AMD64 Vs. AMD64: Venice or San Diego?

by Yaroslav Lyssenko

[ 07/12/2005 | 05:59 AM ]

Advanced Micro Devices has introduced several core revisions within its current microprocessor lineup, which are different in terms of several features, including SSE3 support, performance and power consumption. As a consequence of that it is not a trivial task to pick up the best possible AMD64 chip for particular needs.

Both Venice and San Diego cores are produced using 90nm process technology and deliver lower power consumption and heat dissipation as well as improved built-in memory controller and SSE3 instructions set support compared to previous-generation offerings. But there is also a noticeable difference. While Vince core boasts with 512KB of L2 cache, San Diego core provides 1MB L2 cache. Phoronix web-site has posted an article containing performance comparison of Venice and San Diego cores in real-life applications.

“Thanks to the 1MB cache in the San Diego, the extra cache proves to be beneficial in certain tasks, as shown in the Linux compiling process. The performance advantage is close to 10% in compiling LAME. In other benchmarks, such as Doom 3, the advantage of San Diego is roughly 5% at best. For Doom 3, we saw a 3-5% performance increase from the Venice to the San Diego, though as the quality gets higher, the performance increase diminished to less than 2%. However, this is partially due to the graphic card used to perform this benchmark,” the web-site reports.

“In conclusion, for average users, we found that the San Diego offers an average of 3% higher return than its counter part, Venice, when running at the same clock speed. With the pricing of the cheapest San Diego around $330, Venice 3200+ around $195, and Venice 3500+ around $275, it comes down to whether paying the premium price of the San Diego is justified. The AMD San Diego is one hell of a screamer for single-core setups, but with its high price tag, the small performance increase isn’t truly justified unless you’ll be coding and compiling all day or a similar CPU intensive process,” concludes Phoronix.

• Phoronix: AMD Venice vs. San Diego Core Performance Review.