The Intel Core2 Extreme quad-core CPU offers the best in computer performance today. Four cores will carry you four times as far, and you sure have to pay for this level of performance.

At the end of the Pentium 4’s era, there was an AMD vs Intel battle to speed up processors to extreme levels. When processors became hot enough to cook on, there was obviously something that had gone wrong. Intel was quick to release a dual core Pentium, and then its Core2 range. The Core2’s managed to bring power consumption back to sane levels and regain much of Intel’s street cred.

After dual-core, the obvious next step is quad-core. As the technologies to produce the internals of a CPU get more sophisticated, so more cores can be stuffed into a single processor. But is there a tradeoff?

Intel Core2 Extreme offer a huge performance leap over their smaller brothers and sisters. By definition, the Extreme series leave the bus and multiplier so they can be adjusted by the user. This is useful for those who like to overclock, but not for the vast majority of desktop computer users who just want things to work.

This processor offers a large 12MB L2 cache, which amounts to 3MB per core. This is an increase of 50% of what is found in the other dual and quad-core processors in the range. This is a real performance booster, as L2 cache allows information to be stored close to the processing core, for much faster operations on data.

A new motherboard will be necessary, look for one that supports DDR3, to really stay ahead.

When building a super-fast computer for gaming or heavy duty office work with processor intensive programs, this is a processor worth considering. Stay ahead of the curve, but pick something else from the range if you want value for money.

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AM2 was supposed to be the things of the future delivering the ultimate performance where socket 939 left off. With more memory bandwidth and a whole host of other features the new socket has not lived up to it’s much hyped beginnings.

XYZcomputing takes a look at the AMD AM2 to see just how it performs. Or more specifically, just what makes this computer processor that little bit unexciting.

AMD has a hard time keeping up with massive Intel, who have built such a strong market position that even a series of messups have managed to put much of a damper on their market sector. And although AMD were able to make the best of those blunders by Intel, Intel has now come back in force to once again compete with AMD.

XYZcomputing takes you through the overview to see what’s going on.

Energy savings is big business, especially in big businesses where the power bills for feeding hundreds of power hungry machines can be mind boggling.

AMD have had a great emphasis on how much power their processors can save, but this has mostly been aimed at the server market. These kinds of power saving are now available to the consumer market with the EE range of energy effiecient dual-core processors.

The biggest power savings come with the “Energy Efficient Small Form Factor” EE and SFF model which uses a pretty low 54W at idle. This is quite a saving compared to the Intel rivals, but might not be enough warrant it.

Perfect for use in home theater systems though and small form factor boxes where cooling is a very sensitive issue.

The full low-down can be found at Tom’s Hardware

AMD have released nearly all of their processors using this new socket. Most of this range have also been moved over to dual-core, which now makes up the majority of their range. As reported on bit-tech, this is in line with their strategy to slowly phase out single-core in favor of dual-core.

The 2 new top-end offerings are the FX-62 and X2 5000+. These processors feature all the new stuff to come along with these chips, both of them are dual-core and both of them have built-in DDR2 memory controllers.

The main rivals to these new offerings are the Core Duo series from Intel. Although they manage to beat out the AMD chips sometimes, there are other times where the AM2 chips shine above them.

The uniform socket connection through the range will certainly make upgrading that much easier, being able to upgrade straight to a high-end processor from a mid-range one without changing the motherboard is great.

Waiting a while would be the recommended course of action for those looking to upgrade, as there are likely to be changes made before the whole deal settles down and prices come to reasonable levels.

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The Intel Pentium D processor provides a bottom of the range option for those looking for a dual core processor without the cost involved in getting many of them.

This chip is fairly new to the market and mates two smithfield cores together, with a FSB of 533MHz, one L2 cache of 1MB each for the cores. Unlike its brothers and sisters in the 800 series of dual-core processors from Intel, which all run at 800MHz, this one runs slower at 533MHz, with a multiplier of 20 to get to a speed of 2.67GHz.

In the review at legitreviews.com they managed to push the FSB up to 760MHz without any problems from the processor and loaded up Windows and ran their tests without any problems. The actual increase in performance did not quite match the rise in processor speeds, with the overall change being about a 29% in performance or so.

The processor goes past the levels of the 840 processor and starts to come near the level set by the 840 Extreme Edition.

