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Embedded ARM Computer Tegra T2, dual core&display, FullHD 12 MPix Camera Interface, Cortex A9 www.toradex.com/Dimm-Modu TI's C66x Multicore DSPs Industry's First 10 GHz DSPs w/Both Fixed & Floating Point Capabilities TI.com/C66Multicore Mai bun ca un Tablet PC Atat comod, cat si performant. LIFEBOOK-uri cu Intel Core i7. lifebook.ro.ts.fujitsu.com
In fact, it is hard to imagine anything that could be more interesting and needed, especially, because it has been a while since we posted our CPU guides. However, there is one more reason why we decided to get to massive processor performance tests and analysis. The thing is that the upcoming year 2011 should become the time of dramatic changes in the processor market. At least two of four contemporary platforms (LGA775 and LGA1156) will become obsolete within a few short months. The remaining two platforms will be approaching their dawn in the second half of next year. So, at this point a processor shoot-out like that becomes some kind of a farewell to quite a few CPU models, which we will no longer see in our upcoming tests. The first article is devoted to inexpensive processors from the value segment, which are officially priced in the sub-$100 range. There are 14 different models available today in this price range. Lets take a closer look at them.
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platform supporting DDR3 SDRAM. However, at the same time these processors remain backward compatible with the old Socket AM2+ platform, which makes them a great option also for the upgrade of the existing computer systems. Even though there havent been any significant microarchitectural improvements from AMD for quite some time already, so that the company cannot really compete in the upper price segment, it doesnt really affect the situation in the value CPU market. The company takes the advantage of this situation the best they can, so they are able to offer a vast variety of inexpensive processors. among them are four different AMD CPU families: Sempron. There are two things that make this AMD processor family remarkable. On the one hand, these are the only current single-core desktop processors, but on the other these are the cheapest products on AMDs as well as Intels price lists. Contemporary members of this family work at up to 2.8 GHz frequencies and have 1 MB of L2 cache memory, which has proven to be sufficient for typical office and Internet-applications. Athlon II X2. The most popular processors for inexpensive Socket AM3 systems are dual-core Athlon II X2 CPUs. They are selling at very affordable prices are their clock speeds reach as high as 3.2 GHz. Other than that you can regard Athlon II X2 as two Sempron CPUs within the same packaging: each core of these dual-core processors features a 1 MB L2 cache. The added appeal of this processor family is the OEM CPU modifications that appear from time to time. These processors have slightly limited features, but come at a price almost as low as that of Sempron processors. Athlon II X3. AMDs unique triple-core Athlon II X3 CPUs appear as a way of utilizing the chips that cannot be used for quad-core processors. Therefore, these processors are especially interesting: on the one hand, their price is very affordable, but on the other, the third core comes in very handy in those applications that can be easily paralleled. Especially, since Athlon II X3 clock frequencies are not that much lower than those of the dual-core CPUs: they go as high as 3.2 GHz. However, they have somewhat smaller cache memory: each core has only 512 KB of individual L2 cache. Phenom II X2. AMD positions this processor family as dual-core CPUs for enthusiasts with limited financial means. In reality it means that these processors allow changing their clock frequency multiplier and thus offer easy overclocking. Moreover, Phenom II X2 has 6 MB of L3 cache memory shared among all cores. As for the clock speed, it reaches the pretty common 3.3 GHz level, but only the 3.2 GHz processor falls into the sub-$100 price range. Speaking of inexpensive AMD CPUs, we would like to point out several nice things about them. First of all, it is very appealing that these processors use the same exact infrastructure as the expensive AMD processors. And it means that the value dual-core Socket AM3 processor from AMD can be easily replaced with a more expensive multi-core Phenom II CPU. Moreover, AMD decided to let their low-cost processors keep all of their secondary features as is. For example, even AMD Sempron, not to mention Athlon II X2 or Phenom II X2, support fast DDR3-1600 SDRAM and Virtualization. Another great advantage, is the fact that Socket AM3 processors from AMD are compatible with AMDs high-performance chipsets. In practical terms it means that there are quite a few mainboards with fast integrated graphics available to the owners of such processors, and integrated graphics development is something AMD is very good at. Another argument in favor of inexpensive AMD CPUs is their undocumented ability to allow activating additional cores, because some modifications of inexpensive CPUs are built on semiconductor dies with more cores than indicated in the CPU specs. Among processors that may offer you a pleasant surprise like that are Sempron CPUs, which could acquire a second core; Athlon II X3 based on quad-core dies; and Phenom II X2, which may allow you to activate the third or even the fourth core. The table below lists the specs of all value CPUs from AMD that participated in our todays test session.
