AMD Socket-AM2: Same Performance, Faster Memory, Lower Power
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 23, 2006 12:14 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Power Consumption
Given that AMD reduced power consumption a bit alongside the move to Socket-AM2, we wanted to see how the new chips compared to the latest CPUs AMD had sent us prior to the launch. So we pitted our last Socket-939 sample, the Athlon 64 FX-60, against the two new Socket-AM2 samples we just received: the Athlon 64 FX-62 and the X2 5000+. Remember that the FX-62 actually carries a 125W TDP rating, so it shouldn't be any cooler than previous CPUs, but the X2 5000+ is a new 89W part.
There are inevitably going to be power differences between the Socket-AM2 and Socket-939 motherboards we used, but unfortunately there was no way to isolate them from the comparison as we are measuring total system power consumption.
Under full load, the X2 5000+ does appear to be a bit cooler than the Socket-939 FX-60. We've seen in the past that the 1MB vs. 512KB of cache doesn't really result in any significant difference in power consumption, so it looks like the overall decrease in power consumption is because of the improvements in production AMD has implemented at Fab 30. It is worth noting that the Pentium Extreme Edition 965 consumes just as much power as the FX-62, thanks to its 65nm manufacturing process. Even so, we still can't wait for Intel to drive its power consumption levels even lower later this year.
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rADo2 - Tuesday, May 23, 2006 - link
K8L is just a marketing, nothing else. Have you seen K8L CPU? No? AMD is about 2x slower than upcomming Conroe, so they have to spread some fud, to keep their fanboys happy...This is the magical performance I am speaking about, AMD cannot come even close:
Intel Conroe @ 3.9GHz: SuperPI 1M - 12.984s
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...ad.php?t=99...">http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...ad.php?t=99...
AMD FX-57 @ 4.2GHz: SuperPI 1M - 21.992s
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=100...">http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=100...
I own X2 4400+ myself (it was a good choice in 6/2005), but within last few months AMD is a very bad choice, as for the price of quite obsolete singelcore AMD you can buy dualcore Intel D930 @ 65nm, and later Conroe. I think only AMD fanboys are buying AMD now, AMD has the worst price/value ratio, and Conroe will only make this gap wider.
Griswold - Tuesday, May 23, 2006 - link
Oh and yea, I run superpi all day long because its such a valuable application that earns me money! :PrADo2 - Tuesday, May 23, 2006 - link
SuperPI tells A LOT about gaming performance ;)mesyn191 - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link
SuperPi tells you nothing except how well a CPU runs SuperPi, its not a benchmark.Its also about as in cache and branchless as your gonna get BTW so the performance increases you can get on it by simply scaling clockspeed are impossible as well.
Questar - Tuesday, May 23, 2006 - link
SuperPi is an outlier in Conroe benchmarks.Griswold - Tuesday, May 23, 2006 - link
O rly?Griswold - Tuesday, May 23, 2006 - link
Blablabla...absolsp - Tuesday, May 23, 2006 - link
As suspected, not much of performance gain. Happy with my existing AMD setup.tony215 - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link
likewise, I will be sticking with my 939 venice set-up until conroe is released. Even then, I will wait for some more independent conroe test/reviews before going with Intel.Locutus465 - Tuesday, May 23, 2006 - link
After reading reviews of the new chipset offerings from nVidia and ATI, personally I'm glad I'm running an nForce 4 s393 board. Seems to me the new AM2 chipsets and boards are going to need some maturing before they get good. The new solutions were *not* deffinitivly better than what is out there for s939. In fact, nVidia's offering in my opinion was particularly lack luster in terms of actual performance (compared to the older nForce 4 platform).