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
Intel’s Response: The Pentium E6300
AMD has two new dual-core chips priced at $87 and $102, both run at or around 3.0GHz and have a fair amount of cache. The Athlon II X2 250 has a 1MB L2 per core (2MB total) while the Phenom II X2 550 BE has a large 6MB L3 to share between its two cores. These are both very healthy sounding processors, borderline scary if you’re Intel.
The Pentium E6300
In the blue corner we have the new Pentium E6300. It’s a 45nm monolithic dual-core part, just like the Athlon II X2. It has a 2MB L2 cache also like the Athlon II X2, albeit shared between the two cores which is potentially an upside. Unlike previous Pentium for Desktop (that’s the official name) processors, the E6300 uses a 1066MHz FSB and it supports Intel’s VT. The problem? The E6300 only runs at 2.80GHz; AMD has a clock speed advantage.
In our first Phenom II review I talked about how AMD needs a clock speed advantage to compete. Compared to a large-cache Core 2, that’s very true, but the E6300 doesn’t have a healthy 6MB L2 for two cores. It’s only got 2MB. All of the sudden things aren’t looking so rosy for Intel.
An inherent advantage of Intel’s Core architecture is its 4-issue front end (which in some cases can behave like a 5-issue front end). The problem is feeding such a beast requires very fast memory access. The Pentium E6300 is still based on the same architecture as the Core 2 Duo, meaning it has no on-die memory controller. Rob it of a decent sized cache and its performance suffers. A quick look at Bench shows us that even an extra megabyte of cache helps tremendously:
| Processor | SYSMark 2007 Overall |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 (2.93GHz/3MB L2) | 173 |
| Intel Pentium E6300 (2.80GHz/2MB L2) | 158 |
Note that when Conroe first launched some parts (the Core 2 Duo E6300 funny enough) only had a 2MB L2. The problem is that was nearly three years ago; applications have grown in size and so have their demands from processors. What was acceptable back then is now not. I’d like to see Intel move its 3MB L2 caches down to these sub-$100 price points. But I’ll let the benchmarks decide whether or not it’s necessary.
| Processor | Clock Speed | L2 Cache | TDP | Price |
| Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 | 3.00GHz | 12MB | 95W | $316 |
| Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 | 2.83GHz | 12MB | 95W | $266 |
| Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 | 2.66GHz | 6MB | 95W | $213 |
| Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 | 2.50GHz | 6MB | 95W | $213 |
| Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 | 2.66GHz | 4MB | 95W | $183 |
| Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 | 2.50GHz | 4MB | 95W | $183 |
| Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 | 2.33GHz | 4MB | 95W | $163 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 | 3.33GHz | 6MB | 65W | $266 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 | 3.16GHz | 6MB | 65W | $183 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 | 3.00GHz | 6MB | 65W | $163 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 | 2.93GHz | 3MB | 65W | $133 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 | 2.80GHz | 3MB | 65W | $113 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E7300 | 2.66GHz | 3MB | 65W | $113 |
| Intel Pentium E6300 | 2.80GHz | 2MB | 65W | $84 |
| Intel Pentium E5400 | 2.70GHz | 2MB | 65W | $84 |
| Intel Pentium E5300 | 2.60GHz | 2MB | 65W | $74 |
| Intel Pentium E5200 | 2.50GHz | 2MB | 65W | $64 |
| Intel Pentium E2220 | 2.40GHz | 1MB | 65W | $64 |
| Intel Pentium E2200 | 2.20GHz | 1MB | 65W | $64 |
| Intel Celeron E1500 | 2.20GHz | 512KB | 65W | $53 |
| Intel Celeron E1400 | 2.00GHz | 512KB | 65W | $43 |
| Intel Celeron 450 | 2.20GHz | 512KB | 35W | $53 |
| Intel Celeron 440 | 2.00GHz | 512KB | 35W | $44 |
| Intel Celeron 430 | 1.80GHz | 512KB | 35W | $34 |
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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.