AMD's 45nm dualcores tested

AMD's latest 45nm quadcores are a great alternative to competitor Intel's Core 2 Quad series of processors. In the dualcore segment however, the Core 2 Duo E6000 65nm line-up and later on the E8000 45nm series have always been dominant. To provide a better alternative in this segment as well, AMD launches several Athlon II X2 and Phenom II X2 processors, based on the 45nm 'Deneb' quadcore processor.

The Phenom II X2 and Athlon X2 side by side, courtesy of Xbitlabs

Both cases have two of their four cores disabled, but the Phenom II version retains the full 6 MB of L3 cache. The Athlon X2 has this shared L3-cache disabled, but features the L2 cache of the inactive cores, added to that of the active ones. This means that the Athlon II X2 series have 2x1 MB L2 cache, while the Phenom II sports 2x512 KB of L2 cache. Because it lacks the L3 cache, the Athlon II X2 is slightly more efficient than the Phenom II X2 version. The diagram below shows the full specifications of both chips:

Xbitlabs has already obtained both processors and pitted them against Intel's Core 2 Duo E7400, which will be similarly priced. Apart from running several benchmarks, the overclocking potential of these 45nm dualcore processors has also been tested. As expected, this shows great resemblance to the reults the Phenom II X4 gets, both processors were able to reach clock frequencies of 3,9 GHz on a Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P motherboard, whilst being cooled by a Scythe Mugen CPU-cooler.

courtesy of Xbitlabs

The Phenom II X2 550 will be a Black Edition prcoessor, simplifying overclocking even more.

Tags: ddr2 ddr3 deneb hypertransport overclocking phenom socket-am3 core2 athlon

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