Back to Back Dual Core Processor Competition–When AM2 X2 5000+ meet Intel C2D E6400
 

It’s 2 months later since 2007/02, AMD have several time price drop actions
this year, AMD enhance their market strategy by lower X2 price and 65nm
processor mass production.
Especially the 65nm 3600+ X2 512K processor, the lowest dual core price
with 75USD, this is great cost with great strategy no matter on new DIY or
platform upgrade market.
These are our 2 competition processors.
The cost between them is almost same, but AMD X2 5000+ keep lower price.
The worriers:
Left side, Intel Core 2 Duo E6400
Right side, AMD Athlon64 X2 5000+


The AM2 test board.
DFI INFINITY NF ULTRAII-M2



The Intel test board.
MSI P6N SLI Platinum



The powerful DDRII
CORSAIR TWIN2X2048-10000C5DF


The test VGA card
ELSA GLADIAC 790GS PH2 256DT


Whole platform setup
AMD
CPU:AMD Athlon64 X2 5000+
MB: DFI INFINITY ULTRAII-M2
DRAM:CORSAIR TWIN2X2048-10000C5DF
VGA:ELSA GLADIAC 790GS PH2 256DT
HD:Seagate 7200.7 80GB
POWER:Corsair HX620W Modular Power Supply
Cooler:TT Big Typhoon VX


Intel
CPU:Intel Core 2 Duo E6400
MB: MSI P6N SLI Platinum
DRAM:CORSAIR TWIN2X2048-10000C5DF
VGA:ELSA GLADIAC 790GS PH2 256DT
HD:Seagate 7200.7 80GB
POWER:Corsair HX620W Modular Power Supply
Cooler:TT Big Typhoon VX

Take a look on frequency info.
Processor
Intel Core 2 Duo E6400:266X8=>2133Mhz
AMD Athlon64 X2 5000+:200X13=>2600Mhz
(Motherboard small frequency difference with 2612MHz )
Memory
BIOS Setup will all be DDRII 800 CL3 3-3-9
AM2 processors have some ratio divide issue,
so the real frequency is DDRII 746 CL3 3-3-9 1T
Besides the platform with different motherboard and chipsets, rest of the
components is the same.
I use NVIDIA chipset on both side, that will be more similar with fair
competition.
But still have little difference between Intel nForce6 and AMD nForce4, since
the nForce6 is newest version.
PCMARK2005
Intel

AMD

CPU Source
Intel:5479
AMD:5334

CrystalMark
Intel

AMD

ALU
Intel:18969
AMD:19468
FPU
Intel:22702
AMD:22490

CINEBENCH 9.5
Intel

AMD

1 CPU
Intel:353
AMD:385
2 CPU
Intel:658
AMD:722

The best winning test program from Intel side must be SUPER PI.
Intel

AMD

Intel:22m 30.921s
AMD:29m 57.312s

EVEREST test about memory and cache performance.
Intel

AMD

Memory
Intel:7680/4861/5426 MB/s 58.6ns
AMD:8005/7271/6130 MB/s 47.1ns
AMD is strong on memory bandwidth performance,
since the frequency is only DDRII 746,
but all memory test results are better then Intel with DDRII 800 with same
latency.
CPU Mark
Intel:298
AMD:303

3DMARK2006
Intel

AMD

CPU Source
Intel:1843
AMD:1924

TMPGEnc 3.0 XPress
Intel

AMD


Intel:01:14.51
AMD:01:17:32

Here are my personal opinions:
First of all, I was mentioned before, the K8/AM2 architecture performance
gape is about 400MHz higher to equal compares with Intel C2D.
Second, because the difference architecture, the best cache performance
rate is about 512K, C2D is about 2MB, more cache will only have less
percentage enhance.
Let’s recall our memories to last generation, P4 3G V.S. K8 3000+ competition
on 200USD segment, but P4 3G is worse then K8 1.8G, the overclock
performance is also less then K8 overclock improvement. Now the situation is
different.
AMD is very cleaver in these months with great price strategy,
If user can have 400MHz more AM2 dual core products with better price ,
then AMD will have more advantage to beat Intel C2D.
But Intel C2D got the advantage on overclock range and performance,
normally can easy overclock up to 3.4G~3.8G limited.
AM2 just lead in with 65nm design, extreme frequency is about 3.1G, if the
limited can up to 3.3GHz higher, that will help to deduce the performance and
overclock gape.
AMD comes with lower processor and motherboard price, that’s the advantage,
But for long term business, they have to enhance the frequency limited and
new architecture, that’s the solution to fight back the behind situation now.
Any way, the hard competition will benefit all end users to have lower price
and higher performance.
About the extreme overclock, already had many reviews to know on internet,
this time we take a look on normal user situation with same price segment.
Let’s expect next wave price/performance competition between Intel and
AMD.

Intel still got a nice lead over AMD with C2D, and with price drop of E4300 it will widen I think.

The bottom line question is "What if AM2 can be overlocked at the same level as C2D?".

The answer is "no" as we all know. However, for normal users who buy from HP, Dell, eMachine and Lenovo may find AM2 no worst than Intel C2D, while pricing becomes the main criteria in which to pick.