top model launches, squeezing 3.0 GHz out of AMD's 90 nm silicon. It cannot end Intel's Core 2 Extreme supremacy, but AMD's aggressive pricing fuels the price war, making the 6000 somewhat affordable.

 

[funnyvlad]

The article says that the 6000+ is able to play in the league of C2D 6600E but when you consider that it costs 140$ more then everyone knows who´s the winner. Not to mention the vast OC opportunity for C2D.

 

[zenmaster]

The other issue with this Article is they have no benchmarks for the E6600. Yet it goes on to compare this CPU to the E6600.

The E6700 easily beats the X2 6000+ on nearly every benchmark.
It would be important to see how the x2 6000+ did against the E6600.
For a price premium of well over $100, it would need to be significant.
However, since the performance difference between the E6600 and E6700 is not great, I doubt it would have.

What I really want to see here are OC tests from the latest Brisbane steppings. I am seeing many reports of 3.0+ ghz from $105 CPUs.

This would be fantastic for very low budget PCs.

 

[TheProfiler]

Wonder if it'll be OC'able?

 

[Kurz]

Max to get out've the processor is probably 3.2
Dont expect the highest tiered processor to overclock much.

Amd processors cant run so fast compared to intel's offering.

 

[SSS_DDK]

there are benchies in the CPU chart...you can check them over there

 

[trinitron64]

6000 will not save AMD, but I know what will.

AMD 10,000.

All AMD must do is buy C2D's wholesale, sand down the tops of the chips, reprint their own logo on it... repackage... remove/add pins where needed for it to fit into AM2

I will take my reward in dollar bills please 8)

 

[phrygius]

Bah, so much spin from this AMD PR dude I'm dizzy.

Why not just a straight statement from these guys for once:

AMD finds themselves in a unique position at this point in time to control the bottom 1/3 of the processor market through cut rate pricing and yesterday's process technology. We feel we offer signifigant performance advantages over VIA . . .

 

[halbhh]

lol....

 

[m25]

The 6000+ is in large extent just a place holding product, something that is there for the sake of being, just like the FX-70,72 and 74. It's neither cheap, nor performing.

 

[Gneisenau]

It does seem to me reasonable that this chip would fit well in those situations where someone already has an AM2 set-up and only wants to upgrade the process instead moving to Intel and having to buy a new chip, motherboard, and disassemble the whole thing and reassemble the system, reinstall windows and drivers.

I wonder though: How much trouble would you get into just replacing the CPU and letting Windows go through it's "find new hardware" routine?

 

[PC_Side_Line]

H*LL YEAH!!

Look at these stats on a lo cost build of Sempron and Celeron D

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/02/19/the-300-pc/page9.html

So ur AMD packs more power than those!

 

[romans11]

It does seem to me reasonable that this chip would fit well in those situations where someone already has an AM2 set-up and only wants to upgrade the process instead moving to Intel and having to buy a new chip, motherboard, and disassemble the whole thing and reassemble the system, reinstall windows and drivers...quote]

Have to agree with Gneisenau here. This is not for people who are planning to buy a new system...for the money you could get more from a C2D system. However, if you already plunked down the cash for an AM2 system, this seems like a good value. the $100-$150 price increase over the 6600 is mitigated by the cost of a decent (meaning no $70 low budget entery-level Mobo) motherboard. Again it depends how you upgrade your system. If you do motherboard and processor simultaneously go C2D, if you just want a processor upgrade for you AM2, this might work, but you also might be better off trying to hold out a little longer for the new AMD architecture. (Personally, I would prefer to wait for the "worst" of the new architecture than the "best" of the dying one).

(edited for crappy spelling)

 

[Sirfiroth]

The 6000+ is in large extent just a place holding product, something that is there for the sake of being, just like the FX-70,72 and 74. It's neither cheap, nor performing.

You said it all in one statement "Place holding products", that are in reality not good enough to hold a place near the top of the price/performance charts, too pricey. Some AMD loyalist might purchase this chip, however, I really don't see a wholesale rush for the X2-6000.

__________________
You can't fall off the floor.

 

[zenmaster]

So long as you were not going from single-core to dual core there is nothing for Windows to do. If you went to "Dual-Core" you would need to

1)Goto "Computer" in "Device Manager" and change the driver to "ACPI MultiProcessor PC" or something similar. Otherwise only one of the CPUs would be used.