There is a lot or praise for this chip on the site and the test scores go to show how much it can perform, and how much you can get for your money from the lowest priced dual-core processor around. With a decent motherboard for under a hundred bucks, you will be able to get a processor that is capable or running up to 3.8GHz with a little bit of overclocking.

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One of the factors that comes into play is that much of the software available just doesn’t take advantage of this technology, whereas high performance systems have had it for a little while now.

With the release of 64-bit windows and now video card manufacturers making their cards capable of utilising multi-core processors and hopefully soon, gaming software to support it dual-core processors are coming into their own, slowly, but surely.

AMD and Intel take quite different routes to doing the dual-core processor thing, which can be read about in the article at pcstats. Both are bitter rivals, plugging away at their own technology to get as much as they can from their processors.

AMD has introduced Cool ‘n’ Quiet technology which effectively clocks a processor down when it is not being used heavily, so its clock speeds are lower. When the computer starts using more resources the clock speeds and voltages are returned closer to their normal levels, until they reach normal levels somewhere near 100% system demand.

The processor beats out the Pentium D 840 in all of the system tests that are performed and does so using less power, which is of great concern to those running hundreds of computers in a corporate environment, but probably less to most home users.

64 bit operating system and software also made a big difference, allowing even faster speeds with this new technology.

Check out the full article for all the details.

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The AMD Athlon 64 x 2 3800+ Dual Core Processor is one of the fastest processors that delivers smooth and efficient multi-tasking activities. This means that this model allows the users to switch from one program to another without even pausing for the computer to catch up. This results in increase of office productivity performance of 22% on average.

Following are the significant features of AMD Athlon 64×2 3800+ Dual Processor:

• Processor speed – 64 3800+ / 2.0 GHz
• Bus speed – 2000 MHz
• Processor interface – Socket 939
• Other Technologies – HyperTransport

The advanced technology of the AMD Athlon processor offers the users to take real advantage of new innovations like life-like games, real-time encryption, accurate speech interfaces, easy-to-use video, cinema quality graphic effects and easy audio editing.

This model places itself well below the top of the range 4800+, but only costs half the price. With the price of newer processors stretching into the thousand dollar range, there is something lacking for those looking to keep themselves up to date, but without having to take out a second mortgage on their home to do it. Being near the bottom of the pack for Dual core processors allows you to get the best of the new stuff without the price payout.

AMD have made great steps forward when it comes to their chips. While the current bread of processors tend to get hotter and hotter as they push their clock speeds to ever more ridiculous (but justifiable) levels, AMD have managed to keep things cool. The Dual core chips manage to increase system performance by doubling up the performance over two cores rather than just cranking the speed up all the time.

Pros

• Leading edge software performance
• High-speed performance
• Inter-core communication at CPU speed
• Direct access to memory controller
• Lowest power cost
• Easy installation
• Extremely flexible
• Highly portable
• Cheap price

Basically a great chip if you want to get into dual core processing. A good balance between speed and price.

This dual-core processor increases the performance level of a system by at least 80-85%. The model puts the power of advanced dual-core technology on the desktop. It also contains two processing cores, residing on one chip that performs calculations on two different streams of data and thereby increases efficiency and speed even while running a variety of programs and new multi-threaded software.

Here are the significant features of AMD Athlon dual-core processor:

• Delivers true multi-tasking offering users to easily switch from one program to another without processing pauses.
• Increases office productivity performance.
• Allows amazing photo-editing, high-definition video, audio mixing and content creation.

The fully integrated DDR memory controller offers to provide hi-speed access to memory by offering the processor a direct connection to the actual memory. This results in allowing the users to enjoy quicker application loading and extraordinary application performance of the computer system.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ dual processor comes with almost the same features as the AMD 3800+ dual processor. The Cool’n’Quiet technology used in this model reduces heat output of your PC, reduces power consumption, and keeps your home quiet, for they produce less noise.

The processor uses HyperTransport technology, which provides significantly more bandwidth than other current technologies, uses low latency responses and low pin counts, maintains compatibility with legacy PC buses while being extensible to new SNA [Systems Network Architecture] buses, appears transparent to other operating systems and offers very little impact on peripheral drivers.

List of specifications of AMD 64 X2 4800 processor:

• Processor speed – 64 4800+ / 2.0 GHz
• Bus speed – 2000 MHz
• Voltage – 1.35 – 1.40 V
• Thermal Design Power [TDP] – 110 W
• Cache speed – 1MB per CPU
• Clock frequency – 2.4 GHz

The fabrication process used in AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800 is 90mm using SOI (silicon on insulator). The 128-bit memory controller in the model is compatible with PC1600, PC2100, PC2700 and PC3200 DDR.

