The Athlon II X2 & Phenom II X2: 45nm Dual-Core from AMD
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 2, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Fallout 3 Game Performance
Bethesda’s latest game uses an updated version of the Gamebryo engine (Oblivion). This benchmark takes place immediately outside Vault 101. The character walks away from the vault through the Springvale ruins. The benchmark is measured manually using FRAPS.
Gaming performance clearly goes to the Athlon II X2 and the Phenom II X2. Because of its high clock speed and very high core-to-cache ratio, the Phenom II X2 550 is actually faster than the Phenom II X4 940 in this test. Note that Fallout 3 isn't particularly heavily threaded so the X4's additional cores don't do much good here.
Left 4 Dead
AMD continues to hold on to the gaming performance lead.
FarCry 2 Multithreaded Game Performance
FarCry 2 ships with the most impressive benchmark tool we’ve ever seen in a PC game. Part of this is due to the fact that Ubisoft actually tapped a number of hardware sites (AnandTech included) from around the world to aid in the planning for the benchmark.
For our purposes we ran the CPU benchmark included in the latest patch:
In the newer game engines we see the E6300 catching up to the Athlon II X2 250. The old Pentium 4 660 starves our testbed's GeForce GTX 280 for data; it's horrendously slow.
Crysis Warhead
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vajm1234 - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - link
its really hard to believe ad a lil concern for upcoming c2d processors --- why that 6300 sample didnt overclock? wat was wrong 3.7 i xpct normally but i m amazed as its a 45nm.... not 90 or 65crimson117 - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - link
I'm getting image not found for this first image on the last page of the review:http://www.anandtech.com/reviews/cpu/amd/athlon2/l...">http://www.anandtech.com/reviews/cpu/amd/athlon2/l...
ShawnD1 - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - link
I like how you included the overclockability at stock voltage. Since all of my computers use stock heatsinks, overclocking at stock voltage is pretty much all I can do.Gary Key - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - link
I used the standard heatsink off the Phenom II 940 on the X2 250, 1.4V, and hit 3.825GHz in Win7 64, idle temps around 33C, full load at 54C. I have retail CPUs coming with the new cost reduced heatsink to see what happens but any stock AM2+ heatsink from a Phenom/PhenomII works wonderfully for overclocking these two CPUs.RamarC - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - link
I know AMD has 'nudged' mobo makers to prevent this, but some still allow it. I'm curious why Anand didn't experiment with it.AnnonymousCoward - Wednesday, June 3, 2009 - link
I figured those extra cores have defects.Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - link
It's more of a timing issue than anything else. I spent a lot of last week working on Lynnfield and there's one more CPU review before this week is up. I am curious about it and will look into it shortly though :)Take care,
Anand
flipmode - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - link
Hi Anand. Great review, it is much appreciated. The first thing I looked for was a comparison to the Brisbane CPU. To me, a comparison to Brisbane and a comparison to Penryn are the two most interesting.Just thoughts.
ltcommanderdata - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - link
I'm guessing if Phenom II X2s use harvested cores, they'll eventually be a limited commodity. Still, the Athlon II X2 seems to have a lot of scaling room left so higher clocked Athlon II X2s will probably do just as well.I just flipped through the benchmarks this morning, but since I was one of those commenting on wanting to see the best of dual core Netburst processors like the 965EE for comparison, I wanted to thank you for deciding to include the 955EE.
ltcommanderdata - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - link
As a follow-up is AMD still making 90nm dual cores or have they converted the fab to 45nm now? I believe the previous fastest dual core was still the 3.2GHz 90nm Athlon 64 X2 6400+. It's too bad it wasn't included here.