X-bit labs

AMD Conquering 3GHz: Athlon 64 X2 6000+ CPU Review (page 4)

Category: CPU

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 02/19/2007 | 09:00 PM ]

Gaming Applications

The situation in popular games is pretty similar to what we have just seen in 3DMark06. The performance level of Athlon 64 X2 6000+ is pretty average against the background of the top dual-core Intel CPUs. Our hero gets slightly ahead of the Core 2 Duo E6600, but still falls behind the Core 2 Duo E6700.

Having tested Athlon 64 X2 6000+ in the 64-bit version of Unreal Tournament 2004 game we have confirmed once again that the use of 64-bit extensions doesn’t change the overall performance picture.

Just like in 32-bit games, Athlon 64 X2 6000+ can only compete equally with Core 2 Duo E6600 processor.

Besides a few real games, we have also included the results of two benchmarks based on Valve Source code that will be used for future games development. The first benchmark estimates how fast the testing participants cope with building the lighting maps, and the second – evaluates the performance during environmental physics processing.

Here Athlon 64 X2 6000+ performs even slower. Core 2 Duo E6600 selling at $150 lower price than our today’s hero wins in both these tests.

We have also included the chess benchmark into our gaming test session. It uses a famous Fritz 9 gaming engine.

No consolation again: Athlon 64 X2 6000+ is at the bottom of the chart yielding to Core 2 Duo E6600, which is running at 20% lower nominal frequency than the AMD CPU.