AMD launches Turion 64 X2 to fight Core Duo

Now it's on. After letting Intel run amok with the performance per watt crown for a few months with that well received Core Duo processor of theirs, AMD is jumping into the game with their new Turion 64 X2 chips. The chips range from 1.6GHz to 2.0GHz, and range in price from $184 to $354 in bulk purchases. Of course, it's just not nice these days to call a chip by its clock speed, so the models go by names like TL-50 (1.6GHz), TL-56 (1.8GHz) and TL-60 (2.0GHz). Turns out the wattage, when in an active state at least, is a bit higher than that of the Core Duo, but AMD claims that the Turion 64 X2 won't zap as much power in the down times, so it might turn out to be a wash. No matter how it works out for performance per watt per dollar per lame model number scheme, more competition in the mobile space should be fun. At least for our benchmarks if not for our wallets.

[Via MobileMag]

[Zac @ May 17th 2006 11:28PM]

damnit. I just bought my new laptop with the AMD single core.
this sucks.

[luis @ May 17th 2006 11:32PM]

I can't wait. Lightsabers on and.....

[aazp @ May 17th 2006 11:41PM]

Sorry AMD but this time the core microarquitecture will be the leader, you had your time, sooner than later core 2 duo (I hate that name), and everything will get uglier for you.

But AMD fanboys don't worry, AMD will be the king of the hill once the make their next microarquitecture overhaul, by that time ther the core one will be reaching it's limits.

That's how this thigs work, is a pendular system

[Scott Johnson @ May 17th 2006 11:50PM]

aazp,

Those are bold, unsubstantiated claims. I don't know anything about the microarchitectures behind these 2 chips, but comparable performance per watt is certainly appealing. And if they can beat Intel on price, they'll have my dollars.

[Ayrkain @ May 18th 2006 12:01AM]

I'm with Scott. Show me the benchmarks. Don't just spout meaningless cliches.

[hydrogen_wv @ May 18th 2006 12:25AM]

It's likely that the AMD will be cheaper... maybe not at release, but very soon... AMD chips are always reliable, too.
As far as performance per watt... I don't think that people really focus on that... When you go to buy a laptop, you look for the features you want, and performance per watt is usually not one of them, because it's unlikely that the small difference between these 2 chips will effect battery life much... not as much as the other features at least... I have a 2.6ghz P4 HT laptop that only gets about 3 hours of battery life, I know other laptops with similar performance that get much more battery life.. It's the 17" screen, video card, etc.. that make the big difference.

[six2one @ May 18th 2006 12:31AM]

for normal usage it probably wont matter, but for gaming you know who will take the cake.....AMD...as the core duo's have alot of memory latency due to the fact the mem controller isnt on the chip. i would also LOVE to run linux on the turion x2's, that would be fun in a laptop...

[John Doe @ May 18th 2006 12:56AM]

Wonder how these chips stack up against the Core 2 Duos due out this fall or was it Summer...whatever. Intel?s initial est for the Core Duo were a bit hyped but not by much. If the same it true about the Core 2 chips AMD may still remain in second place in the laptop market. We?ll see.

[The JimP @ May 18th 2006 1:02AM]

Alright guys, here's the real deal. AMD uses on-die memory controllers for every 64bit CPU they make. They've even changed the manufacturing process for their non-64bit CPUs in the higher scale. This means there is no FSB to bottleneck the system at the motherboard. RAM runs at the speed of the CPU.

Intel hasn't mastered this technology yet, but the news is that they've got a sort of working prototype. Until Intel gets it to market AMD will always rule the roost.

Now, couple zero motherboard bottleneck with dual core technology and you will see the same performance difference that have been demonstrated between comperable Intel CPUs and AMD-64 CPUs when you compare dual core CPUs in the same manner. Until Intel gets with the program AMD has the performance game in the bag. Plain and simple.

My big question is, what socket is the dual core? I wonder if I can get one for my lappy... That might be worth voiding the warranty. Hmmmm...

[MartyMcFly @ Feb 16th 2007 5:32PM]

Replying to the "The JimP @ May 18th 2006 1:02AM" entry and to ll of the "niv" entries:

Fellas -- you forgot to list the info for the Flux Capacitor. How many jigawatts does it take for you two to get psyched up for each others twinkies?

