Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Socket AM2 Review

[Hardware Secrets Team]

There has been a new article posted.

Title: Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Socket AM2 Review
URL: http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/328

Here is a snippet:
"AMD has finally incorporated a DDR2 memory controller to AMD64 CPUs. The new DDR2-capable AMD64 CPUs use a new socket, AM2. In this review we benchmarked Athlon 64 X2 5000+, which is a dual-core Athlo..."

Comments on this article are welcome.

Best regards,
Hardware Secrets Team
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com

[enderandrew]

On one hand, I was very excited to see this review.

Then I was absolutely shocked to see that the 939 systems had 2 gigs of memory, to 1 gig in the AM2 system.

If you didn't have 2 gigs of DD2 for the AM2 system, then you should have only used a single gig stick in the 939 systems.

You'll note that in test after test, the FX system scored higher for the system overall (due to the memory discrepancy) where as the CPU-specific tests had the new 5000+ scoring higher. Didn't this jump out to you at all?

The purpose of comparing CPUs is to have everything else the same as possible. Honestly, this was a shoddy benchmark. I hope to see it redone on comparable hardware, but until then I just lost a great deal of respect for this site.

[brickballs]

I agree that the two systems should match. It was not clear to me wether the 5000 system had a single 1 GB stick or twin 512 MB sticks, but whichever it was, the FX system should of matched.

Originally Posted by TFA

Our results, however, aren’t final, since we had 1 GB DDR2 memory installed but 2 GB DDR on socket 939 platform. We will redo all the benchmarks as soon as we get two 1 GB DDR2 memory modules and publish here the results.

And doesn't DDR require two sticks of memory to run at full speed?

[Gabriel Torres]

socket 939 was 2x 1 GB each for 2 GB total

socket AM2 was 2x 512 MB each for 1 GB total

Both were running on dual channel config.

I'll redo the benchmarks and then post the results.

Gabriel.

[dingusfungus]

the problem of the CPU to not achieveing the maximum bandwidth the DDR2 memory can provide appears only for amd cpu which has an odd number multiplier.

is this problem occurs too at ddr2-667??
is this problem occurs only at athlons x2's?(x2 6000, x2 6400 and the black edition's??) how about the phenoms?? are they affected too??


thanks anyone

[Gabriel Torres]

CPUs based on K10 architecture (namely the Phenom CPUs) aren't affected by this issue. BTW, if you want to learn more about Phenom architecture: http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/480

For other speed grades you have to make the math as described on the review.

Cheers,
Gabriel