AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+: Competing with Aggressive Pricing
by Anand Lal Shimpi on February 20, 2007 3:37 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
The Test - Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit
While the major benchmark suites still lack support for the OS, we are trying our hands at testing CPUs under Windows Vista with this review. By now we know not to expect a significant performance difference between Windows Vista and XP, but given Vista's compelling feature set we see it becoming the dominant PC OS for new system builds in the enthusiast community.
With a substantial number of our CPU benchmarks available in 64-bit versions, using the 64-bit version of Vista wasn't a difficult choice. Since we're also using modern components in our testbeds, driver support wasn't an issue either. Given what we saw in our Vista Performance Guide, the ability to use more memory for features like SuperFetch warrants the switch to 64-bit if you don't have any legacy hardware without driver support.
The only other change we've made to our test beds is the use of 4GB of memory; by no means is it necessary (yet) but Vista's added memory requirements coupled with its better use of free memory makes 4GB a good target for enthusiasts.
| CPU: | AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ (3.0GHz/1MBx2) AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ (2.8GHz/1MBx2) AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ (2.6GHz/512KBx2) AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (2.0GHz/512KBx2) Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 (2.66GHz/4MB) Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.40GHz/4MB) Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 (1.86GHz/2MB) |
| Motherboard: | ASUS P5B Deluxe (P965) ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe (nForce 590 SLI) |
| Chipset: | Intel P965 NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI |
| Chipset Drivers: | Intel 8.1.1.1010 (Intel) Integrated Vista Drivers (NVIDIA) |
| Hard Disk: | Seagate 7200.9 300GB SATA |
| Memory: | Corsair XMS2 DDR2-800 4-4-4-12 (1GB x 4) |
| Video Card: | NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA ForceWare 100.54 |
| Desktop Resolution: | 1600 x 1200 |
| OS: | Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit |
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hubajube - Tuesday, February 20, 2007 - link
Wow, no shit? That IS easy.Rolphus - Wednesday, February 21, 2007 - link
You think that's easy...I've got 2.4GHz E6600 on an nForce 680i-based Asus P5N32ESLIWTF board (I forgot the model nubmer, can you tell?).
Last night as I was disabling the onboard audio, in the BIOS, I was curious so I went to the "extreme tweaker" menu, hit "AI Overclock", selected "20% overclock", and there you go - a 2.88GHz E6600.
The machine's fast enough to run everything I want at stock speeds, but who's going to complain about spending 15 seconds to bump the clock speed by 20%?
customcoms - Tuesday, February 20, 2007 - link
I would like to point out that overclocking S939 and AM2 chips is equally easy-and probably why C2D overclocking has proven easy for many people-they started on the AMD chips when they were king and very overclockable (50-60% is not uncommon on the low end AMD chips).For example, my main rig is still an Opteron 165 (basically an X2 3800+ with twice the cache) clocked at 2.7ghz, no voltage change, stock cooling, raised FSB speed from 200 to 300mhz. Required MAYBE 5 bios boots total, all of which were concerned with ram stability (switched ram to 2x1gb at same time installed processor), which can be a pita with a DFI Ultra-D.
The difference between AMD and Intel when it comes to overclocking: highest possible speeds. C2D has A LOT of headroom, which means E6300 AND E6400's can usually reach >3ghz, topping out around 3.5ghz; E6600's can be pushed to 3.7ghz. X2 3800's commonly top out at 2.6gh. Stellar chips can be pushed to 3ghz (actually, good Opty's normally reach 2.8-3ghz, very few X2 3800's get there). No AMD cpu I've seen online has been pushed to 3.2ghz or greater on air. This means C2D is king for now, when we are talking about overclocking.
Neosis - Wednesday, February 21, 2007 - link
You are right about Conroe but actually single core AMD CPUs reached 3200 Mhz with air cooling. And some Opty 165-170-175s managed to exceed 3Ghz Barrier with low voltages. Here is an old thread about San Diego:http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php...">http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php...
neogodless - Tuesday, February 20, 2007 - link
The whole time I was seeing how the X2 6000+ stacked up against the E6600, which would be the CPU I bought if I go with Intel. And suddenly I get to Power Consumption and it's mysteriously absent. I suppose I can try to extrapolate based on the other chips, but if you have data for it and accidentally omitted it, can you please add it in, for the sake of my laziness? Thanks!Imnotrichey - Tuesday, February 20, 2007 - link
i found it interesting the 6700 consumes less power than its younger brothers. But wow, this article made a 6600 really look awesome
JarredWalton - Tuesday, February 20, 2007 - link
Not sure why E6600 is missing on the power charts (perhaps Anand was running a downclocked E6700 for performance testing, which wouldn't be valid in power numbers), but it's pretty safe to say the E6600 would be right around the power draw of the other C2D chips - between the E6700 and E6400. Voltage settings also vary on the C2D CPUs IIRC, so you can get some CPUs that run at 1.1V and others that run at 1.3V, even though they're the same model number.jelifah - Tuesday, February 20, 2007 - link
Is the author making a hint of 'things to come' when Barcelona arrives?A thinly veiled hint that AMD could actually compete? One can only hope. As was said repeatedly in the article, competition is the reason we have these prices and these processors. Without competition I doubt we would be seeing the performance, let alone the price, that we see today
hubajube - Tuesday, February 20, 2007 - link
The X2 5600 does actually compete well with the E6600 and they're very close in price. Although, OCing is another story.goinginstyle - Tuesday, February 20, 2007 - link
I was expecting to see another "just like me" article on this CPU and was surprised to see benchmarks under Vista and 64bit at that. Thanks for an interesting read and hopefully the motherboard editors will start using Vista in their articles now.I still think AMD is close enough in performance that it does not matter that much which platform you use. After all of the troubles I had with my 965 board I wonder why I switched now. Was there any reason why you did not use the nvidia 680i board for testing since the 590 board was used for the AMD system?