Athlon 64 X2 reviews online

[P4Man]

on <A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2410&p=1" target="_new">Anandtech </A> and others.
It seems Intels "extreme" refers to price, power and slowness of their parts

<A HREF="http://hothardware.com/viewarticle.cfm?page=2&articleid=682&cid=1" target="_new">Hothardware</A> is also interesting, since they attempt overclocking. No vcore settings, but at default vcore, they manage 2.7 GHz aircooled stock cooler. Not too bad..

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

 

[darth_farter]

there's more:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23110
all over the net reviews...

...except for tom's.

talk about sticking your head so far up intel's *ss so you couldn't see what's going on in the community anymore....

edit:

They actually did the review on it!!! (bit late though...)

looks like tom's still the option to get my third opinion..<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Darth_Farter on 05/10/05 01:21 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[bigbang]

theres another one
<A HREF="http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q2/athlon64-x2/index.x?pg=1" target="_new">http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q2/athlon64-x2/index.x?pg=1</A>

 

[The_I]

Well, as far as I can see Intel has regained much of their old marketing advantage going dual core: being able to offer a dual-core processor at the same price point as most single-core AMD offerings they can once more use their old 'higher number' marketing advantage; in the old days they'd beat AMD in marketing by offering more mhz, now they're offering more cores...

I even find myself wondering just how much multitasking you have to do before an intel dual-core will beat a single-core AMD at the same price point, I'd love to see some more systematic comparisons of scaling from single to dual core in scenarios from very light to heavy multitasking.

AMD is fastest, no doubt, if you are able to pay for an expensive dual core. But if you aren't making the choice between intel and amd is not as easy as it has been: for the first time in a long time I believe Intel's offerings are actually the better choice in some scenarios...

 

[P4Man]

>for the first time in a long time I believe Intel's
>offerings
> are actually the better choice in some scenarios...

Yes, for some people that pretty much only care about performance of an app that makes great use of two core AND that are on a <$300 budget (as well as not caring much for single threaded performance or caring about heat/power). For those people, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the two cheapest Pentium Ds either.

However, I can fully understand AMDs <i>choice</i> not to compete here. These chips are roughly twice the size of regular desktop parts, I wouldn't want to sell them at $250 levels either, especially not if you could sell them as >$1.000 opterons (or high end Athlon X2s if they clock high enough). As it is, I doubt AMD has the capacity to flood the market with cheap large chips, might as well milk some money from the high end dual core markets where intel currently can't compete. Come 2006 and FAB36 that will change though.


= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

 

[Clob]

Playing a game and running other programs is what I love! AMD seems to have that down well and 2.7ghz sounds real nice! Also I Like to host my gaming server on the same machine as I play the game. This will make it much much easyer!

"If youre paddling upstream in a canoe and a
wheel falls off, how many pancakes fit in a doghouse? None! Icecream doesn't have bones!!!"

"Battling Gimps and Dimbulbs HERE at THGC"

 

[The_I]

I'm more interested in multitasking than multithreaded apps actually. I find anandtechs tests extremely interesting, at least when multitasking heavily even a pentium d beats everything single-core. What I find very interesting is exactly how much you have to multitask before you should go dual-core - I'll be shopping for a new CPU in a few months myself and do some mild multitasking (only playing music-files when playing games), I'm pretty sure I'm going AMD, but I'm still curious about the pentium D. Won't be shelling out 500 $ for a CPU, that's for sure, which is why I find A64 x2 pretty uninteresting...

I agree that AMD has good reason not to marked their dual cores at the prices they do. Hell, they're even superior enough performance-wise that they actualy makes a decent bargain for people on that kind of budgets, even when Intel is shelling out pentium Ds at what has to be a huge discount. I still feel that we should be somewhat grateful that Intel is selling those CPUs with what can't be much of a profit, otherwise we probably wouldn't see many multithreaded apps for a long time.

 

[P4Man]

>I find anandtechs tests extremely interesting

I find many of them extremely useless.

The gaming MT benchmarks, are okay.. *if* you care about rendering or encoding performance while playing a game, then these scenario's indeed tell you something..

the 3D rendering one, okayish, if you happen to use 3D rendering in the background.

But all those mail import tests ? gimme a break, does anyone do that more often that once every two years ? I do that as often as i reinstall my windows, why not benchmark that as well, since it takes much longer. Furthermore, importing mails being such a cpu hog ? Only proves what utter piece of crap Outlook Express is, get a decent mail client..

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

 

[The_I]

I agree about your last point that outlook sucks. And that the usage scenarios aren't maybe to likely - at least I wouldn't be doing any of that stuff in the background while I was gaming - I see them more as an extremity showing how much you can get out of a dual-core in a hypothetical situation. The interesting thing from my point of view is the grey area between their pretty extreme multitasking tests and the clinically uncluttered 'normal' tests they do, the fact that these processors do so well under heavy multitasking makes me wonder how much better they would handle 'normal' background tasks.