 

[Hemi]

Good grief, the gaming benchmarks were crap. WhoTF buys a top of the line processor and runs games at 1024x768?? Talk about spinning the gaming benchmarks in favor of Intel so they can say Intel dominates across the board...

 

[bydesign]

I really doubt you could get 3.2Ghz out of that chip stable at least not for long.

 

[hcforde]

If someone had a descent AMD motherboard why would they dump it buy another motherboard that is on par with the one they had just to get a C2D? The total cost of ownership would be more than the $140.

In my opinion that is who these AMD cpu offerings are designed for; people that want better performance out of their existing MB's or people that are diehard AMD fans for whatever reason.

I have an ASUS A8n-SLI 939/3200+ board that was purchased when it first came out and was on the AMD wagon for some time. I have now made that my HTPC machine and have a couple of C2D ASUS boards so I am NOT a fanboy of AMD but it was all about timing for me. If the new AMD cpu's are all I hear they are to be from some inside sources I have to find a very good reason to dump my 2 $300+ ASUS motherboards just to get the new AMD chip. It will be much cheaper to get a bigger and badder Intel chip to put into my current MB's socket if needed.


At the same time I am hedging my bets because I have a spot for another machine but I am waiting to see what the new AMD offering is really like.

1)The 939 was my old game machine
2)I have a P4 2.4 oc'd to 2.8 as my general purpose machine
3)Asus P5W64 - business machine
4) Asus P5WDG2-WS-Pro NEW Game machine & General Purpose machine

My daughter needed a new machine so setup #2 went to her. The #1 setup is now my HTPC. I have combined uses of my game machine and my general purpose machine for the moment #4. so I have an opening for a new machine BUT as stated earlier I am waiting for the new chip release to make a decision. I said all that to make the point about timing. The new ATI card comes out in a couple of months and the new AMD CPU I figure not too far behind that. Competition will kick in and bring down the price on both classes of units I need to consider.

If there is a kick@** level of performance I just can't bypass I will buy AMD and use it as a solitary game platform again and a new DX10 card. It is all about timing and total cost of ownership.

 

[tamalero]

I really doubt you could get 3.2Ghz out of that chip stable at least not for long.

they said they got 3.28 with the STOCK COOLER.

 

[shabodah]

How about letting us know what other chips have the F3 stepping? The 5200 is a nice deal these days, and with overclocking, it and the 6600 seem to be the only two chips to consider, unless you can make due with less or like wasting money. Now if Newegg will only get some more of Abit's mATX boards in stock, lol.

 

[goldragon_70]

It would have been more helpful to have the E6600 in the test with the other processors so we can get a better idea of the performance that the 6000+ was giving.

 

[PC_Side_Line]

HEMI, i'll disagree with you on a small point...its a known fact that year old cpu's and older run games best when the desktop Resolution of 1024x768x32 bit is matched with the gaming resolution.

When you have matching resolutions from desktop to game, the game runs more efficiently by not wasting your precious time having to change its' video mode.

Now as for cpu's of the last 6 months this could be a different story just like u seem to be saying. Where ur desktop and game resolution dont have to match.

From my experiences of playing mmorgs over the last 10 yrs, it seems best to keep the same res in line from desktop to game.

Even when ALT-TABBing back to desktop while your game is running makes the game feel smoother on the transition, keeping the same res.

 

[NeonDeon]

Why is this even important? It's just a filler CPU. AMDTI is just buying time while they scramble to out do Intel, (if they ever can).

Let me know when AMDTI dose something newsworthy.

 

[shabodah]

I'm not disagreeing with that, but being that the 6700 is there, and there are many reviews out there showing comparisons between the 6600, 6700, and 6800, I don't find it too critical of an issue.

 

[dasickninja]

Good grief, the gaming benchmarks were crap. WhoTF buys a top of the line processor and runs games at 1024x768?? Talk about spinning the gaming benchmarks in favor of Intel so they can say Intel dominates across the board...

Just checking in for a bit... now on to my comment.

You run games at low resolutions when testing CPU's so that all the strain is shifted from the GPU to the CPU. That way, there is a smaller margin of error and you know that you are testing the effect of the CPUs performance and not the GPU.