AMD Athlon II X4 620 & 630: The First $99 Quad Core CPU
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 16, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Power Consumption
Without power gating the Athlon II X4 draws as little power as possible, noticeably less than any of AMD's other multi-core CPUs. Our X4 620 sample was a bit more power hungry than our 630.
Even under load the power consumption story is a good one. Given the position of our Q8400 sample here we'd say that the Q8200 would probably use a bit less power, but the price differential should more than make up for it.
Overclocking
As I mentioned at the start of this article I managed to hit 3.25GHz on the Athlon II X4 620 without any additional voltage using the retail AMD cooler:
I could hit 260MHz x 13.0 for 3.38GHz by upping the voltage, but the gain wasn't worth the additional power usage. Anything higher wasn't possible without more exotic cooling or much more voltage. The performance improved handily at 3.25GHz:
| Processor | Adobe Photoshop CS4 | x264 2nd pass | Left 4 Dead |
| AMD Athlon II X4 620 (2.6GHz) | 27.5 seconds | 15.4 fps | 93.2 fps |
| AMD Athlon II X4 620 @ 3.25GHz | 23.2 seconds | 18.9 fps | 102.9 fps |
| AMD Phenom II X4 955 (3.2GHz) | 22.3 seconds | 19.1 fps | 121.4 fps |
| Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 | 21.8 seconds | 17.9 fps | 105.6 fps |
At 3.25GHz the Athlon II X4 ends up faster than the even more expensive Q8400in some cases, and gets much closer in others. In applications where the large L3 cache isn't missed, the overclocked Athlon II can end up being a poor man's Phenom II X4 955. But looking at the Left 4 Dead performance, there's no such thing as a free lunch - the overclocked Athlon II isn't quite that good.
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silverblue - Thursday, September 17, 2009 - link
Except for you I suppose?Imagine you own a car with a turbocharger. When you accelerate, the turbo just happens to kick in. Is it illegal for the manufacturer to have put the turbo in there in the first place?
I agree it's not a completely parallel analogy due to the fact that a turbocharger provides a free power boost from otherwise wasted energy, but the point is that it's a part of the design and people have, and always will, accept that.
How are the Lynnfield's results false? It clearly states in the nomenclature that the Lynnfield possesses a turbo mode designed so that the processor operates at a higher clock speed for a stated number of cores dependent on the load being imposed upon it. Imagine if a new SIMD instruction set appears and only AMD processors can use it, and software is accelerated as a result - is this illegal?
I feel my intelligence slipping away as I try to reason with you.
the zorro - Thursday, September 17, 2009 - link
turbo overclocking is just overclocking, nothing else.overclocked results are illegal if you try to present them as stock speed results.
you can call overclocking 'banana' if you want, but still that banana is illegal
Kaleid - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
There is nothing illegal about it. Repeating it doesn't make it so.silverblue - Thursday, September 17, 2009 - link
But they haven't! Why can't you see this?Let me put it another way. In single core mode, with turbo enabled, the i5 750 is clocked at 3.2GHz. The Phenom II X4 965 BE is STILL clocked at 3.4GHz and it STILL loses. And guess what, add turbo to more cores and they all slow down, thus making the 965 BE look even worse in most situations as its clock speed gap increases even further.
I've read over those 3.8GHz results. No turbo mode (not illegal, then!). i5 still wins most of the benches. Granted, some of the tests are Intel-optimised applications, but a) it's not Intel's fault that AMD optimisations are lacking from specific programs, and b) in games with no specific optimisations for either architecture, the Lynnfield is still going to win because even with turbo enabled, the i5 750 is STILL clocked lower than the 965 BE and it's STILL equalling or beating AMD's strongest CPU.
End of.
the zorro - Thursday, September 17, 2009 - link
don't fool yourself by over-thinking to justify an illegal activity.turbo overclocking is just overclocking.
and phenom 2 955 beats core i5 750 at stocks speeds, that is lynnfield without overclocking.
lynnfield is a failure, because when overclocked to 4ghz temps are almost 100C. and power compsumption skycket.
phenom 2 overclocked to 4ghz is cool at 55C.
the zorro - Thursday, September 17, 2009 - link
if you overclock phenom 2 955 the same 600 mhz that lynnfield is overclocked, it wipes and mops the floor with lynnfield 750.strikeback03 - Thursday, September 17, 2009 - link
Umm, check your numbers again. Unless you want to claim a 955 at 3.8GHz would perform differently than a 965 at 3.8 GHz. See here: http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3639&am...">http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3639&am...All the 3.8GHz numbers are clock-for-clock, with no turbo (and no HT since the 750 doesn't have it) and the only test where the 965 tops the 750 is the Lightwave3D portion of the multitasking test. The 750 does beat the 965 in the overall multitasking test.
the zorro - Thursday, September 17, 2009 - link
as you can see, at stock speed, when lynnfield 750 has turbo overclocking off, then phenom 2 965 annihilates lynnfield.look at all the tests.
strikeback03 - Friday, September 18, 2009 - link
Well, yes, a 965@3.4GHz does beat a 750@2.66GHz, AMD's architecture isn't that far behind in most cases. But the only ones likely to leave the clocks stock are OEMs, who will also leave the turbo mode which seems to be the bane of your existence turned on. In stock configuration for both processors and looking at only the tests Gary conducted in the above article, the 965 carries advantages of 10%, 19%, -8%, -2%, -6%, 7%, and 12% over the 750. Using pricegrabber, Newegg has the best prices for each right now, at $199.99 for the 750 and $245 for the 965BE. This is a 22.5% difference in price, the performance gain is not that high in any of the tests. This is also ignoring all the tests in Anand's i5/i7 launch article, the majority of which the 750 topped the 965 in.mdk77777 - Thursday, September 17, 2009 - link
You buy a new Computer every five minutes?Really, I5 750 started shipping like a few days ago.
Competitive product, but requires a new MB.
Declare the end of the war after 1 Second of battle doesn't make much sense.