Intel Yonah Performance Preview - Part I: The Exclusive First Look at Yonah
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 30, 2005 2:50 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Yonah vs. Dothan
We didn’t have much time to put together this piece, but at the same time we wanted to present the most complete picture of Yonah as possible, so we went back to our last Pentium M on the desktop article and configured our Yonah system identically so we’d have as close to an apples-to-apples comparison as possible. Of course it is impossible to use the same motherboard, due to the socket differences we’ve already mentioned, but the rest of the systems are configured identically. We apologize in advance for the brevity of the benchmark suite, in due time we will present an even more thorough look at Yonah, but for now we are working with what we’ve got. Also keep in mind that the platform and processor are both pre-release samples, so performance could change, most likely for the better.
With that said, we've got a question and that is: how does Yonah stack up to Dothan?
Unfortunately, our Yonah only runs at 2.0GHz, and our reference Dothan numbers are from a 2.13GHz CPU - so we don’t get the clock for clock comparison we were hoping for, making it even more difficult for Yonah to impress. Thankfully our first benchmark is clock speed independent as we look at how cache latencies have changed from Dothan to Yonah using ScienceMark 2.0:
| L1 Cache Latency | L2 Cache Latency | |
| Dothan | 3 cycles | 10 cycles |
| Yonah | 3 cycles | 14 cycles |
And changed they have indeed. If you’ll remember from our earlier desktop Pentium M investigations, Dothan’s very quick 10 cycle L2 cache allowed it to be competitive with AMD’s Athlon 64, despite lacking an on-die memory controller. With the move to Yonah however, the L2 cache latency has gone up a whopping 40%. While we’re still dealing with a lower access latency than the Pentium 4, this increase will hurt Yonah.
We’re guessing that the increase in access latency is due to the new dynamically resizable L2 cache that’s used in Yonah. In order to save power as well as maximize the use of the shared L2 cache between cores, Yonah can dynamically adjust the size of its L2 cache, flushing data to main memory when faced with low demand. The associated logic is most likely at least partially to blame for the increase in L2 cache latency.
So Yonah has a slower L2 cache working against it, but two cores and a handful of architectural enhancements working in its favor - let’s see how they stack up in the real world.
First up, we’ve got our business application tests:
| Business Winstone 2004 | Communication (SYSMark 2004) | Document Creation (SYSMark 2004) | Data Analysis (SYSMark 2004) | |
| Dothan (2.13GHz) | 24.3 | 129 | 202 | 118 |
| Yonah (2.0GHz) | 21.6 | 146 | 215 | 138 |
Dothan has a sizeable lead in Business Winstone 2004, which we’ve always attributed to its low latency L2 cache. Since the benchmark gets no benefits from dual core, and doesn’t take advantage of any of the SSE improvements to Yonah, the advantage is clearly in Dothan’s court.
The SYSMark tests paint a different picture, with Yonah outpacing the faster clocked Dothan by 6 - 17%. What’s interesting to note is that in these tests, the performance advantage isn’t exclusively attributable to the advantage of having two cores - Yonah’s architectural advancements are at work here as well.
The digital content creation tests are where Yonah’s improvements should shine:
| Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004 | 3D Content Creation (SYSMark 2004) | 2D Content Creation (SYSMark 2004) | Web Publication (SYSMark 2004) | |
| Dothan (2.13GHz) | 29.8 | 188 | 255 | 169 |
| Yonah (2.0GHz) | 34.7 | 264 | 323 | 236 |
And shine they do; thanks to a combination of the move to dual core as well as the architectural improvements over Dothan, Yonah shows anywhere between a 16 - 40% increase in performance.
| DivX | Doom 3 | |
| Dothan | 39.7 fps | 95.5 fps |
| Yonah | 57.5 fps | 93.8 fps |
The DivX test shows what we’ve pretty much seen across the board from dual core scaling in video encoding, so there’s no surprise there. Our only gaming benchmark, Doom 3, shows a hazier picture with Dothan on top, and Yonah close behind. We will investigate gaming performance of Yonah much closer later on.
What we can walk away from these benchmarks with is an idea of the level of improvement to expect from Yonah, but now comes the real test - how does it stack up against other desktop processors, especially the Athlon 64 X2.
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Furen - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
It's not supposed to compete against the 3800+ (But it would have been nice if it could match X2s clock-for-clock, at least, since X2s will hit 2.6GHz soon enough) and it does very considering its power consumption.I must say that it looks like 90nm dual-core Turions will be a very good match for these though (which I still dont think they'll hit 35W max power draw), since Yonah on a mobile chipset only uses 25% less power than a "high-voltage" X2 on a desktop chipset.
fitten - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
18% less power at idle and 33% less power under load supposedly with the same video card, HDD, and all of that (they didn't actually reiterate the test system configurations, just said they were the same and were the same as configured in a different article).Remember... the board tested with Yonah was a desktop version board, not a laptop configuration AND both the Yonah and the board it was on were pre-production test boards. It used the 945G chipset but that doesn't mean that the board was designed in any way like a laptop board. Of course, all of the numbers (performance and power) are subject to change (can be up or down) when Yonah and boards are in production.
I wish the Yonah would have been faster, too. It does well in some areas (nearly equaling the X2 4200 which is 200MHz faster clocked) but others it seems to fall down. It looks like the FPUs weren't beefed up enough and it still isn't up to par main memory wise as the Athlon64s.
Carfax - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
Please post some overclocked scores!bigtoe36 - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
AnandPlease lower the multiplier, run 200fsb with the ddr2 in 1:1 mode and give us a true apples to apples comparison against X2.
EIST should work with clockgen in windows if the bios is poor on your board.
Thanks
Beenthere - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
As other PC industry folks have already stated, Yonah, aka YAWNER, is too little, too late and not worth even bothering with. When Conroe and friends arrive, AMD will have already released faster, cheaper X2 CPUs so Intel is still 2 years behind and loosing ground. Why would anyone buy an obsolete, under-performing CPU that requires a new Mobo? Makes no sense.Calin - Friday, December 2, 2005 - link
No, they are fine. They are as fast as the X2 3800+ processors in almost everything (except heavy non-SSE floating point), and they consume less. Everything depends on the price Intel will ask for them.And I would certainly prefer that Yonah over a Pentium D 830. Why there was no power comparison to the D 830 line too?
DrZoidberg - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
Yonah looks ok for notebooks. I mean its slower than AMD X2 but as a mobile processor, its real competitors are AMD Turion and Sempron and Pentium Centrino not X2.I do hope Intel wont price gorge dual core notebook processors, hopefully they only be slightly more expensive than Dothan.
Viditor - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
Actually, it's real competitor is the dual core Turion...I suspect we shall see AMD extend their lead into the mobile sector this next year.
I must say that I had one dissapointment with this preview...
While Anand finished with power numbers, he didn't tell us how or what they measured. For example, was it the whole system or just the CPU? Did it include the Northbridge numbers for Yonah (since these are alreeady included in the X2)? How does this compare to the numbers from the Turion?
tayhimself - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
Well you suspect wrong, which I suspect, in your case, is quite often. First, there are no dual core Turions on the horizon. Second, AMD is not having much success in that sector because intel's platform strategy is useful for laptop builders. Third, Turion power consumption isnt quite on the same level as Dothan. They will need to move to 65nm before building Turion laptops.
Viditor - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
Sigh...have you ever heard of Google before? It's a wonderful little search engine that would have shown you inumerable articles on the Dual Core Turion being released in early 2006...
Gee...then increasing their marketshare by 75% from Q2 to Q3 was unsuccessful, eh?
If someone could translate this for me, I'd be happy to respond...