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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Furen - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
Silicon on Insulator helps with current leakage, though. The problem for AMD, as I see it, is the delay of its 65nm process.forPPP - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
Interpolating results shown in this article, I think we won't see Turion Dual Core with more than 2.0GHz or maybe even 1.8GHz for now, because it will consume much more power. That's why Turion will be behind it till AMD gets to 65 nm. But then Intel will have new architecture.Cygni - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
Heres a quick summary of my thoughts:Best mobile proccessor option ever produced. Would be silly not to get one with your next laptop. But it doesnt have the muscle for the desktop. Nuff said.
Miggle - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
gaming wise, its looks good. Altho it would be more fair to compare a 2ghz yonah to a 2ghz Athlon X2 /w 2MB L2, being within 5% of 3800+ is very good already, considering that its a notebook cpu. the desktop version may even surpass Athlon64. I sure hope AMD also has something up their sleeves. Exciting match!defter - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
"Altho it would be more fair to compare a 2ghz yonah to a 2ghz Athlon X2 /w 2MB L2"Actually current comparison is fair, since Turion has only single channel memory controller. 2*512KB + dual-channel memory controller Athlon64 achieves about the same performance as 2*1MB + single-channel memory controller.
Furen - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
Dual-core Turions will (supposedly) be socket S1, which will have dual-DDR2 channels.michaelpatrick33 - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
How is it good to be within 5% of a 3800? The 3800+ has only 1024L2 cache total. Additionally, this is their 65nm product compared to a 90nm product and it still doesn't match it in performance? I was expecting more from Yonah than this. AMD already has dualcore notebook Turions coming in Q1 '06 so Intel does indeed look further behind.Additionally, I am not too fond of Sysmark as a performance indicator either way, but still I don't think AMD needs to run around panicing at this point.
Furen - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
If the FX-60 is a 2.6GHz dual-core then AMD will have something that will more than match any Yonah thrown at it (a 2.7GHz or so Yonah could conceivably beat it, I suppose). Yonah really does make things a lot more exciting though, since at least Intel is within striking distance.anandtechrocks - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
You are comparing the most powerful AMD FX processor with a mid-range mobile chip? What does this prove?tfranzese - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
Considering the single core Dothan at 2.0 GHz runs about $300 I don't see how you could say that a dual-core Yonah of the same clock is 'mid-range' especially for a notebook. I highly doubt the chip previewed today will launch at or below that price point, and probably much higher.