AMD Athlon X2 BE-2350 Review --- TheThirdMedia Hardware

Test Setup

For this article, we will be reviewing the Athlon X2 BE-2350, the highest available model at the moment running at 2.1GHz.

Considering that there are no architectural differences between the Athlon X2 and current Athlon 64 X2 processors, we expect the BE-2350 to perform similarly to the Athlon 64 X2 4000+ 'Brisbane' processor, which is also clocked at 2.1GHz. As we did not have a Brisbane processor on hand for direct comparison testing, the benchmarks in this article will be using results from the 'Windsor' based Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (2GHz) and 4200+ (2.2GHz), which should clearly put the Athlon X2 BE-2350 in perspective. All of these Athlons are equipped with 1MB (512KBx2) L2 cache.

On the side of the competition, Intel has a few new interesting processors in the low end segment that should fare well with the Athlon X2 BE-2350 in terms price and performance as well. First up is the Pentium Dual Core E2160, which is actually a Core 2 Duo E4300 in disguise. The E2160 has the same specifications as the E4300 (1.8GHz, 800MHz bus), but only has a 1MB L2 cache. Of course, the results from the E4300 will also be included as well as the original E6300. Scores of the AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ and Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 are provided as a gauge on where these mainstream processors stand in the overall scheme of things.

The test bed configuration for all systems are listed below and will used throughout the benchmarking process unless stated otherwise:-

AMD Athlon X2/Athlon 64 X2 Configuration

ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe (nForce 590 SLI chipset)
AMD Athlon X2 BE-2350, Athlon 64 X2 3800+, 4200+ and 5000+
2 x 512MB Corsair XMS DDR2-800 non-ECC memory modules (CAS 4, 4-4-12)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80GB SATA hard disk drive (one single NTFS partition)
MSI GeForce 7900 GT 256MB - with NVIDIA Detonator XP 84.21
Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2

Intel Pentium Dual Core/Core 2 Configuration

Intel Desktop Board D975XBX (Intel 975X Express chipset)
Intel Pentium Dual Core E2160
Intel Core 2 Duo E4300, E6300, 6320 and E6600
2 x 512MB Corsair XMS DDR2-800 non-ECC memory modules (CAS 4, 4-4-12)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80GB SATA hard disk drive (one single NTFS partition)
MSI GeForce 7900 GT 256MB - with NVIDIA Detonator XP 84.21
Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2

Benchmarks

The following benchmarks will be used:-

BAPCo SYSmark 2004
SPEC CPU2000 v1.3
Lightwave 3D 7.5
Futuremark PCMark 2005
SPECviewperf 8.01
Cinebench 2003
XMpeg 5.0.3 (DivX 6.2.5 encoding)
Futuremark 3DMark05
Futuremark 3DMark06
Unreal Tournament 2004
AquaMark3
Quake 4 ver.1.20
F.E.A.R.



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