Athlon 64 X2 processors
Four different Athlon 64 X2 models should be available in June according to AMD, the Athlon 64 X2 4800+, 4600+, 4400+ and 4200+. We might be somewhat surprised by such a P-Rating.
Indeed, the Athlon 64 X2 4800+ brings doubled performances compared to an Athlon 64 4000+, so why has the P-Rating only improved by 20%? Simply because the test suite used by AMD to establish the P-Rating includes some multithreaded software and some that don’t. Of course, the P-Rating shows its limits here, because the Athlon 64 X2 4800+ is, in fact, an Athlon 64 X2 4000+ to 8000+ according to the applications’ scenarios.
The table below sums up the main characteristics of the 4 Athlon 64 X2, which differ one from another by the frequency and/or second level cache size of each core. We also reported the single core equivalent of these processors and the additional cost of the second core:
In short, and you probably already noticed this, a dual core processor costs on average twice as much as a single core processor with similar cache level and frequency, and it has a 20% higher P-Rating.
Of course AMD is capable of producing, with the same silicon wafer, if it reaches an equivalent yield, twice as few dual core processors. That explains why this price is justified, as well as the fact that AMD’s FAB30 has already reached its maximum capacity.
What is less clearly understood, is that the required entry ticket costs $573. It is expensive, and an 1.8 GHz Athlon 64 X2, 512 KB at 2x$149 (twice as much as an A64 3000+) would have been welcome. Unfortunately the P-Rating would have been 3600+ and AMD has apparently decided to, at least initially, have a higher dual core P-Rating than single core processors. This is the reason why no new single core processors will be released except for some Athlon 64 FX. We feel that this P-Rating policy is definitively unattractive.
Here is Intel’s policy for dual core processors:
This time it is difficult to speak of single core equivalents, except for the PEE 840,which corresponds to two Pentium 4 540. For other processors, there are, on the one hand Pentium D processors without HyperThreading and, on the other, Pentium 4 processors with. The main difference in AMD compared to Intel is that AMD dual core processors are high-end products instead of middle-range products for Intel.
At AMD, only one single core processor is faster than one of the Athlon 64 4800+ core, it is the FX-55. At Intel, the Pentium 4 570, 560 and 550 are much faster than one of the Pentium Extreme Edition 840 cores. The entry ticket for Intel is then "only" $241.
Of course, it won’t provide very high performances, but if you use your computer mainly with strongly multithreaded software, this processor will be a very good choice with no equivalent for AMD.
