X-bit labs

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ Dual-Core Processor Review (page 17)

Category: CPU

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 05/08/2005 | 09:11 PM ]

Conclusion

Today we have taken the first close look at the dual-core AMD processors. According to the results we obtained during this test session, the idea to combine two physical cores inside a single CPU proved highly efficient.

The use of dual-core solutions in desktop systems can significantly improve the performance in a number of applications supporting multi-threading. Since Pentium 4 processors have had “virtual” multi-threading support implemented in Hyper-Threading technology for a long time already, the software developers are offering quite a lot of applications where you can benefit from dual-core architecture. Among the applications where dual-core solutions will ensure a dramatic performance improvement we could list video and audio encoding tools, 3D modeling and rendering systems, photo and video editing applications and professional graphics CAD applications.

Besides there is a lot of software that doesn’t support multi-threading at all or has very limited support for it. Among these tasks are office applications, web-browsers, e-mail clients, media players and games. However, even in these applications you can still enjoy some benefits of the dual-core processor architecture. For example, when there are a few tasks running simultaneously.

Summing up everything we have just said, we would like to offer you one more last diagram where we illustrate the performance advantage of the new AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ dual-core CPU over the single-core Athlon 64 4000+ working at the same clock frequency of 2.4GHz.

As you can see from the diagram, Athlon 64 X2 4800+ appears much faster than its counterpart from the Athlon 64 family. And if it were not for the crazily high price of the new Athlon 64 X2 4800+ exceeding $1,000, I would definitely call this processor a great choice. Especially, since it doesn’t fall behind its single-core fellows in any applications.

Keeping in mind the price of the new Athlon 64 X2, we have to admit that these CPUs can so far be regarded as one more excellent choice for wealthy hardware enthusiasts, just like Athlon 64 FX. Those who care most about the performance in applications other than games will definitely pay due attention to the new AMD Athlon 64 X2 processor family. Extreme gamers, however, are most likely to stay dedicated to Athlon 64 FX.

Well, we are just beginning a series of test sessions of the dual-core processors in our labs. In the next few days we are going to offer you the second part of our review devoted to the dual-core solution from Intel.