AMD Phenom II X2 550 and Athlon II X2 250 preview(with benchmarks)

[sarngate]

I believe the 2Ghz HT is a new release for the energy saving cards (105e and 905e) and is a reduction in raw power to, obviously, reduce energy requirements. I'm not entirely sure how much of an impact it would have, although reviews on other websites will probably deal with this.

There don't seem to be many reviews of the two new 'e' processors has most of the media attention has been on the 550 and 250.

[sammorris]

Agreed. The complexity of the CPU market makes it difficult to decisively say which CPU is better for any given price bracket. Up until the release of the 250 and 550 it was decisively Intel for anything up to £160, but now I'm not so sure. Clearly beyond £190, there aren't any AMD products, so AMD don't exactly have all the market, but the performance of the new more efficient AMD chips is certainly stirring things up in the sub £120 market.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

According to Tom's Hardware Guide the X3 705e consumes around the same amount of peak power as an E6300 and Athlon II X2 250 processors!



http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...2,2324-11.html

The power consumption figures for all the dual cores in the review does look rather high as the two quad cores seem the most efficient though.

I think some more reviews are need TBH so the figures can be confirmed for the 705e and 905e.

[sammorris]

That should be correct, all of them have a 65W TDP. The E6300 uses a similar amount of power as it's an old 65nm Conroe. The E5 and E7 series are Wolfdales so use a bit less power. It is curious that Intel have decided to revive the Conroe architecture at such a price point.
AMD have marked the 'e' quad cores with the same TDP. Since the duals and tris are just quads with cores unlocked it doesn't seem unreasonable to suggest that the cut-off CPUs use very little less power. The fact that the 905e uses the least is a bit strange though. Intel have also released cut-TDP versions of their quad cores, but clearly, they're very expensive compared to the AMDs, since once again, they have little competition. AMD have not extended the 65W TDP to anything beyond 2.5Ghz, whereas Intel have it for their 2.33Ghz (£175), 2.66Ghz (£218) and 2.83Ghz (£248) CPUs. Since the latter rival the full-fat 125W 940 and 955 CPUs, they are very attractively priced, but the £175 Q8200s is rather expensive since it is very little faster than the X4 905e which is nearly £30 cheaper.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

That should be correct, all of them have a 65W TDP. The E6300 uses a similar amount of power as it's an old 65nm Conroe. The E5 and E7 series are Wolfdales so use a bit less power. It is curious that Intel have decided to revive the Conroe architecture at such a price point.
AMD have marked the 'e' quad cores with the same TDP. Since the duals and tris are just quads with cores unlocked it doesn't seem unreasonable to suggest that the cut-off CPUs use very little less power. The fact that the 905e uses the least is a bit strange though. Intel have also released cut-TDP versions of their quad cores, but clearly, they're very expensive compared to the AMDs, since once again, they have little competition. AMD have not extended the 65W TDP to anything beyond 2.5Ghz, whereas Intel have it for their 2.33Ghz (£175), 2.66Ghz (£218) and 2.83Ghz (£248) CPUs. Since the latter rival the full-fat 125W 940 and 955 CPUs, they are very attractively priced, but the £175 Q8200s is rather expensive since it is very little faster than the X4 905e which is nearly £30 cheaper.

The E6300 is a 45nm CPU with 2mb cache like the E5200 but has a 1066mhz FSB:

http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=41493

If other reviews can confirm the power consumption figures of the X4 905e it will be pretty impressive. The fact that the X3 705e is also slightly cheaper than the X3 710 makes it good value for money IMHO.

[sammorris]

Interesting. The Scan website is obviously wrong...

[ixos]

So, which is the better CPU for power / efficiency / Low energy usage?

[sammorris]

Well, ideally a Pentium Dual Core as they use the least, but the 65W Athlons are relatively efficient as well (that is Athlon X2 250, Phenom II X3 705, Phenom II X4 905)

[ixos]

Thanks. Still confusing! lol

[scaryjim]

It's reasonble to assume that over the next few years software developers are going to start utilising multi-core processors better, because quads (and AMD's tri-cores) are going to become mainstream. Remember that AMD is going to bring out Athlon II x3 and x4 processors in the next month or so which should all cost < &#163;100, so quad cores will actually start being available at *all* price points. What that means in terms of choosing a technology is that, unless you are only going to use software where the user is the bottleneck (word processing, web browsing) there's little point going for dual-core any more.

The AMD X3s currently offer an unrivalled balance of value for multicore systems - Intel don't have a competing architecture. Their dual-cores simply can't keep up in heavily multithreaded programs. On the other hand, you are sacrificing an entire processing core, so you need to work out if you are going to notice the loss of performance against a quad-core in the software you currently use or intend to use.

