AMD's 65nm Preview Part 2 - The Plot Thickens (Updated with Information from AMD)
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 21, 2006 12:12 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Media Encoding Performance & Power Consumption
The absolute performance crown under our WME test continues to belong to the E6600, followed by the X2 5000+, but after that it's a fairly close race between the contenders. The E6400 and X2 4800+ are basically equal in performance, with the 4600+ following closely. At the low end of the spectrum, the E6300 outperforms the X2 3800+ but albeit with much higher power consumption.
If we look at absolute power consumption, the X2 3800+ EE SFF can't be beat. Although it's outperformed by every other chip in the test, it consumes at least 20 fewer watts during the benchmark. Power consumption for the rest of the chips is basically equal, with the 90nm X2 5000+ sticking out as the only sore thumb.
Our E6300 sample's combination of high operating voltage and low performance relative to the competition results in it having the worst performance per watt out of the group. The X2 3800+ SFF comes in second to last in this metric due to its lower performance. Meanwhile, the E6600 places first, the 65nm X2 5000+ is in second place, closely followed by Intel's Core 2 Duo E6400 and the 65nm X2 4800+.
DivX performance favors Intel much more than our WME test, as the top three performance spots go to Intel. There's no performance difference between AMD's 90nm and 65nm chips in this test as both 5000+ CPUs are tied at 6.66 fps.
The absolute power advantage goes, once again, to the X2 3800+ EE SFF. Our 65nm 4800+ sample draws a bit less power than the 5000+ and even manages to draw less than the 90nm 4600+ EE. Unfortunately with no great power advantages and mid-range performance, the top three in the performance per watt category belong to Intel.
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MartinT - Thursday, December 21, 2006 - link
AMD - Best CPU at doing nothing.This seems to be AMD's new mantra, no wonder given how hopelessly behind in performance and performance/Watt they are.
mino - Thursday, December 21, 2006 - link
Nicely said.Or better:
CPU using the least power while doing nothing...
DigitalFreak - Thursday, December 21, 2006 - link
LOLBeenthere - Thursday, December 21, 2006 - link
I doubt many PC enthusiasts place much importance on CPU power consumption. If they did Intel would never have sold any P4 chips. With Video cards drawing 200+ watts per card, a 65 nano AMD chip is a sweet piece.From my perspective, this is the first AMD 65 nano chips and like most process drops there is little performance gain just in lowering the nano size. AMD has a lot in the pipeline and as it arrives I suspect PC enthusiasts will be quite satisfied with both the CPU options and performance.
It should be pretty obvious that 99.9% of the market doesn't need faster CPUs, dual cores, quad cores, etc. until we get a decent O/S that can use these CPU features and full 64-bit function. How friggin long will we have to wait for quality 64-bit software to arrive? That is something that would help PC performance significantly, yet we've been waiting two years and the software folks have delivered almost nothing.
Sh0ckwave - Thursday, December 21, 2006 - link
You're right, enthusiasts don't care about power consumption at all. We care about performance and overclocking ability.The average user does not need a faster CPU.
Why doesn't Anandtech write articles for enthusiasts anymore?
mino - Thursday, December 21, 2006 - link
Also, many enthusiasts work at IT depts making decisions what architecture to go for.I mean, for 100s/1000s PCs deployment... An believe me, there, power IS taken into account.
Final Hamlet - Thursday, December 21, 2006 - link
Quote: I doubt many PC enthusiasts place much importance on CPU power consumption.If they did Intel would never have sold any P4 chips.
That is where you are wrong. Say it after me: Million-dollar-marketing-campaign.
Not the best product wins, but the best advertised.
Think back to P4-times: Some average I-know-that-I-have-to-press-the-big-button-to-make-my-compie-start-Joe would enter a big (online) store like DELL where his only choice was a P4 - end of selection.
Asked why he should buy it he would receive something like this: It has 3 REAL GHz, other manufacturers have _only_ about 2GHz. And then he would buy.
PS I'm no AMD-fanboy. One has to clearly admit that Intel did a marvellous job with it's Core2. Only reason to buy is aforementioned power consumption in idle (my PC is idle 90% of the time) und the nice low price.
Too strange. If you read hardware sites you could come to the conclusion that there are no single core CPUs anymore.
feelingshorter - Thursday, December 21, 2006 - link
Looking at those benchmarks, I think Intel won based on per/watt performance. AMD had lower watt usage but also lower performance. Given that a cpu can work harder, then be idle, i see per watt performance as the most important thing. I would have expected AMD to do better, but they did not come through.mino - Thursday, December 21, 2006 - link
No offense, but the moment one takes into account the fact of average PC spending >90% of time at idle, well, C2D eats X2's dust.From energy efficiency perspective, of course.
Accord99 - Thursday, December 21, 2006 - link
Only if the C2D gets paired with a hotter chipset. The P965 motherboards tend to use 10-20W less on idle and load.