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frequency is limited by 1067 MHz. In other words, in terms of its formal specifications Pentium G6950 is just as appealing as its LGA775 counterparts, especially since its price is getting extremely close to $90. But this only budget LGA1156 processor has one indisputable advantage: it is also compatible with the platform that can take contemporary high-performance CPUs. However, this advantage has another side to it, as well: LGA1156 mainboards cost considerably more than Socket AM3 and LGA775 mainboards. Lets sum everything up in the following table that will list the specifications of all current Intel processors from the value price segment:
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Intel Pentium E6500 (Wolfdale, 2 cores, 2.93 GHz, 266 MHz FSB, 2 MB L2); Intel Pentium E6700 (Wolfdale, 2 cores, 3.2 GHz, 266 MHz FSB, 2 MB L2); Intel Pentium E6800 (Wolfdale, 2 cores, 3.33 GHz, 266 MHz FSB, 2 MB L2); Intel Pentium G6950 (Clarkdale, 2 cores, 2.8 GHz, 3 MB L3). Mainboards: ASUS Crosshair IV Formula (Socket AM3, AMD 890FX + SB850, DDR3 SDRAM); ASUS P5Q3 (LGA775, Intel P45 Express, DDR3 SDRAM) ASUS P7P55D Premium (LGA1156, Intel P55 Express); Memory: 2 x 2 GB DDR3 SDRAM (Kingston KHX1600C8D3K2/4GX): DDR3-800 5-5-5-15 with Intel Celeron E3000 and Intel Pentium E5000 CPUs; DDR3-1067 7-7-7-21 with Intel Pentium E6000 and Intel Pentium G6950 CPUs; DDR3-1333 9-9-9-27 with all AMD CPUs. Graphics card: ATI Radeon HD 5870. Hard drive: Kingston SNVP325-S2/128GB. Power supply unit: Tagan TG880-U33II (880 W). Operating system: Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate x64. Drivers: Intel Chipset Driver 9.1.1.1025; ATI Catalyst 10.9 Display Driver.
Performance
General Performance To estimate the processors performance in general-purpose apps we use SYSmark 2007 test that emulates usage models in popular office and digital content creation and processing applications. The idea of this benchmark is very simple: it produces a single score that characterizes average system performance.
As we see, the results obtained in this test correlate very well with the processor price more expensive CPUs
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perform better. There is only one exception triple-core Athlon II X3 CPUs that fall a little bit behind cheaper dual-core solutions. This is because most applications included into SYSmark 2007 testing suite are optimized for single- and dual-core microarchitectures. And that is more of a typical trait of most contemporary office applications rather than a peculiarity of this specific benchmark. Here is a table with more detailed SYSmark 2007 scores sorted according to the application type:
Gaming Performance As you know, it is the graphics subsystem that determines the platform performance in the majority of contemporary games. Therefore, when you are building a gaming system, you should first of all find a proper graphics accelerator. However, value processors can also become a bottleneck of the gaming platform. You can clearly see that from the results of our gaming tests carried out with a high-performance graphics accelerator in the system.
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AMD processors with the integrated DDR2/DDR3 memory controller do pretty well in those games that are quite sensitive not only to the processor computational power, but also to the memory subsystem performance. Judging by the obtained results we can conclude with all certainty that Socket AM3 platform would be a good choice for an inexpensive gaming system. And purchasing an exotic triple-core Athlon II X3 processor may be a good way to go. As we can see, contemporary games get a noticeable performance boost from acquiring a third processor core. Archiving and Encryption To test the processors performance during data archiving we resort to WinRAR archiving utility. Using maximum compression rate we archive a folder with multiple files 560 MB in total size.
