AMD Athlon II X4 620 & 630: The First $99 Quad Core CPU
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 16, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
SYSMark 2007 Performance
Our journey starts with SYSMark 2007, the only all-encompassing performance suite in our review today. The idea here is simple: one benchmark to indicate the overall performance of your machine.
If we only look at the AMD numbers in this chart, there's a pretty nice lineup going on here. The Athlon II X2 250 is slower than the Athlon II X4 620/630, which is slower than the Phenom II X3 730 and all are slower than the Phenom II X4 955. The performance lines up with the pricing, so all is good.
The problem with these cheap quad-cores has always been that you give up a lot in order to get four cores at a low price. The Athlon II X4 appears to break the mold however. The Athlon II X4 620 is priced at $99 and it performs like a $99 CPU. With the exception of the Core 2 Duo E7500 whose high clock speed makes it do unsually well here, the 620 is balanced. You get a reasonably high clock speed and enough cache to be competitive, both at a good price.
You'll see in the individual tests below that performance varies between competitive and underwhelming depending on the task. Anything that can take advantage of four cores does well, otherwise the smaller L2s of the Athlon II X4 hurt it a bit.
In applications that aren't well threaded, you'll see the Athlon II X4 perform less than stellar - but the same is true for all lower end quad-core CPUs. Even the Q8200 is outperformed by the E6300 here. Situations like this are validation for Intel's aggressive turbo modes on Lynnfield.
Any strenuous video encoding however will seriously favor the Athlon II X4. Here we find the $99 620 tying the Core 2 Quad Q8200, and the 630 outperforming it - all at a lower price.
We're back to needing higher clock speeds and larger caches to compete. Being a quad-core processor isn't easy.
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silverblue - Thursday, September 17, 2009 - link
Except for you I suppose?Imagine you own a car with a turbocharger. When you accelerate, the turbo just happens to kick in. Is it illegal for the manufacturer to have put the turbo in there in the first place?
I agree it's not a completely parallel analogy due to the fact that a turbocharger provides a free power boost from otherwise wasted energy, but the point is that it's a part of the design and people have, and always will, accept that.
How are the Lynnfield's results false? It clearly states in the nomenclature that the Lynnfield possesses a turbo mode designed so that the processor operates at a higher clock speed for a stated number of cores dependent on the load being imposed upon it. Imagine if a new SIMD instruction set appears and only AMD processors can use it, and software is accelerated as a result - is this illegal?
I feel my intelligence slipping away as I try to reason with you.
the zorro - Thursday, September 17, 2009 - link
turbo overclocking is just overclocking, nothing else.overclocked results are illegal if you try to present them as stock speed results.
you can call overclocking 'banana' if you want, but still that banana is illegal
Kaleid - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
There is nothing illegal about it. Repeating it doesn't make it so.silverblue - Thursday, September 17, 2009 - link
But they haven't! Why can't you see this?Let me put it another way. In single core mode, with turbo enabled, the i5 750 is clocked at 3.2GHz. The Phenom II X4 965 BE is STILL clocked at 3.4GHz and it STILL loses. And guess what, add turbo to more cores and they all slow down, thus making the 965 BE look even worse in most situations as its clock speed gap increases even further.
I've read over those 3.8GHz results. No turbo mode (not illegal, then!). i5 still wins most of the benches. Granted, some of the tests are Intel-optimised applications, but a) it's not Intel's fault that AMD optimisations are lacking from specific programs, and b) in games with no specific optimisations for either architecture, the Lynnfield is still going to win because even with turbo enabled, the i5 750 is STILL clocked lower than the 965 BE and it's STILL equalling or beating AMD's strongest CPU.
End of.
the zorro - Thursday, September 17, 2009 - link
don't fool yourself by over-thinking to justify an illegal activity.turbo overclocking is just overclocking.
and phenom 2 955 beats core i5 750 at stocks speeds, that is lynnfield without overclocking.
lynnfield is a failure, because when overclocked to 4ghz temps are almost 100C. and power compsumption skycket.
phenom 2 overclocked to 4ghz is cool at 55C.
the zorro - Thursday, September 17, 2009 - link
if you overclock phenom 2 955 the same 600 mhz that lynnfield is overclocked, it wipes and mops the floor with lynnfield 750.strikeback03 - Thursday, September 17, 2009 - link
Umm, check your numbers again. Unless you want to claim a 955 at 3.8GHz would perform differently than a 965 at 3.8 GHz. See here: http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3639&am...">http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3639&am...All the 3.8GHz numbers are clock-for-clock, with no turbo (and no HT since the 750 doesn't have it) and the only test where the 965 tops the 750 is the Lightwave3D portion of the multitasking test. The 750 does beat the 965 in the overall multitasking test.
the zorro - Thursday, September 17, 2009 - link
as you can see, at stock speed, when lynnfield 750 has turbo overclocking off, then phenom 2 965 annihilates lynnfield.look at all the tests.
strikeback03 - Friday, September 18, 2009 - link
Well, yes, a 965@3.4GHz does beat a 750@2.66GHz, AMD's architecture isn't that far behind in most cases. But the only ones likely to leave the clocks stock are OEMs, who will also leave the turbo mode which seems to be the bane of your existence turned on. In stock configuration for both processors and looking at only the tests Gary conducted in the above article, the 965 carries advantages of 10%, 19%, -8%, -2%, -6%, 7%, and 12% over the 750. Using pricegrabber, Newegg has the best prices for each right now, at $199.99 for the 750 and $245 for the 965BE. This is a 22.5% difference in price, the performance gain is not that high in any of the tests. This is also ignoring all the tests in Anand's i5/i7 launch article, the majority of which the 750 topped the 965 in.mdk77777 - Thursday, September 17, 2009 - link
You buy a new Computer every five minutes?Really, I5 750 started shipping like a few days ago.
Competitive product, but requires a new MB.
Declare the end of the war after 1 Second of battle doesn't make much sense.