So if you're building a computer for your grandma to check her email and ebay on, you can go with an Athlon II X2 (or Intel E5200 / E6300 or similar). If you're looking at a lowish power HTPC that you might game lightly on it's probably worth paying the extra for the Phenom II X3 705e (a 65W processor *should* generate less heat so is better for SFF). If you are building a normal desktop computer but know you don't use much multithreaded software, you're better off going for the X3 710 / 720 for the extra clock speed at stock. If you know you are making use of a lot of heavily mutlithreaded software, stump up for a quad core - in which case the Phenom II X4 905e makes a lot of sense as it will significantly reduce the power draw of your PC.

[sammorris]

They're bringing out even more CPUs? I've only just got my head around the last lot...
The sheer number of CPUs out these days is making a very thin balance in the different technologies these days, the Phenom II X3s are good value, but the price difference between them and a Core 2 Quad isn't actually that significant, and likewise the price step up from a dual core to a tri core is equally small.
Realistically, if you build a PC specifically for just email and light browsing, the Athlon64 LE CPU is only 20 quid, bung that in a cheap Gigabyte board for reliability at low cost and you can build an amazingly cheap PC. Standard fare PCs are made cost-effective through great value CPUs like the 7750 or E5200. You can easily pump up the speed by getting Phenom II 550 or an E7000 series.
The X4 905 is an excellent product from AMD, a quad core with very low power consumption, unfortunately it's also a very low speed offering compared to some of the rival products. Despite having a 95W TDP, the Q8000 series CPUs from Intel don't use anywhere near that much, and you can get a Q8300 or sometimes a Q8400 for less than the 905e if you know where to look, and they're far better performers for a minor increase in power consumption. The hint of this is that the 2.5Ghz 65W 905e and the 3Ghz 125W 940 are almost the same price.

[ixos]

So, a Triple core is the way forward? That is an AM3 CPU? Plus, what Motherboard with onboard graphics is best and what DDR3 Ram? Thanks for any help.

[scaryjim]

They're bringing out even more CPUs? I've only just got my head around the last lot...

To be fair, the CPU range AMD are aiming for is pretty simply:

Athlon II X2 200, X3 400, X4 600 - No L3 Cache

Phenom II X2 500, X3 700, X4 900 - 6MB L3 Cache

Phenom II X4 800 - 4MB L3 Cache - discontinued?

Otherwise, the internal architecture & feature set is identical, AFAIK - compare this with Intel's offerings which chop and change features throughout the range.

The X4 800s certainly muddied the water a little, and I wonder if that wasn't just a way to use some X4 chips that had a manufacturing defect in part of the L3 Cache. Rumours about other reduced cache Phenoms have dried up, so that range might drop out of the picture completely. I think releasing the Athlon 7850 was a bad idea. The 7750 made sense when it weas released, pushing a new architecture into the low end, but the 7850 has already been made redundant by the Athlon II, which is just plain better. Hopefully this means that AMD are going to go forward with just 2 ranges: Athlon with no L3 cache, and Phenoms with 6MB. That'd make a lot of sense to me...

[scaryjim]

So, a Triple core is the way forward? That is an AM3 CPU? Plus, what Motherboard with onboard graphics is best and what DDR3 Ram? Thanks for any help.

AM3 CPUs can go in AM3 *or* AM2 motherboards. At the minute, the only AM3 board with onboard graphics would be a high end 790GX one, so you might want to wait a couple of months when the 785G chipset is coming out - this features a HD4200 IGP with UVD2 - although I don't know any details about the architecture and whether it's a genuine 4000 series or a rebadged earlier graphics chip (the 780G's 3200 is actually an HD2400...).

You can pick up 780G-based AM2 motherboards from around £50,and these take cheaper DDR2 memory, so would form the basis of a good low cost build around a Phenom II X3. Alternatively, you could look at the motherboard I mention in this earlier thread and add a low-end graphics card like an HD3400 or HD4300. That thread also mentions some very good value OCZ Reaper series DDR3 RAM you might want to look at.

[sammorris]

Well, the fact that there's a question mark in your post should show that AMD's new set of CPUs isn't exactly clear cut...

[sammorris]

Here's an interesting result courtesy of SPCR:

Idle:
E7200: 57W
X2 250: 60W
X2 550: 65W
X3 720: 76W
HD Video:
E7200: 67W
X2 250: 84W (76W undervolted)
X2 550: 85W (83W undervolted)
X3 720: 97W
Full load:
E7200: 88W
X2 250: 122W (108W undervolted)
X2 550: 129W (126W undervolted)
X3 720: 153W

That's a substantial difference in power consumption from the Pentiums to the Athlons.