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There are a lot of factor affecting the WinRAR performance: clock frequency, number of cores, cache-memory size, etc. As a result, triple-core processors and Phenom II X2 - the only CPU in our session with a large L3 cache - become the leaders in this test. The processor performance during encryption is measured with an integrated benchmark from a popular cryptographic utility called TrueCrypt. I have to say that it can not only effectively utilize any number of processor cores, but also supports special AES instructions.
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Encryption is a task that can be easily paralleled, so it is absolutely logical that the triple-core processors with relatively high clock frequencies win this race. As for the results demonstrated by dual-core testing participants, Athlon II X2 and Phenom II X2 turn out a little faster than their competitors from the Celeron and Pentium series. Image Editing We measured the performance in Adobe Photoshop using our own benchmark made from Retouch Artists Photoshop Speed Test that has been creatively modified. It includes typical editing of four 10-megapixel images from a digital photo camera.
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Intel processors perform faster in Adobe Photoshop. Their advantage is so significant, that a 50-dollar Celeron is even faster than AMD Phenom II X2 priced over $90. Audio and Video Transcoding We use Apple iTunes utility to test audio transcoding speed. It translates the contents of a CD disk into AAC format. Note that the typical peculiarity of this utility is its ability utilize only a pair of processor cores.
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Apple iTunes is an example of yet another application that favors Intel CPU architecture. Here All Pentium processors outperform any Athlon II X2 and Phenom II X2 CPUs. However, junior Celeron processors cannot repeat the success of their elder brothers, because of a too small L2 cache. In order to measure how fast our testing participants can transcode a video into H.264 format we used x264 HD benchmark. It works with an original MPEG-2 video recorded in 720p resolution with 4 Mbps bitrate. I have to say that the results of this test are of great practical value, because the x264 codec is also part of numerous popular transcoding utilities, such as HandBrake, MeGUI, VirtualDub, etc.
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Like in any other application optimized for multi-core architectures, triple-core Athlon II X3 processors show the best results among other value processors during video encoding tests. All other testing participants line up according to their price. There is only one exception: the LGA1156 Pentium G6950 loses to the top Pentium CPUs for LGA775 form-factor, which, however, cost considerably less. The performance in Adobe Premiere Pro is determined by the time it takes to render a Blu-ray project with HDV 1080p25 video into H.264 format and apply different special effects to it.
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The results obtained during video encoding in Adobe Media Encoder are not that much different from what we have just seen during x.264 tests. However, in this case AMD processors improved their results and now the top Pentium can only catch up with Athlon II X2 255. Mathematical Calculations We launch standard MathematicaMark7 test from Wolfram Mathematica suite to measure the systems performance here.
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We see right away that large cache is important for high scores in Mathematica suite. That is exactly why Phenom II X2 is the number one here, as it has not only L2, but also L3 cache. As for Athlon II X2 processors, they dont do too good: they fall behind top Pentium CPUs. The Celeron processors with significantly reduced L2 cache become real outsiders against the background of other testing participants. Final Rendering We use special Cinebench test to measure the final rendering speed in Maxon Cinema 4D.
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The more cores the processor has, the faster it is. We can see it clearly in rendering tasks, so the superiority of the triple-core processor over its dual-core fellow shouldnt be surprising to you. other than that, there was nothing unexpected here: the CPUs lined up on the diagram in accordance with their price. Rendering speed in Autodesk 3ds max 2011 with both, Scanline as well as Mental Ray, was measured using SPECapc test.
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As we see from the results obtained in 3ds max 2011, processors with Core microarchitecture cope better with final rendering in this application. However, Athlon II X3 still manages to rip the victory out of top Pentiums hands due to their third core. I have to say that this third core is a very strong argument in a number of benchmarks, and not just here.
