When talking about memory support, it's worth to note that the memory controller in Athlon II X2 models has beed downgraded to DDR2 1066 MHz and DDR3 1066 MHz, unlike other Athlon X3 and X4 models that support DDR3 up to 1333 MHz. Again, small business will love this feature at a $60 price point. Probably the most important feature is the AMD's virtualization technology, which Intel supports only with higher end Core 2 Duos and Core 2 Quad processors. it's clear that Intel needs something fresh in the lower market segments.
AMD K10 VX INTEL CORE 2 PLUS
When you put in play Athlon's flexibility with AM2+/AM3 and DDR2/DDR3 support plus all of the features it's packing including MMX, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4A instructions, Enhanced 3DNow!, NX bit, AMD64, Cool'n'Quiet, and AMD-V technology.
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If you look at Intel's offering at that price point, Celeron E1600 and Pentiums E5x00 might just not be enough. For anyone who is familiar with AMD's current architecture this means three things: competitive price/performance ratio against Intel's Pentium processors, low heat output and great stock overclocking potential.ĪMD is asking $60 for its Athlon II X2 240, and that's a fair deal right there. Our Athlon II X2 240 works at 2.8 GHz frequency, 1.425 V stock voltage and has a 65 W TDP rating. Image courtesy of mAJORD from XtremeSystems. In total, Regor's core die size measures 117 mm², not as small as Intel's Core 2 Duos but close enough. Compared to 元 cache, L2 cache works at higher frequency, takes less cycles to process the instructions needed and has more bandwidth, so it should make some difference and we're going to check that out later in testing. This means they nullified some of the performance impact of not having any 元 cache memory on board. They increased the L2 cache from 512 KB to 1 MB per core. The resulting die area was so small that AMD had the opportunity to make some improvements while keeping the core die at a very cost efficient size. To make the Regor core, AMD physically removed two cores from Propus (Quad Core).
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It follows the same philosophy, but it has two logic cores, a total of 1 MB L2 cache memory per core, and no 元 cache memory. This enables AMD to make small, power-efficient and cheap Quad Core processors, and if any of its logic cores is faulty - no problem, disable it and sell it as even cheaper Athlon II X3 (Rana) processor.įinally there is the Regor core. It also has 512 KB of L2 cache but lacks any 元 cache. It's the same story with the Propus core which is the base for Athlon II X4 processors. This is a great way to run a cost efficient production and offer a large selection of products to the customer. To make cheaper and slower models, Deneb, with some of its cores or some of its 元 cache memory disabled, were then renamed to Callisto/Heka and sent to market as Phenom II X2, X3 or X4 800 models. Deneb has 512 KB L2 cache per core and a large 6 MB 元 cache buffer that is shared between all cores. All three cores are based on same K10.5 architecture, and the only real differences between them are the size of L2 and 元 cache memory. Cheapest, smallest and basic, the Regor with its two logic cores is implemented in all Athlon II X2 models and market entry Sempron models. That brings us to the third and final core design.
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We reviewed an Athlon II X4 620 model a while back, and we have reviews of Athlon II X3 models planed in the near future, which are based on the same core design with one core disabled. The second core is Propus, also with four logic cores, but no 元 cache. First there is is Deneb, a Quad Core, that is implemented in all Phenom II models, with some variations to core number and 元 cache size. New Athlon II X2 processor models are based on one of three native core designs manufactured by AMD.