You guys need to get a life and get some action (and I'm not talking about on "to catch a predator")

[John Doe @ May 18th 2006 1:05AM]

"for normal usage it probably wont matter, but for gaming you know who will take the cake.....AMD."

I doubt it. Benchmarks at Anand basically showed that the Core Duo kept pretty good pace with the standard Athlon X2's. These being desktop chips. No doubt the Turion X2?s are simply scaled back desktop chip with better power management. My money is on the Core Duo still retaining the overall performance crown at this point. Also ignoring the fact that the Core 2 is prob less then 5 months away but then again what is AMD's short term road map? Do they have any other mobile chips on the horizon?

[SRD @ May 18th 2006 1:37AM]

Quote6. I
As far as performance per watt... I don't think that people really focus on that... When you go to buy a laptop, you look for the features you want, and performance per watt is usually not one of them, because it's unlikely that the small difference between these 2 chips will effect battery life much... not as much as the other features at least... I have a 2.6ghz P4 HT laptop that only gets about 3 hours of battery life, I know other laptops with similar performance that get much more battery life.. It's the 17" screen, video card, etc.. that make the big difference.

This whole statement makes absolutely no sence. Performance per watt is exactly what you want in a laptop. Thats why the centrino was invented people want a effcient fast CPU that gets great battery life. Thats while all mobile chipsets are catered to performance per watt. and as for you saying you have a p4 17in laptop that gets 3 hours batter life. I call bull thats impossible. since every other p4 17in laptop gets 1-1.5 hours battery life. i have two centrinos one asus 17in laptop that gets about 3 hours which is much much more efficient than a p4 and a 14.1 in centrino that get a max of 4 hours. now these are made for battery life and you are trying to say your p4 gets 3 hours. please where do you get this crap.

I love amd desktop chips but intel has them beat in laptops and they will till amds next complete overhaul. intel just has a better chipset and cpu going for them.

[anon @ May 18th 2006 2:05AM]

How can a 2.0GHz processor faster than a 3.xGHz processor? If someone could explain it to me, that would be great. Thank you.

[SwiftBlue @ May 18th 2006 2:10AM]

Number 11?

You must be running some crazy cluttered machines with old batteries. Seriously. 1-1.5 hours for a P4 laptop? I get 4-6 hours battery for my Toshiba Satellite 40, which has the 17"er. It all depends on other interior parts, such as the video card and memory.

Also, talking preformance per watt. How much power does it take to run a standard intel memory controller? Add that to the equation, and wouldn't AMD have it just matched, or slightly better? (Since AMD includes theirs on-die, it must be added to the cpu consumption. Intel can claim that it's not the cpu's power, it's the memory controllers power, but think about it, it would make more sense the other way. Of course, not for marketing.

[niv @ May 18th 2006 2:11AM]

First off, most of you simply don't understand the complexity of these processors, but benchmarks could appease your thirst for "knowledge".

AMD and Intel are peers in this business and you should know why. Believe it or not, you are going to get what you want from either one, but how much you want to pay is up to you. Since when have you seen companies like ATmel or Microchip manufacturing processors meant to drive an entire computer? This is going to be interesting, just don't make any assumptions yet because the vast majority of you understand almost nothing about the true technical aspect of these semiconductors.

[Yem @ May 18th 2006 2:52AM]

"How can a 2.0GHz processor faster than a 3.xGHz processor?"

With the same architecture (same manufacturer and model range), it can't. But if you're comparing AMD to Intel it can. The "Ghz" speed is just the number of "cycles" the chip completes per second. If one chip can DO MORE per cycle than another one, then it can get MORE STUFF DONE per second over all - ie faster.

A chip that runs at 2Ghz and does 20 ops per cycle is going to be faster (and hopefully cooler) than one that runs at 4Ghz and only does 8 ops per cycle.

[niv @ May 18th 2006 2:57AM]

That also depends on the instruction set--only some of the instructions take the same number of cycles to complete. Things like GOTOs or subroutine calls make take slightly longer.

[niv @ May 18th 2006 2:59AM]

*may take slightly longer.

AMD has a reputation of making their instruction sets extremely efficient and relevant to the chips that they produce. I wonder where we will be seeing improvements in speed or efficiency (or both).

