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
Power Consumption and Final Words
At 2.0GHz, Yonah is basically equal to, if not slightly slower than an Athlon 64 X2 running at the same clock speed in virtually all of the tests we ran. The important distinction here is that Intel is able to achieve that level of performance, without an on-die memory controller. But there is also one more thing to note, Yonah can offer that level of performance with significantly lower power consumption:
While the Yonah and Athlon 64 X2 systems consumed relatively similar power at idle, Yonah hardly eats up any more power under full load. In fact, a 2.0GHz Yonah under 100% load consumes less power than an Athlon 64 X2 3800+ at idle. Obviously Intel has the advantage of being on a much lower power 65nm process, but it won't be until the second half of next year before we see any Athlon 64 X2s at 65nm, so it is an advantage that Intel will have for quite some time.
Although we didn't consider it as such here today , Yonah will be quite impressive on notebooks. The thought of having such a cool running dual core processor in a notebook is honestly amazing, and the performance difference (especially for multitaskers) over what we have today will be significant. The other thing to keep in mind is that when you go from a single core to a dual core Pentium M notebook, you won't be giving up anything at all. On the desktop side, you normally give up clock speed for dual core support, but Yonah will be running at very similar frequencies to what Dothan is running at today. In other words, you won't be giving up single threaded performance in favor of multi-threaded performance - you'll get the whole package.
As a desktop contender, Yonah is a bit of a mixed bag. While its performance in content creation applications has definitely improved over the single core Dothan, it still falls behind the Athlon 64 X2 in a handful of areas. Intel still needs to improve their video encoding and gaming performance, but it looks like we may have to wait for Conroe and Merom for that.
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monsoon - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
i am waiting for overclocking tests and most of all the coming release of a MAC MINI with this baby inside. I'm going to run windows on it if possible ( so does it come with VT or not ? ). Hopefully january won't be a let down from apple...tfranzese - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
Are you dense?Ask yourself: What's the mini's price point? Now, what do you think this chip's price point will be?
I think you're dreaming.
Furen - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
I wouldnt quite put it like that. I think single-core Yonahs will find themselves thrown into the cheaper Mac Minis, I dunno if apple will actually make a premium version with the dual-core CPUs.forPPP - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
I don't understand all those comments that AMD is 2 year ahead because Athlon 64 X2 3800+ is on average 8% faster.Yohan is MOBILE cpu, while Athlon 64 X2 is desktop. Please compare Yohan with Turion and then complain.
Intel has lead with 65 nm technology which means AMD won't catch it up for very long in mobile market. Turion dual core at 90 nm will be far far behind Yohan.
rpsgc - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
Yonah is a 65nm dual-core, Turion is a 90nm single-core....
forPPP - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
[quote]Yonah is a 65nm dual-core, Turion is a 90nm single-core....[/quote]And that's why for now there is nothing to compare. Yonah is its in own class. Even "Turion Dual Core" will be behind it, because of power consumption problem.
tfranzese - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
Really? I can't pick a notebook up today that has one, so comparing a processor that's been shipping for quite some time to this one means little.
Further, no one seems to point it out, but does Yonah not have 64-bit extensions? If not, now that near every desktop CPU sold today has them it'd be a real shame if 64-bit Windows development gained momentum.
forPPP - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
Great point. You are right. It's the biggest disadvantage of the Yonah.
Viditor - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
WHAT power consumption problem?
Shintai - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
Maybe the power problem with adding over twice the transistors.Dothan->Yonah ~140mio to ~151mio ~8% more transistors
Turion->Turion X2 ~105mio to ~233mio(X2 current) ~121% more transistors.
And transistors = powerusage.