AnandTech's First Look at Intel's "Yonah"

NetRyder

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AnandTech takes a look at Intel's upcoming "Yonah" dual-core processor, intended as a successor to the current Pentium-M "Dothan" line for mobile PCs, and compares the performance to Intel's Pentium D and AMD's Athlon64 X2, the two dual-core CPU lines on the market today.

Here's the concluding excerpt:

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.
Check out the full report at: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2627&p=1
 
That sounds tasty. When will the first laptops with this start coming out?
 
No problem, El Grandmaster :)

Of course, these potential product insertions are always subject to change.

EDIT: I definitely will keep my eyes peeled, more so for the potential price war it will drive AMD to come down a bit I'd think?
 
Finally, AMD may get owned. Shakes happy. For no reason except to quiet the processor b*&th wars
 
NetRyder said:
AnandTech takes a look at Intel's upcoming "Yonah" dual-core processor, intended as a successor to the current Pentium-M "Dothan" line for mobile PCs, and compares the performance to Intel's Pentium D and AMD's Athlon64 X2, the two dual-core CPU lines on the market today.

Here's the concluding excerpt:


Check out the full report at: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2627&p=1

You know what I found odd about that?

When I first got my 3400+, I was not blown away by the speed since I was basically moving from a pretty speedy 3.0c setup.

I was blown away by the utter smoothness of the setup even though it did not have HT. And even more so with the X2.

The dothan is a great proc and I am sure yonah will continue to blaze a trail but when looking at the benches, you can see that the X2 is consistenly right there or ahead, being behind in only a few games.

While I applaud AT's pointing out that the on-die memory controller's effect was almost negated, I am appalled that they fail to mention the significantly larger L2 cache that is employed by the intel procs in this test.

I mean if you are pointing out the benefits and the faults, be fair and critical. Yonah has a wonderful road ahead of it undoubtedly but for crying out loud, THE CACHE MAKES A DIFFERENCE.

Now coming back to the on-die memory controller, anyone who has used an a64 based system knows what I am talking about when it comes to smoothness and responsiveness. It is not "faster" but it sure as heck feels like it. And this is not discussed by AT even while talking about on-die memory controllers.

I think that is a glaring miss.
 
Sazar, the cache issue was one of the first things I noticed too. Definitely something that should have been mentioned. :)
 

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Also Hi EP and people. I found this place again while looking through a oooollllllldddd backup. I have filled over 10TB and was looking at my collection of antiques. Any bids on the 500Mhz Win 95 fix?
Any of the SP crew still out there?
Xie wrote on Electronic Punk's profile.
Impressed you have kept this alive this long EP! So many sites have come and gone. :(

Just did some crude math and I apparently joined almost 18yrs ago, how is that possible???
hello peeps... is been some time since i last came here.
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Rest in peace my friend, been trying to find you and finally did in the worst way imaginable.

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