Feature Articles

Q3 2007 CPU Performance Charts

By Vijay Anand - 29 Oct 2007

AMD Processors Recaped & Test Setup

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Series

What about AMD? Sadly, not much has happened for most of this year other than having further processor model number revisions due to core revisions. This has unfortunately confused people at different times because there are cases where up to three different variants of the so-called same processor model exist at the same time. Some were more power efficient cores of the same core model, while other models jumped to a new core offering different technical specs, but retained the same processor model name. To add on to these, AMD has in recent times offered a "Black Edition" model that is basically means that the multiplier is unlocked and is great for overclocking efforts. The Black Editions are currently limited to the Athlon 64 X2 5000+ and the 6400+ models though.

For the most part of this year, AMD has been revising its processor prices to stay competitive with Intel, and has been trying hard to transition the 65nm Brisbane cores for its processor family. Unfortunately, the latter has been tough for AMD has they have difficulty scaling the processor frequencies. Thus even after a year since Brisbane first appeared, AMD still relies on its older 90nm Windsor cores to drive their higher performance parts. It's hard to imagine how AMD is going to deliver Barcelona and Phenom processors when they couldn't even transition to Brisbane properly. In fact, AMD has an Athlon 64 X2 5200+ model using the Brisbane core, but its availability is quite scarce for a long time. As such, most in the market are still the Windsor models.

While AMD has difficulty ramping clock speeds of the Brisbane core, they have however binned the better quality cores for 45W TDP rating and are available under the new AMD Athlon X2 BE-2xxx naming scheme. That's a good move, albeit they command a premium that gets people thinking if power savings or better performance makes better sense for their needs. With that said, here is how AMD's product mix stacks up currently:-

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Series Processor Details
Processor Model / Processor Characteristics Clock Speed L2 Cache Processor
Core Code
Max TDP (W) Price
AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+
'Black Edition'
3.2GHz 1MB x 2 Windsor 125 US$220
AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ 3.0GHz 1MB x 2 Windsor 125 US$167
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ 2.8GHz 1MB x 2 Windsor 89 US$146
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ 2.6GHz 1MB x 2 Windsor 89 US$125
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ 2.6GHz 512KB x 2 Brisbane 65 US$115
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ 2.5GHz 512KB x 2 Brisbane 65 US$104
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ 2.3GHz 512KB x 2 Brisbane 65 US$89
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ 2.2GHz 512KB x 2 Windsor 65 US$78
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ 2.1GHz 512KB x 2 Brisbane 65 US$68
AMD Athlon X2 BE-2400 2.3GHz 512KB x 2 Brisbane 45 US$104
AMD Athlon X2 BE-2350 2.1GHz 512KB x 2 Brisbane 45 US$96
AMD Athlon X2 BE-2300 1.9GHz 512KB x 2 Brisbane 45 US$91

As always, we would love to test as many processors as possible, but as much as we've tried requested from AMD, they were unable to obtain some of the Brisbane processors for our testing needs. As such these processor models are unavailable in our comparison matrix: Athlon 64 X2 4800+, 4400+, 4000+ and the BE-2400 processors. The latter is just too new that it's hard to come by, just like the high-end 6400+ model that is also not in the comparison.


Test Setup & Benchmarks

With the recap of dual-core processors, variety and updates to the series since we've last discussed about them, we're all set to lay down the test setup specs used to benchmark them. The outcome of which, we have obtained roughly 400 results that we've compiled from running 18 different processors across our suite of benchmarks. Here then are the testbed specifications used for this review:-


Intel Core 2 and Pentium Dual-Core Configuration

  • Intel Desktop Board D975XBX (Intel 975X Express chipset)
  • Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850, Core 2 Quad Q6700, Q6600, Core 2 Duo E6850, E6750, E6550, E6420, E6320, E4400, Pentium Dual-Core E2160 and E2140.
  • 2 x 512MB Corsair XMS DDR2-800 non-ECC memory modules (CAS 4. 4-4-12)
  • Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80GB SATA hard disk drive (one single NTFS partition)
  • MSI GeForce 7900 GT 256MB - with NVIDIA Detonator XP 84.21
  • Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2


AMD Athlon 64 FX / X2 Configuration

  • ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe (nForce 590 SLI chipset)
  • AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+, 5600+, 5200+, 5000+, 4200+, BE-2350 and BE-2300.
  • 2 x 512MB Corsair XMS DDR2-800 non-ECC memory modules (CAS 4, 4-4-12)
  • Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80GB SATA hard disk drive (one single NTFS partition)
  • MSI GeForce 7900 GT 256MB - with NVIDIA Detonator XP 84.21
  • Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2


The benchmarks used in this review include:-

  • SPECCPU 2000 v1.3
  • Futuremark PCMark 2005 Pro
  • BAPCo SYSmark 2004
  • Lightwave 3D 7.5
  • Cinebench 2003
  • XMpeg 5.03 (DivX 6.2.5 encoding)
  • Futuremark 3DMark06 Pro
  • Unreal Tournament 2004
  • AquaMark3
  • Quake 4 ver.1.20
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