The performance of the Turion ii processors should be close to the Intel Core 2 processors in the nominal clock frequency of 2.0 to 2.2 GHz. In other words, the similarly clocked Intel core 2 processor slightly outperforms the AMD Turion ii Ultra processor M600.
The Turion ii Ultra M600 has, however, integrated memory controller, which leads to lower memory latency and a better overall performance. The integrated memory controller in the Turion ii M600 is a dual channel DDR2-400.
The communication with the chipset is using HyperTransport Bus at 3600 MT/s. Although many websites including AMD’s own website at
http://products.amd.com/en-gb/NotebookCPUDetail.aspx?id=579&f1=&f2=&f3=&f4=&f5=&f6=&f7=&f8=&f9=
mentions the front side bus as 3600 MHz, we at starredreviews, believe that they meant 3600 Million Transaction per second. Dirk Meyer, are you listening ?
It may have been more appropriate to call it either 1800 MHz or 3600 Mt/s. The confusion is created, since, the HyperTransport Bus works on the rising as well as falling edge of the clock. So even though the clock frequency is 1800 MHz the effective rate of the transfer of bits is 3600 MT/s.
The Turion ii M600 has a 1 MB of L2 Cache in each of the two cores, making up a total of 2 MB L2 cache. This core is not a shared core, unlike the intel smart cache in its core i3 and i5 processors. The dedicated core, however, simplifies the design and keeps the things clean, and potentially reduces the overhead in latency. The discussion of the dedicated Vs shared cache is beyond the scope of this review. In some test environment, the shared cache definitely has a point, especially if a particular application, for example, need a larger cache.
According to AMD -
Each core has its own dedicated L2 cache, which enables simultaneous independent core access to cache, eliminating the need for cores to arbitrate for cache access. This helps reduce latency on L2 cache access.
The Turion ii M600 supports the various multimedia instructions including the latest SSE3, Enhanced 3DNow!. It also supports the AMD64 – the 64 bit instruction set from AMD.
The AMD Virtualization support should help your system if you are planning to use two operating systems and you need to switch between the operating systems seamlessly.
The Super Pi 1M and 2M benchmark scores for the Turion ii M600 processor is 32 seconds and 75 seconds respectively. The 3DMark score, a benchmark score for the graphics intensive task has been reported to be close to 1900.
Some of the notebooks powered by Turion ii ultra M600 processor include
- HP ProBook FN063UA Notebook
- Gateway NV5336u 15.6″ LED Notebook
- HP ProBook 6445b
- Gateway NV5387u 15.6″ notebook,
- Acer AS5542-5547 15.6-Inch Laptop
- HP Pavilion DV7-3060US
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| Turion ii P540 Vs Core i3-370M |
| Pentium P6100 Vs Turion ii P540 |
AMD Turion II P540 has a nominal clock frequency of 2.4 GHz. It has two cores and has integrated DDR3 memory controller. In the integrated memory controller, the processor communicates with the memory directly which leads to faster processor to memory communication. This is unlike the Intel core 2 architecture, in which processor first communicates with the North Bridge which, in turn communicates with the memory. It communicates with the chipset using the high speed differential HyperTransport Bus.
The integrated memory controller leads to comparable performance for the AMD Turion ii P540 as compared to the similarly clocked Intel Core 2 processor. The intel core 2 processors do not have the integrated memory controller, leading to higher memory latency and which slows down the overall processor performance. On the other hand, Intel has been able to overcome this by use of larger cache memory.
The Turion ii P540 as well as the Intel Core i3-370M are both clocked at 2.40 GHz. Check out which one if faster in Turion ii P540 Vs Core i3-370M performance comparison.
The Turion II P540 has a level 2 Cache of 2 MB.
Not much benchmarking results are available for the Turion ii P540. Some of the performance benchmark avialable at cpubenchmark indicate that this processor is faster than Intel Core2 Duo T8300 2.40GHz.
Some of the notebooks seen to be powered by Turion ii P540 include HP Pavilion 16 dv6z, Compaq Presario CQ62Z and HP Pavilion dv6-3120us.
The AMD Athlon-II X4-645 is a quad core processor clocked at 3.1 GHz. Half of the gamers still use a dual core processor for their gaming needs. The quad core processor still make up only one fourth of the gamers needs.
Athlon ii series has been known to be the entry level low cost and high performance processors that can give a decent and acceptable performace. With a processor frequency of 3.1 GHz, Athlon ii X4-645 is the fastest four core Athlon ii processor at the time of writing.
Gamers have found that the Athlon ii X4-645 is easy to overclock – a feature, many gamers look for.
In essence, the performace of the Athlon ii X4-645 should be on line with the Athlon ii X4-640. There is a 100 MHz increase in frequency, which tantamounts to 3% increase. We therefore expect a performance gain close to 3%. the price of this 645 is close to $125 at newegg at the time of writing. It is upto you to justify close to 25% increase in price as compared to 3% increase in performance ( assuming you get X4-640 at $100).
You will also be glad to know that the X4-645 is compatible with AM2+ and AM3 motherboards. It is therfore DDR2 and DDR3 compliant.