 

[Mephistopheles]

All of the reviews I've read so far indicate that on standard air cooling and at stock voltage the A64 X2 2.4Ghz can do 2.7Ghz. That's a 12,5% overclock, and for standard cooling on two cores, I find that pretty amazing. It indicates that a 2.6Ghz dual-core could probably run OK with 90nm... Naturally, that would be two FXs on a die and with better tech, so, no, AMD didn't do that, of course...

As for further overclocking, given that these are essentially venice cores, there's very little actually stopping these chips to clock at a full <b>3Ghz</b>, from the electrical point of view - there's heat, but then again, there can always be watercooling. Could you imagine an A64 X2 watercooled running at 3.0Ghz? If you can pay X2 prices, you can probably also afford water cooling... For these prices, though, I'd have thought AMD would even let these chips be multiplier-unlocked, but that would defeat the whole purpose behind a "A64 X2 Lineup" with 4 different processors at 4 different prices, I suppose......

Then again, a good overclockers site with samples of both a 2.8Ghz Smithfield and maybe a 2.2Ghz A64 X2, both running on watercooling, would probably have a lot of fun and would probably give us a lot of interesting results...

If it weren't for prices... :frown: Intel rules in dual-core price/performance indeed...

 

[P4Man]

>It indicates that a 2.6Ghz dual-core could probably run OK
>with 90nm..

Keep in mind, these are just the very first 90nm chips from AMD ! Its a new process, the scaling has yet to begin. Power consumption is down <b>dramatically </b> compared to 130nm (which wasnt all that high either), so I wouldn't be surprised if 3 GHz dual core chips will be upon us before AMD moves to 65nm around this time next year. Then again, it will probably take somewhat more competition from intel for AMD to bother.

>As for further overclocking, given that these are essentially
> venice cores, there's very little actually stopping these
>chips to clock at a full 3Ghz, from the electrical point of
>view - there's heat, but then again, there can always be
>watercooling.

Don't think heat will be a major issue, considering Venice seems to be sub 30W at 2.4 GHz. dual core will roughly double that, so you end up with a reasonable 60W real world power (stress). Thats low enough as starting point for some serious overclocking, even on air.

What might be an issue though, is statistics; assuming each core's overclock potential is more or less unrelated to the others, you will on average achieve lower overclocks as for single core parts, as the slowest of both clocks will be the limiting factor.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

 

[endyen]

You should read Tom's review. It is absolutely sick. They just lost all thier friends at Intel. (sob, sob)

But in the dual core arena, though, there is not much that speaks for Intel: go with the Athlon 64 X2.

<A HREF="http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050509/index.html" target="_new">http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050509/index.html</A>
Patrick is going to be in real Shmid

 

[mozzartusm]

Cnet has an article today that puts AMD out in front of Intels Dual core.

Old wise man say; "He who stands on toilet is HIGH on POT"

Intel P4 550(3.4)@<font color=green>5Ghz</font color=green>

 

[darth_farter]

"If it weren't for prices... Intel rules in dual-core price/performance indeed..."

cheapest dual core chip is the pentiumD 2.8Ghz at ~$280

though for single threaded environments you'd just upgrade to a 2.8prescott with a record breaking powerconsumption and thermal design (=add significant psu & cooling expense compared to amd!!!)

this chip would need a new $250-$300 mobo (tangible extra cost above amd's dual core mobo's)
and DDR2 533 at the least (also extra cost above amd)

and last but not least amd's cheapest dual core @$531 overalls much better than the $1000 top of the line intel PEE which is more than double the value of the PEE 840 (value is performance/price)

... and I have a hunch that amd will be coming out with some lower GHz models of the dual core line (1.8GHz & 2.0GHz versions aka same thing as with socket 939 when it first launched and later the 3000+/3200+ were added to the lineup of 3500+/3800+/FX53)

 

[dhlucke]

Did I read this right or does Intel's CPU top 300W? That's insane!

<pre><font color=red>A64 3200+ Winchester
DFI Lan Party NF4 Ultra-D
1GB Corsair 4400C25PT
WD740GD, WD2000JB, WD1200JB
ATI X800XL
Dell 2405FPW</pre><p>

 

[P4Man]

>You should read Tom's review. It is absolutely sick. They
>just lost all thier friends at Intel. (sob, sob)

I don't think so.. THG must be the only site around that managed to let Pentium 660 and 840 win a considerable number of "gaming" benchmarks.. not a small feat! 50% faster in farcry than a 4000+.. surely, an "honest" mistake ?

