AMD Socket-AM2: Same Performance, Faster Memory, Lower Power
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 23, 2006 12:14 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Outside of DDR2 support, there are a couple of other features that are introduced with Socket-AM2. The new AM2 CPUs now all support AMD's Virtualization (Pacifica), although we're still fairly short on ways to truly evaluate the performance of both AMD's and Intel's Virtualization support - other than to tell you that it works and can be quite useful when supported by software.
As we've already reported, the Socket-AM2 heatsink retention mechanism has been redesigned potentially requiring new heatsinks depending on the configuration of your old Socket-939 unit. The new heatsink tray is significantly sturdier as it now uses four mounting screws compared to two with the old Socket-939 trays. AMD continues to have a far superior heatsink mount to Intel's from an end-user perspective, as installing a heatsink is as simple as can be on Socket-939 and AM2 compared to the unnecessary complexity of Intel's LGA-775 heatsink mount.
Socket-939
Socket-939
Socket-AM2 (note the four mounting screws)
Socket-AM2
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rADo2 - Tuesday, May 23, 2006 - link
K8L is just a marketing, nothing else. Have you seen K8L CPU? No? AMD is about 2x slower than upcomming Conroe, so they have to spread some fud, to keep their fanboys happy...This is the magical performance I am speaking about, AMD cannot come even close:
Intel Conroe @ 3.9GHz: SuperPI 1M - 12.984s
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...ad.php?t=99...">http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...ad.php?t=99...
AMD FX-57 @ 4.2GHz: SuperPI 1M - 21.992s
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=100...">http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=100...
I own X2 4400+ myself (it was a good choice in 6/2005), but within last few months AMD is a very bad choice, as for the price of quite obsolete singelcore AMD you can buy dualcore Intel D930 @ 65nm, and later Conroe. I think only AMD fanboys are buying AMD now, AMD has the worst price/value ratio, and Conroe will only make this gap wider.
Griswold - Tuesday, May 23, 2006 - link
Oh and yea, I run superpi all day long because its such a valuable application that earns me money! :PrADo2 - Tuesday, May 23, 2006 - link
SuperPI tells A LOT about gaming performance ;)mesyn191 - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link
SuperPi tells you nothing except how well a CPU runs SuperPi, its not a benchmark.Its also about as in cache and branchless as your gonna get BTW so the performance increases you can get on it by simply scaling clockspeed are impossible as well.
Questar - Tuesday, May 23, 2006 - link
SuperPi is an outlier in Conroe benchmarks.Griswold - Tuesday, May 23, 2006 - link
O rly?Griswold - Tuesday, May 23, 2006 - link
Blablabla...absolsp - Tuesday, May 23, 2006 - link
As suspected, not much of performance gain. Happy with my existing AMD setup.tony215 - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link
likewise, I will be sticking with my 939 venice set-up until conroe is released. Even then, I will wait for some more independent conroe test/reviews before going with Intel.Locutus465 - Tuesday, May 23, 2006 - link
After reading reviews of the new chipset offerings from nVidia and ATI, personally I'm glad I'm running an nForce 4 s393 board. Seems to me the new AM2 chipsets and boards are going to need some maturing before they get good. The new solutions were *not* deffinitivly better than what is out there for s939. In fact, nVidia's offering in my opinion was particularly lack luster in terms of actual performance (compared to the older nForce 4 platform).