Technical Features of AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+

The new Athlon 64 X2 6000+ processor is based on the Windsor core, which we have already discussed in detail before. It is manufactured with the good old 90nm production technology. Although AMD has already managed to start mass manufacturing of 65nm Brisbane based processors, these cores were not used for the new CPUs for two reasons. Firstly, mature 90nm technology allows achieving higher clock speeds, as the top of the line CPUs on 65nm Brisbane core can only hit 2.6GHz at the most. Secondly, the cores used for the top Athlon 64 X2 processors with the total of 2MB of onboard cache-memory do not have any analogues among 65nm dies, because the biggest cache Brisbane can offer is only 1MB.

The specifications of the new CPU are pretty predictable.

The data reported by the diagnostic utility is fully compliant with the official specification:

There is one thing that you should definitely pay special attention to. The new processor is based on F3 core stepping, which we know from Athlon 64 FX-7X used in Quad FX platform. It should be this new Windsor core stepping that allowed AMD to increase the clock frequencies of the mass processors to 3.0GHz. However, this frequency increase turned out not free for the newcomer. Its typical heat dissipation rose to 125W, which puts Athlon 64 X2 6000+ on the same level with the Athlon 64 FX processors. Even Athlon 64 X2 5600+ working at 2.8GHz dissipated only 85W of heat, which is typical for the entire line-up of “common?Socket AM2 CPUs.

So, Athlon 64 X2 6000+ sets special requirements to the cooling system and mainboard CPU voltage regulator circuitry. This processor is only compatible with those coolers and mainboards that support Socket AM2 versions of Athlon 64 FX processor family. Other than that, there should be no potential problems with the use of the new Athlon 64 X2 6000+ processor.

Testbed and Methods

We decided to compare the performance of the new Athlon 64 X2 6000+ processor with that of the top CPUs on Core micro-architecture as well as to that of the fastest AMD solutions available these days: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ and Quad FX platform. Considering that we have pretty good idea of what the result will turn out to be and in order to add some intrigue to our test session we decided to use Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate OS. All performance measurements taken throughout this test session were performed in 64-bit version of the above mentioned operating system.

Our test platforms were built using the following equipment:

• CPUs:
• AMD Athlon 64 FX-74 (Socket 1207, 3.0GHz, 2x1024KB L2);
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ (Socket AM2, 3.0GHz, 2x1024KB L2);
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ (Socket AM2, 2.8GHz, 2x1024KB L2);
• Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 (LGA775, 2.93GHz, 1067MHz FSB, 4MB L2);
• Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 (LGA775, 2.66GHz, 1067MHz FSB, 2x4MB L2);
• Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 (LGA775, 2.66GHz, 1067MHz FSB, 4MB L2);
• Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (LGA775, 2.4GHz, 1067MHz FSB, 4MB L2).
• Mainboards:
• ASUS L1N64-SLI WS (Dual Socket 1207, NVIDIA nForce 680a SLI);
• ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe (Socket AM2, NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI);
• ASUS Striker Extreme (LGA775, NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI).
• Memory:
• 2048MB DDR2-800 SDRAM (Mushkin XP2-6400PRO, 2 x 1024 MB, DDR2-800, 4-4-4-12);
• 2048MB DDR2-800 SDRAM (Mushkin XP2-6400PRO, 4 x 512 MB, DDR2-800, 4-4-4-12).
• Graphics card: PowerColor X1900 XTX 512MB;
• HDD: Western Digital WD1500AHFD.
• OS: Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate (64-bit).

We ran the tests with the BIOS Setup of the mainboards adjusted for maximum performance.

Also note that according to the manufacturers?recommendations the Quad FX system was equipped with four 512MB memory modules, while all other test systems used two 1GB DDR2 SDRAM memory modules. Node Interleaving function was disabled.

We used 64-bit applications version everywhere where it was possible.