Product Listing

AMD Turion 64 X2 Performance Preview

By Vijay Anand - 17 May 2006

Test Setup

Test Setup

Well, the MSI S271 Turion 64 X2 Mobile Technology is a notebook, so there's not much control we have over there. However, we had the liberty to put up appropriate comparisons with the notebook from our previous CPU test runs from a desktop Sempron 3400+ processor all the way to an Athlon 64 X2 3800+. We even had the original Turion 64 ML-30 running on a modified desktop motherboard that had very similar characteristics as the TL-52 Turion 64 X2 processor such as total L2 cache size (1MB) and clock speed (1.6GHz). As such, we were able to make direct comparisons to see how much the Turion 64 X2 has progressed ahead of the original Turion 64. The complete test setup detail of all the different CPU configurations compared are as listed exhaustively below.


MSI S271 Turion 64 X2 Mobile Technology pre-evaluation notebook includes:-

  • ATI Radeon Xpress 200 based board
  • AMD Athlon Turion 64 X2 TL-52 processor (1.6GHz, 2 x 512KB L2)
  • 1 x 512MB Transcend DDR2-667 non-ECC memory module (CAS 5.0, 5-5-13)
  • Integrated Radeon X300 graphics on-chip
  • Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2


Components used in the AMD Turion 64 ML-30 testbed include:-

  • MSI K8-VMM (VIA K8T800 PRO)
  • AMD Turion 64 ML-30 processor (1.6GHz, 1MB L2)
  • 2 x 512MB Corsair DDR400 non-ECC memory modules (CAS 2.5, 3-3-6)
  • Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80GB SATA hard disk drive (one single NTFS partition)
  • MSI GeForce FX 5700 256MB (AGP) - with NVIDIA Detonator XP 61.34 (beta)
  • Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 1


Components used in the AMD Sempron 3400+ & Athlon 64 X2 3800+ testbed include:-

  • ASUS A8V Deluxe (VIA K8T800 PRO)
  • AMD Sempron 3400+ & AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ processors
  • 2 x 512MB Corsair DDR400 non-ECC memory modules (CAS 2.5, 3-3-6)
  • Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80GB SATA hard disk drive (one single NTFS partition)
  • MSI GeForce FX 5700 256MB (AGP) - with NVIDIA Detonator XP 61.34 (beta)
  • Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 1


Components used in the Pentium 4 630 & 660 testbed include:-

  • Intel D925XECV2 Desktop Board (Intel 925XE Express chipset)
  • Intel Pentium 4 630 & 660 processors (3.0GHz & 3.6GHz)
  • 2 x 512MB Micron DDR2-533 non-ECC memory modules (CAS 4, 4-4-12)
  • Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80GB SATA hard disk drive (one single NTFS partition)
  • MSI GeForce PCX 5750 128MB (PCI Express x16) - with NVIDIA Detonator XP 61.34 (beta)
  • Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 1


Components used in the Pentium D 920 testbed include:-

  • ASUS P5WD2-E Premium (Intel 975X Express chipset)
  • Intel Pentium D 920 Processor (2.8GHz)
  • 2 x 512MB Kingston DDR2-667 non-ECC memory modules (CAS 4, 4-4-10)
  • Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80GB SATA hard disk drive (one single NTFS partition)
  • MSI GeForce PCX 5750 128MB (PCI Express x16) - with NVIDIA Detonator XP 61.34 (beta)
  • Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 1


Benchmarks

The benchmarks used in this review include:-
Futuremark PCMark04 Pro
Futuremark PCMark05 Pro
Futuremark 3D
Mark05 Pro


Additional Notes

Our MSI S271 Turion 64 X2 Mobile Technology evaluation only shipped with one stick of 512MB DDR2-667 memory and that means it was unfortunately crippled to operate on a single memory channel. We hadn't any other compatible memory module at hand to plug in and enable dual-channel, nor did we have enough time with the notebook to try and obtain other modules from vendors. It's unfortunate that our allotted time with the notebook was rather short, but it may as well have been such since the early test unit had power management issues to run any full fledged in-depth test run. As such, you'll notice that we've opted to showcase results from a very select few benchmarks. We'll show you the full Monty when get the proper retail unit in the near future.

Here's the CPU-Z info of the Turion 64 X2 TL-52 processor, but since CPU-Z was a much older version when we got the notebook, it wasn't able to identify the CPU properly.

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