Codenamed Propus, the X645 processor has 512 KB of L2 cache per core to make up 2 MB of total L2 Cache. According to the AMD website the suggested price of the X4-645 is $122 ( The X4-640 has suggested price of $99.99).
The processor connects to the chipset using HyperTransport 3.0 One 16-bit/16-bit link up to 4.0GHz full duplex (2.0GHz x2).The X4-645 has a TDP rating of 95 Watts and is intended only for the desktops ( no laptop).
You should also notice that the Athlon ii processor do not have the L3 cache which limit their performance. Fortunately the integrated memory controller helps in alleviating some of the problem caused by the absence of the L3 Cache. The DDR2 controller works upto 1066 MHz in DDR2 and the upto 1333 MHz for DDR3.
You may like to notice that the Athlon ii chips come with AMD-V or the virtualization technology. To understand the importance of the virtualization technology assume that you have purchased a PC with Windows 7 preinstalled. However, your business need demands that you work on WIndows XP ( because some software will potentially not work on Windows 7). In this circumstance you would like yo switch between the processors on the go. The AMD’s virtualization technology comes handy in this circumstances. Many developers also need to switch between the Linux and the Windows and it is there that they will find the support for the virtualization technology helpful.
Like the other Athlon-II chips we have seen, the X4-645 will come with full virtualization support through AMD-V technology
Several benchmark tests have proved that the X4-645 has better performance that the more expensive core i5 solutions. Form example the benchmarkreviews.com has performed the benchmark against the intel core i5-655K which is $75 more that the X4-645. It was found that the X4-645 has consistently outperformed intel core i5-655k by a significant margin.
In reality, AMD X4-645 competes with its own X4-640. At sub $100, X4-640 is only 3% lower in performance and you save close to $23.
If you are a gamer, AMD’s X4-645 ( and, of course X4-640 as well) deserve a serious look.
AMD’s bulldozer architecture consists of modules. Each module has two cores. So, a bulldozer based processor with single module will have two cores. A dual module bulldozer core will have 4 cores.
AMD plans to release processors with 8 modules with a total of 16 cores. The bulldozer based processors will have 8MB to 16MB of L3 cache which will be shared by all the modules on the same silicon die. The bulldozer architecture will have integrated DDR3 memory controller and there will be support for upto DDR3-1866. The memory controller will have high Level of Parallelism for efficient memory transfers.
The memory controller will be Quad Channel DDR3 for Desktops. It will have support for the Registered DDR3 for server and workstation market.
Connection to the chipset will be supported with next generation of the HyperTransport version 3.1. The HyperTransport 3.1 will work at 3.20 GHz, which means, working with both the rising and falling edge of clock gives effective transfer rate of 6.4 Giga Transfers per second/s. The HyperTransport is a bidirectional bus. There will be 16 bit lane in each of the upwards and downwards direction (need to confirm).
In contrary to the Intel’s Hyperthreading, AMD’s architecture uses real, physical cores to handle multiple threads. The Intel’s hy HyperThreading also execute two threads on a single core but the process is slightly different than that of the AMD’s.
The problem with intel’s Hyperthreading, as AMD explains – “is that it exploits gaps in the execution pipeline in order to get that second thread running”. If you are inefficiently executing applications, you do have have gaps in the pipeline and you get your second thread exploit the gap to get executing. If your software and the execution process is efficient, you do net get opportunity to take advantage and there is really little gain, if any by way of hyperthreading.
AMD’s bulldozer will have real physical cores. In heavily optimized systems, the real physical core is the way to go, since there is little inefficiency left that can be exploited.
The bulldozer architecture will have two dedicated integer cores. Each of these integer cores will consist of 2 Arithmetic Logic Unit 2 AGU. These two together can execute 4 independent arithmetic or memory operations per clock cycle per core.
The integer core has duplicating integer schedulers. The execution pipelines offers dedicated hardware significantly increasing performance in multi-threaded integer applications.
It will be interesting to see how Intel reacts to the thread from bulldozer. Apparently, the only issue that is seen from AMD’s end is the delay. The verification and validation process do take time. By the time we are keeping our fingers crossed. While we definitely know that bulldozer will launch in 2011 – the real question is – when in 2011.
The Phenom ii 555 will fit in the motherboards supporting AM3 socket. Besides 2 x 128K L1 cache and 2 x 512 KB L2 cache, the Phenom ii 555 also has 6 MB of L3 cache. The L3 Cache leads to somewhat better performance as compared to the similarly clocked L3 Cacheless Athlon ii processors.
The Phenom ii 555 has integrated DDR3 memory controller and high speed differential HyperTransport Bus at 4000 MT/s to communicate with the chipset. The TDP rating of just 80 Watts means that there is a room for the overclocking.
The drawback of the 555 is that it has just 2 cores and this is just not good enough for environment needing multiple threads at a time. The Phenom ii dual core 555 is, for example, slower as well as more expensive than the triple core Athlon II X3 440. So what is the logic of buying the Phenom ii 555 instead. The answer is – its ability to overclock.
The Phenom ii 555 can be easily be overclocked by changing its multiplier in the BIOS of your choice. This ability makes this this CPU favorite for overclocking fans. The CPU is priced at less than $100, you get the overclocking advantage at a budget price.