“AMD today introduced AMD Turion 64 X2 mobile technology, the first and only family of 64-bit dual-core processors designed for thin and light notebook PCs. AMD Turion 64 X2 mobile technology allows people to get more from their mobile lifestyle through long battery life and outstanding performance, even when using multiple applications simultaneously, including demanding digital media applications.”
I want to see how this stacks up against Intel’s Core Duo.
Is the performance better?
Is the power consumption lower?
Power: ???
In performance…look at the Athlon64 scores. With DC DDR2, they should be all but identical identical. That also means they should be about even with Core Duo.
From the MacBook review:
I then ran two instances of this script in order to peg both processor cores. The system would step the speed of the processor up to 1.833GHz until the processor crossed a threshold of approximately 82°C at which point it would step the processor down to 1.667GHz.
I would be satified if any laptop with the Turion 64 X2 in it wouldn’t reach a temperature of ridiculous 82C that’s for sure.
It seems to be an issue with the assembly of the Macbook rather than an issue with the Intel chip. You posted in that thread, so you must have read some of the comments… With the screwup that Apple might have done, even the X2 would reach such insane temperature.
Low power, dual core and 64Bits. AMD beat Intel again.
I just got a laptop with a Turion64 and it works realy great! It would be better with X2.. oh well!!!
truckweb, what laptop did you get?
Figs : It’s a HP Pavilion dx8120ca, Turion64 ML-37 2.0Ghz, 1GB RAM, ATI XPRESS 200M 128MB, Hitachi 2x80GB, 17″ LCD 1440×900.
Realy nice laptop, big screen, good for everything except mabe games. You can game on it, but at low settings.
Low power, dual core and 64Bits. AMD beat Intel again
Apple should of waited and gone with this CPUs instead
In Jobs interview in said the Intel’s Core Duo was the best mobile CPU on the market. with that stated it’s hard for me to understand how it’s better it does not support 64bit and I’m sure it will have a slower bus then AMD’s new Turion 64 x2 CPUs. I still think the macs are overpriced because it does not run one of these.
I’ve been holding off buying a new laptop just to wait until both camps have their dual-core options out. Core Duo looks nice, but if I’m going to go all out on a laptop, it’s going to have to last 4 years or more (budgetary and spousal constraints)
At this point, I’m eager to see benchmarks of the new Turion X2’s and how they stand up to the Core Duo – in both power consumption and performance. The Turion X2’s will have less L2 than the Duo out of the gate (512kb / core on Turion vs 2MB shared on Duo), but whether or not the onboard memory controller will trump this advantage will yet to be seen.
Either way, now that the Turion X2’s are out, the market will stabilize a bit since there is competition in the dual-core mobile arena.
You gotta love AMD. They were first to market a 64 bit x86 compatible cpu. The first to market a dual core x86 compatible cpu. The first to offer a 64 bit notebook chip and the first to offer a dual core notebook chip. This only makes things sweeter for AMD. I’ve been waiting on Turion X2s for a while now. I guess it’s time to start notebook shopping.
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fww…
http://www.online-translator.com/url/tran_url.asp?lang=en&direction…
The Duo seems to perform a little better, but keep in mind that these are 32bit benchmarks.
I want to know when we will see some new alienwares with these bad boys.
Edited 2006-05-19 15:40
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=1376998&postcount=7
I stumbled across this one over at http://www.hardwarezone.com:
http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?cid=2&id=1904
In short they test the TL-52 1.6GHz 2x512KB L2 and point out that:
* better power management than the Turion. The power consumption of the dual core Turion X2 is perhaps slightly less than the single core Turion.
[Sweet]
* separate L2 cache for the two cores, but now only 512KB per core – meaning lower latency, but less space for buffering.
[No idea how this affects overall performance. I’m interested in a fast 64-bit floating point monster for scientific computation. Does anyone here know if L2 cache generally is important for number crunching or rendering?]
* Faster than the Turion and Sempron 3400+, slower than the heavyweight Pentium 4 and Athlon desktop CPUs. [I guess comparing it with Intel Core Duo or Intel Core 2 Duo makes more sense, anyone care to speculate here?]
* May be a snappier/less hungry 65nm revision around the corner.
Hmm, this all sure sounds nice indeed. My project supervisor suggested (!) that I buy a new laptop before the fall. Should I wait for a second revision or an Intel Core 2 Duo or start shopping?
Edited 2006-05-19 16:41
generally speaking, wait as long as possible. prices go down and performance goes up. the closer to your deadline you buy, the more bang for your buck (even if price isn’t important).
Yup, that is very much true. I will wait for sure 🙂 Who knows, perhaps there is even a good 64-bit Apple machine around by then that boots some nice Debian derivate?