Pros

• Easy installation
• Flexible
• Hi-tech performance
• Great speed
• Cheapest
• Lowest power cost
• Highly portable
• Direct access to memory controller

There is a lot of hype going on over the new breed of dual-core processors, but do they really offer the performance advantages they say they offer?

This is one of the cheapest of the models in the x2 range from AMD, so it will provide a good comparisson for making a good value purchase.

Dual-core processors essentially offer two cpu processors in one. In the same chip, you will find two cores (the brain part, if you like) and cache (very fast memory) for each one. They are all housed inside the same casing. By having two cores to do the work, you can theoretically get a lot more done.

At over $500 this chip is still not cheap. When I compare it to my favorite priced AMD Athlon 64 3000+ with Venice Core do I really think that 3 times the price will give me 3 times the performance.

As always my main focus is good value. I don’t have any money to burn, and it is always a factor in my purchasing decision. Although modern technologies and that kind of stuff are interesting and worth considering, I am looking for real world performance for my buck.

The main area where dual-core processors, like this one and ones from Intel is the area of multi-tasking. When running more than one program your operating system, usually Windows and the processor use some pretty cool tricks to allow you to use more than one program at the same time. By taking turns using the resources of the processor, two programs can run at the same time seamlessly.

With two processors the ability to do this becomes that much better. There is the ability to physically split up the tasks over the two cores inside.

So what difference is there in real world performance?

Well, not as much as I would have hoped. The actual increases in speed in general applications is noticable, overall, it’s not enough for my liking.

Straight CPU tests which stress the processor in applications and things which basically just require raw power from the CPU like video encoding show an increase in performance. Speeds for such applications show a 50% to 60% increase in performance and speed.

General applications and things you might use everyday also benefit from this, resulting in speed increases too, nearly as much as above.

However when it comes to gaming, the increase is not so great. The processor performs on the same level as the AMD Athlon 64 3000+ mentioned above. But for 3 times the price that is not too good.

I would hold off on the purchase of this chip as the price is still too high. If money is not the first thing on your mind then this lowest of the AMD range will certainly allow you to run more programs with more overhead and ability to multitask more, which is perfect for the office environment. Unfortunately it does not provide enough power for the buck for my liking, but if you want to stay with the times and be a little future-proof, go for this guy.

The AMD Athlon 64 series are very powerful and very good quality chips. They provide some of the strongest performance that can be found today. This one is my pick for the fastest processor I would get, at time of writing.

Both AMD and Intel have moved into the realm of dual core processors, which mates two cores into a single chip. Although that is good for the development of chips and improvement in speeds, they are still too expensive for my liking.

So, why would this be my processor of choice.

Firstly, it’s the bottom of the pile of Athlon 64. It is the slowest in the current range from AMD. This always works in my favor because the prices are very good, with this one coming in at around $150 with a standard fan.

It’s speed is good, but doesn’t quite match up to the latest out there.

However, this chip runs at extremely low temperatures. While the whole range were getting hotter and hotter, meaning that the chips were running at higher and higher temperatures, this one set a new standard of energy efficient, cool running chips.

That coolness, allows one great feature, overclocking.

As the slowest and the fastest of the same core are nearly the same, it’s often possible to push the chip further than it is set at the factory, and the same applies for this chip.

It’s standard bus speed is 200MHz, which can safely be pushed to as far as 266MHz (33% increase) while still using the standard fan, and only increasing the voltages slightly. You also need a motherboard and memory that handle these increased bus speeds. Dual channel DDR memory that can go up to 533MHz is necessary, you can find some by searching this site. The motherboard I recommend is an MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum Socket 939 Motherboard or the MSI K8N Platinum with SLI support, which have tons of extras and can handle these increased loads.

HTT needs to be reduced to 4x, chipset voltage raised to 1.7v, DIMM voltage raised to 2.8v and Vcore raised to 1.55v. The standard fan is fine.

With these settings you will get performance that nearly outdoes the AMD Athlon 64 3800+ plus you get the advantages of higher bus speeds. These speeds were accomplished with a AMD Athlon 64 3000+ with Winchester core, the Venice core model is actually capable of more overclocking, as can be seen in this article at hexus.

So, you should be able to easily gain great performance from a processor that has good value, just the reason that people overclock.