Athlon 64 2000+ at 8-watts outperforms, draws less energy than Atom
By Darren Murph 
posted August 17th 2008 5:46AM
posted August 17th 2008 5:46AM
AMD's going through some rough times, no doubt about it, but for fanboys of the CPU maker (wait, do CPU fanboys still exist?) here's your feel-good story of the year. The always-thorough Tom's Hardware has pit Intel's 1.6GHz Atom 230 processor against AMD's Athlon 64 2000+, and the results just might surprise you. The 1GHz Athlon (with a core voltage of 0.90 volts and a power draw of just 8 watts) managed to best the aforementioned Atom in both energy consumption and processing power tests. The gurus at Tom's credited the more modern 790G platform and the highly efficient K8 architecture as big players in the Athlon's strong showing, finally deeming said chip "more economical, faster and quieter" than the Atom. We know you're in disbelief -- good thing there are 14 pages of proof waiting in the read link.[Thanks, Carl]
Since these tested the desktop performance, Its understandable as different hardware (especially for the A64) could play a role in this, like other saids chipsets might be the key here
The Atom's strong point and selling point is for mobile devices not so much about small-factor pc's as that might of been intel's just "money" in a potential market, as for VIA's Issiah (aka Nano...) its not out at the current moment so who knows.
AMD, if you have a card that can out perform the only company in the mobile devices market, you might want to throw that chip into R&D to get miniaturized
This just shows how kingly AMD used to be back in the day; hell, even I was an AMD fanboy back then.
But nowadays the heart of my computer beats to those Intel tones, in a Core 2 Duo configuration
Didn't AMD announce a netbook, with an AMD chipset? Maybe it uses the aforementioned chip, or a scaled down version? Here is the link to engadget's post:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/03/amd-jumps-into-the-netbook-game-challenges-opponents-to-a-duel/
Wait..... Tom's Hardware actually said something good about AMD? Did Intel decide they didn't need to pay them off or something? What is the world coming to!?
The majority of the credit goes to AMD's ATI chipset division. They produced a chipset that takes less than 1W in power. Intel's chipset by comparison takes up 22W by itself. The chipset is the set of supporting chips other than the CPU. Plus the ATI chipset also has better graphics capabilities than the Intel, in that it can run Windows Vista's Aero interface if you were suicidal enough to try. The ATI acquisition is now starting to pay off, and once they are fully in the swing watch out Intel. Also this particular version of Athlon 64 is a special low-power recipe, you won't be able to get a regular Athlon 64 down to this power consumption as these voltages and currents won't even run them.
Maybe its because amd's northbridge is in the processor?
Hmm, the AMD is three times larger and has nearly 2 1/2 times as many transistors. It also draws 8 watts compared to 4 of the Atom. It's more correct to say its savings come not so much from the CPU but the chipset that surrounds it. The system as a whole is more energy efficient but the CPU is less. So buy it on the basis of the system, and its slight performance edge not the core CPU.
AMD has already done something similar to this with the Geode NX 2001 based on the K7 Athlon Thoroughbred core. As usual, AMD's marketing department has botched another one. I'm not surprised that no one has heard of this one. Back in the day when the AMD Athlon and Athlon 64 handily trounced the Intel P4 on performance, power consumption, and value, AMD was not able to capitalize on their advantages. Likewise their past mobile offerings were lukewarm at best. Many non-techies know "Centrino" but have never heard of "Turion"
While Intel had built strong brand identities behind "Pentium," "Core," and "Centrino," AMD's "Turion," "Athlon," and "Opteron" have no such power. In the next couple of months, my last A64 system will probably be retired and all my systems will be Intel Core 2 and Xeon based
Wasn't a big surprise for me, K8 was never bad, it's just outdated.
The problem I see, is that the 2000+ will still be produced in 65nm and won't be that profitable like the Atom for Intel. Though I hope that it will help to gain AMD's market share.
Wait did I read that correctly that they were using the AM2 socket version of the chip? How much more power would the X2 be or the slightly older 939 socket models?
I wonder how the 1ghz Athlon compares to an Intel 1.06ghz Core (2?) Solo ULV in terms of power and performance. I bet the Solo win on both counts.
Without a doubt, the Atom is garbage in a desktop setting.
What about a Core 2 Solo or Duo clocked at 8 watts? how well does that perform compared to the A64?
Uh...is this a big surprise to people ? I'll admit the power consumption thing was s bit of a shock but even that really shouldn't have been. Atom is built on the Netburst architecture, a la Pentium 4. We've known for ~5 years that AMD64 outperformed P-IV clock for clock...and was actually more energy efficient too. This is the same thing as Pentium D vs. AMD X2. Of course X2 was superior, it was the same matchup in the underlying technology. So reincarnating Netburst as Atom shouldn't be expected to be all that different.
Another poster made a good point though that Atoms Hyperthreading capabilities will give it an edge in multitasking. And yet another poster made an excellent point that benchmark tests rarely give you a good picture of real world performance so much as they give you a look at POTENTIAL peak performance.
But what does all this really mean ? I think more than meaning something bad about Intel/Atom it means something good for AMD. Bobcat, Atoms erstwhile AMD counterpart, will be based on the AMD64 architecture. So if AMD can do as good a job reincarnating that as Intel did for Atom, Bobcat should be pretty competitive...possibly even superior. Which can only be a GOOD thing for us consumers...
Yeah, no. Atom is NOT built on the Netburst architecture. The only things implemented into Atom from Netburst is HTT and the P4 bus.
The video shows:
- Warhawk running from HDD
- no PKG version
- no WH disc while WH is running
- Motorstorm running as proxy disc
- legal way
I wont explain the details here till the project is finished 100%, also cuz many devs want to take a look at first and not get it patched that fast. I can say that if all will work like I want it to you'll need:
- game dump of the game you want to play from HDD (possible you need a special one)
- one (any) original bd game
- 2x minimum 60GB HDD's (illegal way - it worx but its not allowed in most countrys - its working like a packed game on psp memory stick)
OR
-1 60GB HDD + original disc (legal way - no need to be inserted while playing)
Im using newest firmware PAL 60GB SKU. 3 games tested yet - working.
Games which should be possible from the knowledge i got yet:
- Warhawk
- Motorstorm
- Resistance
- GT5
- COD3
- ...
I cant check more atm, as I dont have else here. The final way will be a bit different than the video shows. Even there are 2 different ways then to do it, thats because there are 2 different groups of games. One can be done with 1 HDD but then you need the original disk of the game.
all in all its a hack for rich ppl as you need to have 2 big HDD's to store all games on it, which you want to play. 2 games would require actually about 50-100GB on both HDD's. if you have much space on pc hdd thats no prob as you can just backup and rewrite the data on HDD's.
i dont support piracy, this is just to safe your disks
THIS VIDEO IS JUST A PROOF OF CONCEPT - NOT A FINISHED PROJECT!!!
that means:
- proof that disk games can run from hdd without having the disk in drive
download the video here:
hidden link no? about this
better quality vid will come when i get new hdd + repaired hdtv. the clicking which sounds like keyboard typing in the background is just the cam auto focus.
I hope you see theres no hidden PKG (game list is shown), no hidden disk (i insert motorstorm). At the end of the video i just wanted to show its no test unit --> watch the settings.
Sorry for bad TV quality, my HDTV just exploded and i need to use SDTV for 2 weeks now
if there are any questions, you can ask but i dont say ill answer all.
***UPDATE***
dont ask stupid questions which are already answered on teh forum or in the mainpost, thanks!
how do u delte comments worung section i posted this in
i have used and owned both and like what the AMD can do..
generaly better bang for you buck!
and i think ....
intel inside... idiot outside!
some of the bleading edge stuff intel flog can be flaky especialy with there motherboards.
windows cant use 64bit chips anyway(what a waste)
another reason Linux is better!!
Man, what about us the hackintosh rebels?
One huge advantage of the Atom is the Splashtop Linux that boots from the BIOS in 5 seconds! Nothing else offers a boot that fast!
Wow...that's a surprise to me. Plus AMD 64 2000 are pretty inexpensive now as well! :-D
Yea, AMD 64 2000 are very inexpensive, so inexpensive I can't find anywhere that sells one now unfortunately. Anyone know where I can find one of these? Trying to build a small firewall that takes little room and requires little to no fans.
AMD has great hardware I LOVE my Phenom 9500+ but sometimes they have a way about screwing things up. I guess you could say I'm one of those fanboys but in a less extreme sense of the term.
Intel has to stop trying. Whenever they announce something supposedly revolutionary, AMD beats them on it without making big claims about it. OTOH, Intel seems to beat out AMD most of the rest of the time.