Intel Yonah Performance Preview - Part I: The Exclusive First Look at Yonah
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 30, 2005 2:50 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Multitasking Performance
Business Winstone 2004 includes a multitasking test as a part of its suite, which does the following:
"This test uses the same applications as the Business Winstone test, but runs some of them in the background. The test has three segments: in the first, files copy in the background while the script runs Microsoft Outlook and Internet Explorer in the foreground. The script waits for both foreground and background tasks to complete before starting the second segment. In that segment, Excel and Word operations run in the foreground while WinZip archives in the background. The script waits for both foreground and background tasks to complete before starting the third segment. In that segment, Norton AntiVirus runs a virus check in the background while Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Project, Microsoft Access, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft FrontPage, and WinZip operations run in the foreground."
When it comes to multitasking performance, the 2.0GHz Yonah remains quite competitive with the X2 3800+. We were curious as to whether or not the shared L2 cache would mean that single-to-dual core scaling would be improved at all, but to really answer that question we'll need a single core Yonah...
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Furen - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
Silicon on Insulator helps with current leakage, though. The problem for AMD, as I see it, is the delay of its 65nm process.forPPP - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
Interpolating results shown in this article, I think we won't see Turion Dual Core with more than 2.0GHz or maybe even 1.8GHz for now, because it will consume much more power. That's why Turion will be behind it till AMD gets to 65 nm. But then Intel will have new architecture.Cygni - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
Heres a quick summary of my thoughts:Best mobile proccessor option ever produced. Would be silly not to get one with your next laptop. But it doesnt have the muscle for the desktop. Nuff said.
Miggle - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
gaming wise, its looks good. Altho it would be more fair to compare a 2ghz yonah to a 2ghz Athlon X2 /w 2MB L2, being within 5% of 3800+ is very good already, considering that its a notebook cpu. the desktop version may even surpass Athlon64. I sure hope AMD also has something up their sleeves. Exciting match!defter - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
"Altho it would be more fair to compare a 2ghz yonah to a 2ghz Athlon X2 /w 2MB L2"Actually current comparison is fair, since Turion has only single channel memory controller. 2*512KB + dual-channel memory controller Athlon64 achieves about the same performance as 2*1MB + single-channel memory controller.
Furen - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
Dual-core Turions will (supposedly) be socket S1, which will have dual-DDR2 channels.michaelpatrick33 - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
How is it good to be within 5% of a 3800? The 3800+ has only 1024L2 cache total. Additionally, this is their 65nm product compared to a 90nm product and it still doesn't match it in performance? I was expecting more from Yonah than this. AMD already has dualcore notebook Turions coming in Q1 '06 so Intel does indeed look further behind.Additionally, I am not too fond of Sysmark as a performance indicator either way, but still I don't think AMD needs to run around panicing at this point.
Furen - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
If the FX-60 is a 2.6GHz dual-core then AMD will have something that will more than match any Yonah thrown at it (a 2.7GHz or so Yonah could conceivably beat it, I suppose). Yonah really does make things a lot more exciting though, since at least Intel is within striking distance.anandtechrocks - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
You are comparing the most powerful AMD FX processor with a mid-range mobile chip? What does this prove?tfranzese - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
Considering the single core Dothan at 2.0 GHz runs about $300 I don't see how you could say that a dual-core Yonah of the same clock is 'mid-range' especially for a notebook. I highly doubt the chip previewed today will launch at or below that price point, and probably much higher.