Power Consumption
Performance is not the only practical spec that may be of interest to potential buyers of value CPUs. Many users decide to go for value solutions not for money-saving reasons, but because of lower power consumption of such processors compared to their higher-speed counterparts. And this makes processors like that a pretty attractive choice for miniature multimedia systems, like HTPC, which often do not require high processor performance at all. Therefore, we decided to add a power consumption comparison to our extensive performance tests. The graphs below show the full power draw of the computer (without the monitor) measured after the power supply. It is the total of the power consumption of all the system components. The PSU's efficiency is not taken into account. The CPUs are loaded by running the 64-bit LinX 0.6.4 utility. We enabled all the power-saving technologies for a correct measurement of the computer's power draw in idle mode: C1E, AMD Cool'n'Quiet and Enhanced Intel SpeedStep.
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In idle mode all tested systems consume about the same amount of power with a slight advantage towards AMD based platforms.
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However, things change dramatically as soon as processors get hit with computational load. Celeron and Pentium prove more energy-efficient than AMD CPUs with similar price and performance. And in this case the power consumption difference is pretty significant: almost 20-30 W. So, looks like Intel processors are a way better fit for energy-efficient, miniature or quiet systems. AMD can only offer special energy-efficient processors with 45 W TDP for systems like that. However, it is important to remember that processors like that work at lower clock speeds, cost more and are more difficult to find in stores.
Conclusion
Despite the fact that the value segment including CPUs priced between $40 and $100 seems to be pretty narrow, AMD and Intel offer a large variety of very diverse solutions in it. This diversity makes it tricky to find an optimal CPU for ones needs. Moreover, just like with high-performance platforms, you should always consider the way your inexpensive system will be used when you shop for a suitable processor. As we have just determined inexpensive Intel processors perform pretty well in typical office applications, but yield significantly to competing solutions from AMD under heavier load, such as video transcoding, data encryption or 3D games. And this isnt surprising at all: LGA775 being a very old platform that has hard time catching up with the contemporary needs has definitely affected its performance. In fact, LGA775 processors are simply unable to score higher than value Socket AM3 CPUs in those tasks where high performance is required. However, Celeron and Pentium CPUs have another important advantage: they are much more energy-efficient than Athlon or Phenom. And it is not about some formal superiority, but about a significant practical advantage. Therefore, we can strongly recommend Intel processors for those systems, where low noise and small size matter more than performance in resource-hungry apps. Especially, since mainboard makers have a lot of modifications of miniature mainboards designed for LGA775 form-factor. I would also like to say a few words about Intel Pentium G6950, because it is a truly unique processor it is the only LGA1156 product that falls into the Value price segment. However, it doesnt prevent this CPU from
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showing very disappointing results: it was outpaced by almost the entire LGA775 Pentium family, not to mention the competitors from AMD. It is obvious that Intel has restricted the functionality of their Clarkdale core too severely. Although Pentium G6950 does have a few real advantages. Besides a pretty decent integrated graphics core, it is also compatible with the mainboards for Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs, which means that it could be a good choice for those users who intend to upgrade at a later day. In order to better illustrate the consumer advantages of value processors from Intel and AMD, we created a diagram showing how the average performance of the todays testing participants correlates with their price:
As you can see from this diagram, the best price-to-performance ratio in the Value segment belongs to Athlon II X3 CPUs. Multithreaded applications are not a rare thing these days, even many contemporary games can successfully utilize more than two processor cores. Therefore, Athlon II X3 CPUs look like one of the most optimal choices with a small price tag: they offer three computational cores and pretty high clock speeds. And if we also consider the possibility of unlocking the fourth core, it becomes perfectly clear why we think Athlon II X3 445 and Athlon II X3 450 are the absolute best choices in the sub-$100 price range today. We are proud to award these two processors our Recommended Buy title:
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If you are looking for something even less expensive than that, then you should try to find something like an Athlon II X2 220. Unfortunately, they are being distributed only through OEM channels and may be quite hard to come by in a computer store. But if you manage to find one of those, you will be rewarded with a good CPU performance at a minimal price. Moreover, just like Athlon II X3, this processor can potentially turn into a tripleor even quad-core piece due to activation of the disabled cores. To our great regret, there are no attractive offerings like that among officially shipped Athlon II X2. If you are a devoted Intel fan or if you are looking primarily for an energy-efficient solution, you should check out Pentium E5700 or Pentium E6700, which offer the best price-to-performance ration among their counterparts. At the same time, they consume considerably less power than any dual- or triple-core AMD CPUs.
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