[Keaton @ May 18th 2006 3:03AM]

Amd's new Turion X2 is a better buy in my mind. When 64 bit Vista finally comes out you will be able to run it on a notebook with a Turion X2 but not a Core Duo...(Intel Core duos are not capable of 64 bit computations) looking into the future, A notebook with a Turion X2 processor is a steal...

#9 The Turion X2 I think is the new Socket S1 638 pin infrastructure so good luck putting it into your current notebook. :-) If you wanna check it out go to this website.
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_13909_13911,00.html

[Jeff @ May 18th 2006 7:02AM]

Yeah, I'm running a Turion X2 laptop now myself. I got it specifically because I wanted 64 bit. I ain't really using it right now, but I will someday :)

I kinda doubt most people really even utilize both cores on these dual-core CPU's anyway. How many of you are actually doing something like playing games and encoding video at the same time? It's rare that I ever have to do two CPU-intensive tasks at once (I multitask, but it's usually just a few apps running in the background without doing much), so I'm perfectly fine with my X2.

[Jeff @ May 18th 2006 7:04AM]

Woops, I ain't running an X2, just a regular old Turion 64 (the ML-32). Oh well, still 64 bit :)

[TZK @ May 18th 2006 7:20AM]

aazp , you sound gay.

[chris @ May 18th 2006 8:18AM]

So is AMD releasing them right now? If so, when will we actually see laptops that use them? If I remember correctly, it was a few months before the major manufacturers (Dell, HP, Asus) started releasing models using Core Duos.

[Ken @ May 18th 2006 9:38AM]

I want dual core because my pc constantly slows to a crawl when some background process starts. I would want quad core for the same reason.

Anyone running any Norton program knows what I'm talking about.

[willyjsimmons @ May 18th 2006 10:17AM]

Intel already has a quad-core.

Intel has already tested fab at 45nm.

Intel has already tested fab at 32nm.

Sorry AMD.

And 64bit.......jeeez.

[JeffS @ May 18th 2006 10:20AM]

I just want to know if I'll be able to swap the X2 into my laptop that's currently using a regular Turion.

Anybody know?

-Jeff

[gumbo koontz @ May 18th 2006 12:44PM]

The chips doesnt matter, what matters is your hard drive. Get a SATA-II with 8-16 mb cache 7200-10,000 RPM harddrive. This is the fastest bottleneck you can get. That harddrive can do 300mhz three time "faster" than your regular EIDE-100 drive, I guess. Or much faster. You will also need a mother board that can support SATA-II harddrive. There is a slower SATA-I, forget it. Maybe there is a much faster SATA on the way like 500MHZ or something. Hard drives are the bottleneck of the whole scheme. Get a spyware doctor and a AOL privacy wall. You are home free! Spyware bogs down everything.

[gumbo koontz @ May 18th 2006 1:00PM]

get sata-II HARDDRIVE!

[gumbo koontz @ May 18th 2006 1:15PM]

WHERE IS MY ANOTHER POSTING?

[gumbo koontz @ May 18th 2006 1:19PM]

CHIPS RUN CIRCLES AROUND HARDDRIVES. GET SATA-II WITH 8-16MB CACHE, BUT CHIPS WILL STILL RUN CIRCLES ALBEIT AT A SLOWER RATE. SATA-II CAN MOVE 300MHZ "THREE TIMES FASTER" THAN MOST OF YOUR ATA,EIDE100 HARDDRIVES.

[gumbo koontz @ May 18th 2006 1:23PM]

SATA-II HARDDRIVES IS ALMOST AS FAST AS YOUR DDR. IF YOU HAVE SATA-II, YOU CAN GRADUATE TO DDR2 OR DDR3. YOU WILL NEED MOTHERBOARD THAT CAN SUPPORT SATA-II HARDDRIVES. THERE IS TWO SATA TYPES ONE IS OLDER SATA AND THE OTHER IS NEWER SATA-II. BE SURE YOUR NEW MOTHERBOARD CAN SUPPORT SATA-II (3GHZ). MANY MOTHERBOARDS SUPPORT ONLY SATA (1.5GHZ) WHICH IS A TAD FASTER THAN ATA-100 IDE. NOT WORTH IT. TAKE SATA-II .

