Turion X2's

[Fox5]

I think it would be pretty interesting if the Turion X2's could go in current socket 754 radeon xpress laptops, it would make a decent upgrade for people who already have laptops.

 

[coldpower27]

The planned Socket is Socket S1 with 638 Pins, with DDR2 Memory Controller.

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: coldpower27
The planned Socket is Socket S1 with 638 Pins, with DDR2 Memory Controller.

Hmm, why did it go down in pins? Is it single channel?

 

[kknd1967]

Is this still news?
Turion X2 announced

 

[Furen]

Originally posted by: Fox5
Hmm, why did it go down in pins? Is it single channel?

It's actually supposed to be dual-ddr2. If I had to guess I'd say that the reason why the pin count is so low is because all the useless "future expansion" pins are being removed. I'm pretty sure these will be pretty much two DDR2 channels, a single HT link and whatever power, identification and grounding pins are required. Socket 754 (and 939/940) included all kinds of pins reserved for future expansion which AMD didn't get to use.

 

[BrownTown]

wonder when the 2.33G Yonahs are coming out, they should have the performane, but AMD should have better power consumption IF their chipsets and such also are low power.

 

[Accord99]

Originally posted by: BrownTown
wonder when the 2.33G Yonahs are coming out, they should have the performane, but AMD should have better power consumption IF their chipsets and such also are low power.

I seriously doubt that, not when Yonahs use signficantly less power than a single core Turion.

 

[BrownTown]

well, for one thing Yonahs don't use signifigantly less power then a single core Turion, so that statement is wrong. Secondly, the new Turions run at 1.075V, now since power is proportional to the square of the voltage you should expect a signifigant drop in power consumption.

 

[Furen]

Originally posted by: Accord99

Originally posted by: BrownTown
wonder when the 2.33G Yonahs are coming out, they should have the performane, but AMD should have better power consumption IF their chipsets and such also are low power.

I seriously doubt that, not when Yonahs use signficantly less power than a single core Turion.

It depends on the TDP of turions, though I doubt it'll be lower than 35W, at least it won't be on the 90nm process. The vcore is low as hell (1.075v), though, which may actually make these stay within the 35W ( rather easily. Of course it also makes me wonder just how good yields will be (since that vcore approaches extreme undervolting), though I suppose using the already mature 90nm process will help that out a bit.

 

[BrownTown]

the Turions don't use the same process as the X2s, they use different transistors that sacrifice speed for power, so its reasonable to beleive that at 1.075V yields arent too bad at the clockspeeds mentioned, but i doubt they can clock much higher without bumping the voltage considerably.

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: Furen

Originally posted by: Accord99

Originally posted by: BrownTown
wonder when the 2.33G Yonahs are coming out, they should have the performane, but AMD should have better power consumption IF their chipsets and such also are low power.

I seriously doubt that, not when Yonahs use signficantly less power than a single core Turion.

It depends on the TDP of turions, though I doubt it'll be lower than 35W, at least it won't be on the 90nm process. The vcore is low as hell (1.075v), though, which may actually make these stay within the 35W ( rather easily. Of course it also makes me wonder just how good yields will be (since that vcore approaches extreme undervolting), though I suppose using the already mature 90nm process will help that out a bit.

Don't forget the low speeds and reduced cache sizes, though I expect the cache sizes are due more to cost savings.Since these will probably be launching when AMD is at 3ghz, that's a huge disparity in clock speed, approaching the difference between Yonah and the Pentium 4's, except without more IPC.

 

[Furen]

It's not supposed to compete against the desktop X2. Yonah is currently at 2.16 and may be at 2.33 by the time this launches. Considering that an X2 3800+ is about the equivalent of the top-end X2 Turion AND it outperforms the Yonah 2.0GHz consistently I'd say AMD will be about one speed grade behind with similar power consumption (since Yonah uses 28-30W at when both cores are loaded). Not bad for a 90nm.