Does anyone know which manufacturers that are likely to compile series of Turion X2 laptops? HP? Dell? IBM?
HP and Acer do AMD based laptops, so I’d guess they’d have some models with these in them before long.
Does anyone here know if L2 cache generally is important for number crunching or rendering?
Good question. Answer is not straightforward. Caching (L1/2) is here to reduce the frequency of access to the physical RAM, that is as slow as a snail from the CPU point of view.
Now that work this way: the CPU request an address. Is this address in the L1 cache table? Yes good. No: L1 “cache miss”, let’s ask L2. Is this address in the L2 cache table? Yes give L1. No: L2 cache miss, let’s ask RAM. The think you want to avoid is the monstruous “cache miss”.
Incrementing the size of the cache helps in multitasking (more program’s contexts can be stored in the cache), but still, an application is required to make a good use of the cache. Let me explain: when L1 or L2 got a cache miss they do not ask for one particular address… the ask for a chunk of address. A good number crushing application will try to put all the numbers is need to compute in a sequential order in a table so that they are all referenced in the same chunk: this way you reduce drastically the number of cache misses and make very good use of cache, therefore your app is running very fast. To me, software plays the most important part.
To verify if those apps you’re talkin about, are making good use of cache, you can get valgrind, and run your app like that
> valgrind –tool=cachegrind my_app my_app_args
it will gives you a summary of the cache usage. The lower the cache miss are, the faster your application will compute.
Now I hope this gives you a hint of what is cache and how it plays a role in a computing.
I have had a really hard time figuring out how to measure cache usage and benchmark CPUs for the applications that are relevant to me. I’ll definately have a look at valgrind! Thanx!
Something to keep in mind is not just performance and power consumption but the issue of upgrading hardware. Unlike Intel’s Core Duo line AMD’s Turion X2 doesn’t use the same socket as the previous Turion series. Meaning a laptop running the Intel Core Duo Yonah processor can upgrade to the Merom (EMT64) Core Duo when it’s released ETA August 2006. I would prefer to be able to upgrade individual laptop components rather than be forced to replace the entire laptop just to have a newer CPU. Intel seems to have gotten this right by extending the life expectancy of laptops using their Core Duo processors. Something which AMD needs to take into consideration when providing a mobile processor.
I believe the Intel Core Duo’s can do EMT64 and therefore did it before this processor.
Why didn’t they advertise it? Because who cares? Unless you are running IDEAS, PRO/E, etc… you don’t need it. On top of that, people use 64-bit for the larger amounts of RAM, not the speed, so unless you have a massive noteboot with 8 RAM slots, it isn’t important.
I believe the Intel Core Duo’s can do EMT64 and therefore did it before this processor.
No, the Intel Core Duos do not do EMT64, they are 32-bit cores based on a tweaked version of the Pentium M core (“Yonah”).
The upcoming Intel Core 2 Duos (“Merom” and “Conroe”) will support EMT64: they’re due around July/August. Therefore AMD has beaten them. That said, you’re right that 64-bit means very little for the consumer right now.
However in the future, the digital camera craze will make digital camcorders cheap; large amounts of memory and hard-disk space will become available at a reasonable price, codecs like MPEG 4 will become standard, and people will be able to do some serious video editing at home. When that happens, 64-bits will be appreciated. That’s about five years away though.
I just ordered a MacBook Pro today and now I am wondering if I made a mistake. Maybe I should have waited a couple weeks to see if this thing blows core duo out of the water.
ehh… live and learn
>Does anyone know which manufacturers that are likely to compile series of Turion X2 laptops? HP? Dell? IBM?<
It seems HP and Gateway would be your best bet as far as big names go. I am sure there are a bunch of small name companies that would build one to order for you as well.
All I can say is that while I understand Apple’s reasoning for going with Intel I still wish they went with AMD. If they had done so, I wouldn’t be pissed off that I just ordered a MacBook Pro 4 hours ago.
All I can say is that while I understand Apple’s reasoning for going with Intel I still wish they went with AMD. If they had done so, I wouldn’t be pissed off that I just ordered a MacBook Pro 4 hours ago.
Uh oh. Buyers remorse. Now you will sit with a buzzing in your head and a pit in your stomach until your Macbook arrives…
Well, If you’re a fan of AMD and dislike Intel, then cancel the order. If you’re a fan of OSX, get the Macbook. The chips are appear to be fairly comparable in speed. The differences come in what you use them for.
The biggest bottleneck with both chips appear to be OSX & Windows.
I do agree with you though. I wish Apple had gone with AMD. I have always been very pleased with AMDs price and performance (except the K5) and disapointed with a lot of Intel chips.
“and the first to offer a dual core notebook chip.”
No.