[gumbo koontz @ May 18th 2006 1:26PM]

MANY THANKS Y'ALL BYE

[gumbo koontz @ May 18th 2006 2:00PM]

i SEARCHED THE WEB FOR HYPOTHETICAL SATA-III. YEAH, THERE WILL BE SATA-III ON THE WAY IN 2007. IT WILL DOUBLE SATA-II. IT WILL BE AT 600 MHZ. WOW!!!! WE WILL HAVE A COMPUTER RENAISSANCE COMING UP!! HARDDRIVES MATTER THE MOST!!!

[gumbo koontz @ May 18th 2006 2:04PM]

WHY DONT AMD OR INTEL BUY SEAGATE OR WESTERN DIGITAL ? AMD CAN PUT CPU INSIDE HARDDRIVE AS WELL AS DDR2-5. FUTURE COMPUTERS WILL LOOK LIKE A DAMN HARDDRIVE . NO CABLES. AMD CAN POUR MONEY IN R&D TO BOOST SATA-IV, V, VI, VII AND SO ON. UNTIL HARDDRIVES ARE ON PAR WITH CPU AND DDR5. THERE WILL BE NO MORE MOTHERBOARDS. EVERYTHING WIL BE IN HARDDRIVES. FLASH WILL NEVER REPLACE HARDDRIVES, I REALIZE NOW.

[Keaton @ May 18th 2006 5:13PM]

Gosh... Why are we talking about hard drives... Isn't this post about the new AMD X2??? It is true tho' hard drive and video card technology currently lags WAY behind processors and such.

Jeff on #26 I don't think you can swap processors out. The new X2 is based off the new S1 socket which has 638 pins. Turion's currently run off of the 754 pin socket design. The new 638 pin X2 will not fit into boards with 754 pin sockets.

Does anybody know a notebook that supports SATA-II Hard drives? A notebook with a mobile X2, 15" screen, video card and SATA-II hard drive would be soooo cool.

[Oshi @ May 18th 2006 5:36PM]

"The new X2 is based off the new S1 socket which has 638 pins. Turion's currently run off of the 754 pin socket design. The new 638 pin X2 will not fit into boards with 754 pin sockets."

Dammit! I was wondering the same thing. Good thing I grabbed the ML-44(2.4GHz) off the bat then, if I'm in for the long haul with it...

[gumbo koontz @ May 20th 2006 5:15PM]

If you put everything on motherboards or pc cards into the harddrives, you can bring it with you and plug it in your car dashboard, your office desk, home center, cafes with coin-operated monitors, motels with coin-operated monitors, etc, etc, etc, If you lose it, It has gps that can be located pronto. No more notebooks or desktops. All you need is a frigiing harddrive with all the works inside. It will cost only $200-500 with the top prices for gaming nutcases. I love games, too. Recycling headaches mostly solved!!!!
Oh by the way, you can go to Kinkos with yuor harddrive and plop coins into printers. No more expensive ink cartridges or printers. All printers will be topnotch. No more printer cheapies that lasted only 50 pages before breaking all hell apart. !!! You can go to UPS stores, too. You can go shopping with your harddrives to pay for stuff. You will not need to plug your harddrive becase you can have radio (wireless) RFID or whatever to do your business anywhere. Your harddive can keep you tracked for your safety by cybercops if you elect to do so anytime you want . you can turn it off or on for private moments or whatever. If you feel endangered, you can activate your cybercop buddy, as you run your adventures.

[gumbo koontz @ May 20th 2006 5:29PM]

if your harddrive crash, you just go buy another harddrive and download your same configurations at the store where you bought your drive . YOu can go backup your harddrive at the store where it can be transferred to a central server very quickly through fiber optics unlike your slowpokey cable or dsl. The store can afford fiberoptic technology all the way to Microsoft or whatever. You will no longer need to plop CD to install XP. Just buy that smart harddrive with all the works inside and install everything or divide into more harddrives or whatever. You will have options I dont care as long as there is a CPU and RAM and chipsets, and um....video audio and wireless and arrrgh>...... USB, fans, powersupply, inside the harddrive. I dontneed to worrry about ink cartridges, screens, cases. I may prefer to carry my own keyboard and mouse, I guess. Public keyboards and mouses can be germ-infested from public usage. Yuck! I dont need DVD players. or HD-DVD or Blueray whatever.