 

[BrownTown]

not bad for 90nm? maybe so, but the point is moot since Intel has 65nm and AMD doesn't. Anyways, speed isn't really something I see as the most important aspect of a laptop. I guess if all you have is a laptop and no desktop then you will want it to be able to play games and the like, but when you arent doing that then i'd say battery life is very crucial. But when you run off the batter your not running at 2.0G at full laod, your running 800mhz at .95V and lite load. Still, id imagine both a Turion and Yonah are good enough at gaming to make the crappy laptop GPUs be the bottleneck instead of the processor, so the real battle comes in with battery life first, and performance second. Now if only someone would put as much money into researching how to make better batteries (or alternate pwoer supplies) as they put into designing low power CPUs...

Basically what it boils down to is that the Turion will almsot certinaly not be a consistantly better CPU then Yonah (and could well be consistantly worse). This means that people who currently use Intel will have no motivation to switch since Intels marketing dollars and name recognition will mean that Core Duo processors will sell better then Turions even if their specs are the exact same. So in the mobile arena it doesn't look as though AMD will be able to gain any ground (unless they get power consumption really darn low which is unlikely). So, AMD will have to try to expand its marketshare in the server and desktop industries if it wants to keep gaining ground.

persoanlly I think AMD only has a few more months to try to increae its marketshre before Conroe comes out and puts an end to AMDs current growth (except in the MP server arena where AMDs architecture will scale better)

well, thats my 2 cents

 

[Furen]

Originally posted by: BrownTown
Anyways, speed isn't really something I see as the most important aspect of a laptop. I guess if all you have is a laptop and no desktop then you will want it to be able to play games and the like, but when you arent doing that then i'd say battery life is very crucial. But when you run off the batter your not running at 2.0G at full laod, your running 800mhz at .95V and lite load.

Oh, but you're wrong there. If performance wasn't a priority then we'd all be running Transmeta Efficeons instead of all these new high performance chips. Another thing that is very important is price. Intel isn't letting the price for its Core Duo drop below $240 so if AMD can undercut the Core Duos with a comparable power consumption (these parts SHOULD have a 35W TDP, which probably means that overall power consumption will be pretty similar when fully loaded, though Yonah may have a 2-3W advantage when idle) then I think we'll see some excitement over the Turions. One big thing is that AMD is going for cut-down cache with all of these CPUs, probably to be able to price the CPUs aggressively enough. I think AMD's Sempron-like SKU (256k cache X2) will be priced under $200, which is nice for a dual-core chip.

Also, battery life is actually not THAT important. To us it is because we over-research all our purchases, but to most people out there there's little difference between 3 hours and 2 hours and 45 minutes so no one will make a big deal about a few watts. I think the dual-core checkbox/sticker on cheaper kit (AMD HAS to be cheaper or it'll be crushed by Centrino) is going to be give AMD a bit of an edge... until Intel responds.

EDIT: The Inquirer claims that woodcrest (3GHz) will hit around 2800 SPECint and 2500 SPECfp, which does sound pretty impressive (a 2.8GHz Opteron 254 hits around 1918 and 1906 respectively) but I wonder if this is all due to the wider width (Woodcrest's numbers seem to be around 33% higher than an Opteron would be at the same clock), which may not have such a big impact in the real world. It could just be that the CPUs are simply better, of course, but the fact that the numbers fit so nicely into this the increase in issue width makes me wonder...

 

[openwheelformula1]

Actually I agree with BrownTown. Power consumption is perhaps the single most important element in choosing a laptop. Speed isn't quite as important. Very few play games or encode videos on their laptops. We want to be able to use our laptops for as long as possible w/o having to plug into the wall.

That aside, there is one thing that really interests me: Turion X2's overclockability and price compared to Yonah/Merom.

 

[kknd1967]

It is all about the tradeoff between battery, performance and budget
there is no such "single most important element" everyone agrees upon
otherwise, Dell XPS won't be there and no one needs dual-core in notebook anyway

on the other hand, here is a screenshot of CPU-Z
Turion CPUZ
Rumor says it can go as low as 433MHz when on battery?

Originally posted by: openwheelformula1
Actually I agree with BrownTown. Power consumption is perhaps the single most important element in choosing a laptop. Speed isn't quite as important. Very few play games or encode videos on their laptops. We want to be able to use our laptops for as long as possible w/o having to plug into the wall.

That aside, there is one thing that really interests me: Turion X2's overclockability and price compared to Yonah/Merom.

 

[Furen]

Interesting screenshot. That model number, as weird as it is (wonder what the T means), does imply that it will be a 35W part...