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Anandtech takes early look at AMD's AM2 socket

Tom Krazit Former Staff writer, CNET News
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Google, as the most prominent company on the Internet defends its search juggernaut while expanding into nearly anything it thinks possible. He has previously written about Apple, the traditional PC industry, and chip companies. E-mail Tom.
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Tom Krazit
2 min read

Early benchmark tests conducted by Anandtech on upcoming processors using AMD's AM2 socket show that the company might have a hard time catching the performance expected from Intel's Conroe processor later this year.

The AM2 socket gives AMD processors the chance to take advantage of DDR2 memory, which can hit higher speeds than DDR memory. However, it doesn't appear that the move to faster memory alone will give AMD much of a boost over its previous-generation products, which was the same result Intel initially saw when it moved to DDR2 memory in June 2004.

Anandtech compared a system using a dual-core Athlon X2 processor and 1GBs of DDR memory running at 400MHz to a system using a dual-core X2 processor based on the AM2 socket and 1GBs of DDR2 memory running at 800MHz. The clock speeds and cache sizes of the AM2 processor and the current-generation processor were identical.

Most application tests showed a minimal increase in performance from the faster memory. The AM2 processor used in Anandtech's tests is not necessarily the final version of the chip, but its performance was a lot better than earlier versions of the chip tested by the site. Tom's Hardware conducted a test in February using DDR2-667 memory that showed the AM2 systems actually fell short of the performance offered by current-generation products.

The small advantage delivered by DDR2 memory makes it appear that Intel might finally be able to reclaim the performance crown in 2006, assuming it launches Conroe on time. AMD will no doubt continue to increase the clock speed of its X2 processors in 2006, which will help the chips take advantage of the faster memory, but Intel's Conroe had a decisive advantage in early reviews.

It's important to remember that all AM2 and Conroe tests have been conducted on preproduction chips, and in Conroe's case on hardware set up by Intel. Anand Shimpi, editor in chief of Anandtech, understandably declined to specify where he got the AM2 hardware, and an AMD representative declined to comment.

AM2 looks like it's just an interim step until AMD's 65-nanometer manufacturing technology is ready to move the company to quad-core processors in 2007. Intel, of course, will also probably release quad-core chips in 2007, and the dance continues.