[temp @ May 27th 2006 9:32AM]

gumbo koontz,

Smart hard drives? Fiber Optics straight to Redmond? No need for install cd's, DVD players or any optical drives at all...

And then once everyone's stopped taking you seriously you just had to throw in a little diatribe about the germ-infested public.

You need to stfu.

Thanks, that is all.

[MartyMcFly @ Feb 16th 2007 5:32PM]

My reply to the "The JimP @ May 18th 2006 1:02AM" entry anf the "niv" entries:

JimP -- you forgot about the flux capacitor. How many jigawatts does it take for a geekhead like you to make niv hot for your twinkie?

[Jason Taylor @ Mar 9th 2007 7:57PM]

You don't need to make fun of someone else, just because you are too stupid to know what he is talking about. By the way, someone who brags about getting action probably is a virgin. How 'bout you get a life instead of making fun of others.

[Sammy @ Feb 20th 2007 9:39PM]

I bought an HP Pavilion Notebook dv6000 series. I got it with the AMD Turion x2. Has anyone seen or heard of this model getting horrible battery life and heating up? With the original 6-cell battery, i got about an hour discharge time doing much anything. Whether it was playing a game or watching a movie, to just leaving a text document open, my processors run at the same speed. I now have the 12-cell, but that really is only like a double improvement.

[Bela @ May 12th 2007 10:34PM]

"I bought an HP Pavilion Notebook dv6000 series. I got it with the AMD Turion x2. Has anyone seen or heard of this model getting horrible battery life and heating up?"

SAMMY: I just bought the same PC, and yes--I fried my bacon and eggs on the touch pad this morning. heh. Just a joke, but barely. This mama gets HOT. I just got it and haven't tested the battery life. I'm taking it back.

Bela

[Odie @ Jun 9th 2007 12:30AM]

does the x2 mean that there are 2 800mhz processors or 2 1.6ghz processors

[jeff @ Jun 3rd 2007 12:17AM]

Odie x2 means there are two 1.6 ghz processesor.
My story:
I went with the hype and bought a laptop with core 2 duo at best buy with of course the intel(barf) GPU, brought it home went throught the motions did all the setup up crap got it with 120 GB HDD, 1GB ddr2 mem, and did I mention intel(barf) GPU? oh I did sorry there is a point to all this madness, install a dx9 3d game I got back to the bestbuy in the time it took me to make a 10 degree turn, I wirelessly conected to my router(internet) on my laptop for a day, went on circuit city bought an acer with amd x2 with ati radeon x1***, got offline return everything to the package paid a whopping 300+ smakers($) for restocking and off to circuit city I went.. this point buy amd it is just better, lots of compatible chipset, intel has limited integrated chipset which mean in order to get the full potential (for laptops anyway), it has to be intel everything(lan,GPU,Chipset,modem,audio(i don't think they make audio but if they do then so be it lol) you get the point) .... best $300 buck I ever lost... AMD definately the smarter choice

[art @ Aug 20th 2007 1:55PM]

hello there!
I'm buying a notebook for mobile use since i'm a frequent traveler. I need it for interior design planning (auto-cadd, adobe, coreldraw) & presentation. Can anyone tell me if an AMD Turion 64 x2 a better buy than Intel Core 2 Duo or Macbook?

[art @ Aug 20th 2007 2:00PM]

hi there!
i need a notebook for my work, interior design planning (auto-cadd, adobe, coreldraw) since i'm out most of the time (travel). Is a notebook w/ AMD Turion 64 x2 a good buy than Intel Core 2 Duo or Macbook?

[art @ Aug 24th 2007 2:59PM]

hello there!
I'm buying a notebook for mobile use since i'm a frequent traveler. I need it for interior design planning (auto-cadd, adobe, coreldraw) & presentation. Can anyone tell me if an AMD Turion 64 x2 a better buy than Intel Core 2 Duo or Macbook?

[Joe Poindexter @ Dec 10th 2007 10:58PM]

I have an HP Pav with turion 64x2 processor. The OS is Vista Home Premium. When I try to install norton endpoint protection 11 if will stop at the beginning say it was unable to install due to the processor and advise me to call the manufacturer. Is this new or a known bug.
Thank you

Joe