Intel Core Duo (Yonah) Performance Preview - Part II
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 19, 2005 12:55 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
The Test
| CPU: | AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ (2.2GHz/512KBx2) AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (2.0GHz/512KBx2) AMD Athlon 64 X2 2.0GHz/1MBx2 Intel Pentium M 760 (2.0GHz/2MB) Intel Core Duo T2500 (2.0GHz/2MB) |
| Motherboard: | ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe AOpen i915Ga-HFS Unnamed 945G Yonah Motherboard |
| Motherboard BIOS: | ASUS: Version 1013 Dated 08/10/2005 AOpen: Version 1.11 Dated 11/15/2005 |
| Chipset: | NVIDIA nForce4 SLI Intel 915 Express Intel 945G |
| Chipset Drivers: | nForce4 6.66 Intel 7.0.0.25 |
| Memory: | OCZ PC3500 DDR 2-2-2-7 DDR2-533 4-4-4-12 |
| Video Card: | ATI Radeon X850 XT NVIDIA GeForce 7800GTX |
| Video Drivers: | ATI Catalyst 8.173.1.2 NVIDIA ForceWare 81.85 |
| Desktop Resolution: | 1280 x 1024 - 32-bit @ 60Hz |
| OS: | Windows XP Professional SP2 |
While we used an NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX for almost all of our tests, there was one exception, thanks to a NVIDIA driver bug. With dual core processors, NVIDIA's 81.95 drivers will cause the system to maintain 100% CPU utilization when running 3dsmax 7, even when the system is actually not doing anything at all. We didn't discover this bug until we had already run the majority of our tests using the 7800 GTX. So, for the 3dsmax 7 tests, we switched to an ATI Radeon X850 XT. The GPU doesn't impact CPU rendering performance at all, so it doesn't change the performance characteristics of the platform. We just wanted to point out the bug, in case any of you were wondering why your dual core platforms were behaving strangely in certain applications. NVIDIA is aware of the problem and is working on a publicly available fix.
For this comparison, we've kept the number of CPUs to a minimum, focusing on the Pentium M, Core Duo and Athlon 64 X2. The exclusion of the Pentium D was on purpose; we've already compared the Core Duo to the Pentium D in our last article and to put it bluntly, the Pentium D won't really be competition for any of Intel's new architectures. By this time next year, NetBurst will have already been forgotten and the real comparison that matters is how Core Duo stacks up to the Athlon 64 X2, whose architecture is not going the way of the dodo.
As we mentioned earlier in this article, in addition to the X2 3800+ and 4200+, we have included benchmarks of an Athlon 64 X2 running at 2.0GHz, but with a 1MB L2 cache per core (2MB total on die). The point of including this simulated "Athlon 64 X2 4000+" is to answer complaints that the Core Duo has a larger L2 cache than the X2 3800+ and thus isn't a true apples-to-apples comparison. So we've now leveled the playing field even more, and actually given AMD more of an advantage - the 2.0GHz/1MB L2 Athlon 64 X2 has a larger L1 cache (128KB per core vs. 64KB per core), and of course, the X2 still has its own on die memory controller.
With that said, let's see how things stack up now...
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Shintai - Monday, December 19, 2005 - link
I doubt a a laptop uses 108W and got a x800XT. That powerchart is close to useless.A Core Duo laptop is 31 peak for CPU and 2.5 for the 945GM. A single core tution is 35W. unless you want 25W part, but then we gotta use the lower intel part aswell.
Dualcore Turion wont even stand a chance until it get 65nm.
Furen - Tuesday, December 20, 2005 - link
The 25W Turion parts are $5 more expensive than the 35W parts, hardly comparable with the price difference between regular and LV Intel CPUs. I agree with you in that I dont expect 90nm Turions to match Yonah's power consumption but I must say that what I've heard about the Yamato platform (which, to tell the truth, is almost nothing) makes me think that it'll be a closer match than we think.Missing Ghost - Monday, December 19, 2005 - link
What, no 64 bit?I won't buy this.
fitten - Tuesday, December 20, 2005 - link
Do you actually use 64-bit or is it just a feature checkbox? I bought some Athlon64s because they were 64-bit and allowed me to test the software I write on a 64-bit platform, for example... not that the codes I actually write require many of the features of 64-bit, though. In the past, I have written and worked on a number of projects that actually need 64-bit (typically just very large datasets which can just be used flat in 64-bit as opposed to all sorts of tiling and paging on a 32-bit machine).Chickan - Monday, December 19, 2005 - link
Did anyone else notice that the numbers in the graph for Black and White did not match up with the spreadsheet below it? According to the graph, the Core Duo hit 44.5 FPS, the same as the X2 2ghz w/ 1mbx2, but in the sheet below, it is reported to only do 40.1 FPS, lower than even the Pentium M. In fact, it performs the worst out of all the CPU's there, at every resolution, even though this is not reported, nor mentioned.I also find it interesting that Intel's new line is only able to match X2's, not beat them. Either way, lets see some new stuff from AMD!
KazenoKoe - Monday, December 19, 2005 - link
Odd, the article clearly has it at 42.3fps on both the graph and the table. The Pentium M got 40.1 and the X2 2GHz/1MB got 44.5.WitchKing - Monday, December 19, 2005 - link
I enjoyed reading this 2nd article on the next Intel platform.Although I am basically in favor of AMD since Athlon platform, I am quite glad that Intel is closing the performance gap. It will make AMD move further ;-)
Anyway, it should be quite interesting to see how these 2 platforms compare in 64-bits tasks (Windows XP-64, Vista (is a 64-bits version available yet?) and linux based).
A 3rd opus of this article maybe? ;-)
saratoga - Monday, December 19, 2005 - link
Yonah does not support x86-64, so doing 64 bit testing is not possible.phaxmohdem - Monday, December 19, 2005 - link
I thought this review was much better than the first. Thanks guys. It pretty much illustrates the same thing, but it is interesting to read about new CPU's none the less.I don't mind the name personally, I think that we uber-nerds don't like it because we actually know what a core is in regards to a CPU. Your typical idiot customer doesn't know what a Core, or Processor die is, and Core is just another brand name like Pentium.
While these chips look freaking awesome for laptop use, I must admit I will ver very dissapointed it Conroe launches, and only brings Intel back to equality with AMD. When a new generation of CPU launches, I generally like to think that they are releaseing something to regain their status as performance leader, not just level the playing field. (Though I guess PII/PIII/P4 al launched with worse performance than the high end of their predecessors)
tfranzese - Monday, December 19, 2005 - link
If memory serves, the only one to launch with a loss in performance was the Pentium 4. The Pentium II was a great advancement over the Pentium it replaced (not the Pro) and the Pentium III performed equally, though was available at higher clock speeds. That said, I don't know where you got to grouping the PII and PIII in with the P4's poor launch status. Willamette was a joke.