They also spent half the review trying to get the message accross that top performance suddenly doesn't matter anymore, but hyperthreading and/or dual core rocks. i.o.w, you want cheap dual cores, and 2.8 GHz is plenty. But hardly a word on the fact that intels "cheap" dual core will end up *more expensive* if you add the costs for DDR2, new motherboard, better powersupply and cooling as well as the electricity bill.. not too mention, for most apps, these "not-quite-as-cheap-as-they-look" chips will be competing with Sempron.

Then you have charts that are so illegible its really hard to see how AMD totally trumps Intel. Fifteen or so times they repeat 'these chips will not be available until late summer' (whereas they will be in june, but no new chip reaches high volume up on launch, and >$500 chips rarely do anyway).

Nah, I don't think they lost any friends at intel, in fact, I doubt intel PR could have spun this any better considering their clearly inferior products. There is a limit to the ammount of spinning you can do, and even intel can expect

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

 

[P4Man]

>Did I read this right or does Intel's CPU top 300W? That's
>insane!

It would be.. and still is, buts its the entire system power draw, minus videocards. Surprising THG didn't add powerconsumption numbers of 2 21" monitors, a laserprinter and a scanner to try and further obscure the enormous delta in power consumption between the X2 and Pentium D.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

 

[P4Man]

>being able to offer a dual-core processor at the same price
>point as most single-core AMD offerings they can once more
>use their old 'higher number' marketing advantage; in the old
> days they'd beat AMD in marketing by offering more mhz, now
>they're offering more cores..

There is a small difference: producing a 1.5 GHz (P4) wasnt any more expensive than a 1 GHz (P3/Athlon), whereas dual cores simply cost twice as much to make. Thats okay for $500+ cpu's, thats not okay when it concerns your mainstream products.

>I even find myself wondering just how much multitasking you
>have to do before an intel dual-core will beat a single-core
> AMD at the same price point, I'd love to see some more
>systematic comparisons of scaling from single to dual core
>in scenarios from very light to heavy multitasking.

Its fairly simple.. if run apps that benefit substantially from multithreading, almost any dual core chip will be faster than the fastest single core ones. If you look hard enough, you should be able to identify at least 5 such apps, none of which you will likely care about .

If you run more than a single cpu intensive app at a time, it gets more complicated. If you only care about foreground performance (like most do), while being able to run other tasks at whatever speed, dual core won't buy you anything that thread priority tweaking can't achieve. Just try running folding at low priority while gaming, and tell me if you notice any slowdown ? I don't. But then, of course your folding performance will collapse, so by all means, spend $500 to improve that.

For gamers; dual core most likely helps in reducing stutters when your antivirus or whatever kicks in in the background. AFAICT, this is a problem with windows scheduler and hard disk access; it seems windows somehow lets disk access monopolize the system, a problem I've never seen in Linux. Its a bit silly to spend $500 to cure that, but since we can't modify windows, I guess its up to you to see if its worth it, or if you'd rather reschedule that scan to 5 a.m.

Now if care about speed in more than one simultaneous app, these chips make a lot of sense. Sure it would be nice twice a year to be able to backup that DVD at full speed while playing a game. thats twice half an hour a year you can game instead of browsing the web.. how much is that worth to you ?

My take on this: if and when more apps come out that really benefit from dual core, I'll get one. For now, I really don't care, they don't provide any tangible benefit to me. I'd rather spend that money on a better second or third monitor.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

 

[RX8]

I just feel IMO that each release AMD makes intel just keeps looking like its loosing its grip of domination as a technology leader, and it just seems intel has released nothing to counteract the galloping horses AMD releases every 6 months or so.

AMD new X2 duel cores are relatively new and will be at a high cost and still are not streamlined like the P4 HT competition, but i feel we should whatch this space as we all know with AMD it will get Better and Better as there past history shows.

Power consumption and heat is a big issue to any PC builder/OC/etc intel has a big problem in this area how can they ansewer to AMD figures they use half the power and less mhz but still produce a DC which is equal to intels top, if i was intel i would be surprised if a new comer came and showed me up.

With all this PR for AMD i dont think this will dent intels profit at all, i just see this as added competition for intel to do better.

P4MAN what is your opinion on what i say?

<font color=purple> MY FINGER IS ON THE BUTTON! </font color=purple>

 

[P4Man]

>P4MAN what is your opinion on what i say?

Why is everyone asking for my opinion these days ? Its *mine*, from me me me, not yours, I aint giving it .



oh well, if you insist: yes, intel has lost their dominant position as a tech leader, yes X2s are cool and fast and expensive, no I don't see why AMD will get "better and better" just like that, yes power is a problem, no I don't think AMDs X2s equal intels top, they are significantly better, no I don't think intel was surprised (they are not stupid, most of us wherent surprised), and yes, I do think AMDs current competitve products will eat into intels margins and profit over the next 12-18 months.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =