Athlon Socket AM2 Review

NerdMaster writes "Hardware Secrets has just posted an Athlon 64 X2 5000+ review, one of the first AMD CPUs to support the new socket AM2. It runs at 2.4 GHz, has two 512 KB L2 memory caches (one for each core) and supports DDR2 memories." However, many are still predicting an end to AMD's dominance in the market thanks to Intel's Conroe.

[offtopic] 'Print' version is split into 10 pages.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Hardware secrets - you suck.

10 pages not saying very much is (irritating, but) acceptable, but when you split the print article [hardwaresecrets.com] into 10 pages, you've crossed line from greediness to stupidity.

(fires up IE). Oh nice, and there's advertisments on each of the print pages too. How is that supposed to be printable?

Ignore these benchmarks

[Enderandrew]

They actually tested the 939 rigs with 2 gigs of memory, and the new rig with 1 gig of memory. They said they didn't have 2 sticks of DDR2 for the AM2 rig, but then they should have only used 1 stick in the 939 rig.

When benchmarking, you should try to keep all test systems as comparable as possible. I really am disappointed by what I consider a glaring oversight.

Seriously, for shame.

Welcome, Intel

[eebra82]

I for one welcome Intel to the top performance game. I used to be all happy about AMD gradually taking over the market ever since their first Athlon slot CPU:s. This has also caused the pricing war significantly since AMD already knew they kicked Intel in most parts of all reviews.

Now that Intel is back, we can finally see some heavy competition between the two. The Core Duo is a superb processor and I am eagerly awaiting my MacBook to arrive and I can't wait to see the second release of the Core Duo.

Remember what it was like a few years ago? I used to follow the price charts of CPU:s for drops and they were a lot more frequent than they are today. So now it's easy to say that we should get the same competition all over again and I am quite sure that Hector Ruiz at AMD has a backup plan ready to be enrolled this year.

So once again, welcome, Intel!

Re:Welcome, Intel

[chrismcdirty]

You feel like you're overpaying for Intel, but you didn't ever feel like you were overpaying for PowerPC in the past? I have a feeling that if Apple had used AMD chips, you'd still be paying the same price, but more of it would go directly into Apple's pockets.

Buying PCs isn't as exciting as it used to be

[Anonymous Coward]

My 1.66GHz Athlon XP 2000+ does the job well and is still very often limited by memory (1GB) and harddisk bottlenecks. That's a 3 year old system, and CPU+Board cost only $140 back then. Am I really expected to pay that price several times over to replace a reliably working system and get less than a 2x performance increase?

Re:Welcome, Intel

[NutscrapeSucks]

You feel like you're overpaying for Intel, but you didn't ever feel like you were overpaying for PowerPC in the past?

Speculation was that Apple paid under $50 for a G4 CPU.

For a large OEM like Dell, I doubt there's any huge difference between Intel and AMD pricing. Apple however is pretty much only using the luxury Core Duo parts, so they are probably spending a lot more money on CPUs and saving it elsewhere by using Intel chipsets and integrated video. If component costs were really a huge concern for Apple, they'd be shipping boxes with Celerons and Pentium-Ds. But with 20-30% profit margins, who cares?

Re:Socket consideration

[GiMP]

Don't forget the new memory. Usually they tend to change the memory when they change to socket as well, and the dual-memory boards are usually from PC Chips or other quality manufacturers, like ECS. Right now, my basement is full of EDO, SDRAM, DDR, DDR2, etc. Some ECC, some not, some motherboards don't work with ECC, some don't (officially) work without ECC. I have some older and more exotic memory as well.

Am I complaining? Not much, I understand it is necessary to improve the architecture. Nn the other hand it isn't fair to say that a processor upgrade is only a processor and motherboard. It is often the case that new RAM is required as well.

Re:Intel's roadmap to the Cornroe and beyond

[westyx]

See, I like comparisons which compare products that are actually out, because comparing product a with (hypothetical) product b inevitably ends up with "product b rocks! shame it isn't out yet. can't be bought. benchmarks will be x. probably. if everything works out"

It's totally fair. You could say that the upcoming amd chips *might* be better than what intel is rolling out now, but to say it isn't 'fair' smacks of fanboiism.

The Once and Never Champion

[Catbeller]

AMD has beaten Intel's offerings for, what, three years now, and STILL they can't get a break. Apple won't use them. Dell just this month tentatively offers AMD chips for their server line.

The chips are cheaper and are faster than Intel's. You couldn't tell from the press!

No matter what AMD does, the next line in this type of story is "But Intel's next CPU, expected in the year 2121, is expected to outperform AMD's best. Is AMD doomed? "