Stars (K10) microarchitecture employed in Phenom X3 and X4 processors has finally made it to dual-core CPUs. So, the new Athlon X2 got all the advantages of their elder brothers including shared L3 cache. Nevertheless, these intriguing newcomers will hardly be able to fix AMD’s current market standing. Our today’s article will reveal why.
Table of Contents
· Two Is Four Minus Two
· Testbed Configuration
· Kuma vs. Brisbane
· Performance
o General Performance
o 3D Games
o Media Content Encoding
o Other Resource-Hungry Applications
· Power Consumption
· Overclocking
· Conclusion
Two Is Four Minus Two
Before we get to know the characteristics of the new Athlon X2 7000 from the Stars class, let us say a few words about the prerequisites for their arrival. The thing is that these prerequisites are not so evident: this is not the unification with the Phenom processors. The launch of Athlon X2 7000 series will not mean that the Brisbane based models have to go. On the contrary, these two families will coexist. Moreover, according to current AMD roadmap, Athlon X2 from the old 5000 and 6000 series will remain in the market even longer than the today’s newcomers. Therefore, we see the main reason for the new Athlon X2 7000 series to appear as AMD’s desire to get rid of the quad-core dies production scrapping. There is in fact indirect proof to this fact: the new Athlon X2 7000 are based on the same semiconductor die as the triple- and quad-core Phenom processors.
However, refreshing the dual-core processors lineup by introducing more up-to-date architecture into it may also be a way of making dual-cores more popular. It is no secret to anyone, that there haven’t been any changes in Athlon X2 family for quite a while now. As a result of no action in this segment on AMD’s part, these processors have little by little moved into Budget market sector. And regular dual-core production announcements from Intel have helped this process tremendously.
Anyway, AMD chose the simplest approach to creating new Athlon X2 7000 series processors: they used a standard quad-core Agena die from Phenom X4. Just like Phenom X3 (Toliman) processors are built from Agena with one disabled core, the new Athlon X2 7000 (codenamed Kuma) are built from the same Agena with two disabled computational cores. In this case, however, it would seem more logical to name the new dual-core processors Phenom X2, but AMD marketing specialists base their decisions not that much on logics, but on how well the trademark is recognized by the community.
Table of Contents
· Two Is Four Minus Two
· Testbed Configuration
· Kuma vs. Brisbane
· Performance
o General Performance
o 3D Games
o Media Content Encoding
o Other Resource-Hungry Applications
· Power Consumption
· Overclocking
· Conclusion
Two Is Four Minus Two
Before we get to know the characteristics of the new Athlon X2 7000 from the Stars class, let us say a few words about the prerequisites for their arrival. The thing is that these prerequisites are not so evident: this is not the unification with the Phenom processors. The launch of Athlon X2 7000 series will not mean that the Brisbane based models have to go. On the contrary, these two families will coexist. Moreover, according to current AMD roadmap, Athlon X2 from the old 5000 and 6000 series will remain in the market even longer than the today’s newcomers. Therefore, we see the main reason for the new Athlon X2 7000 series to appear as AMD’s desire to get rid of the quad-core dies production scrapping. There is in fact indirect proof to this fact: the new Athlon X2 7000 are based on the same semiconductor die as the triple- and quad-core Phenom processors.
However, refreshing the dual-core processors lineup by introducing more up-to-date architecture into it may also be a way of making dual-cores more popular. It is no secret to anyone, that there haven’t been any changes in Athlon X2 family for quite a while now. As a result of no action in this segment on AMD’s part, these processors have little by little moved into Budget market sector. And regular dual-core production announcements from Intel have helped this process tremendously.
Anyway, AMD chose the simplest approach to creating new Athlon X2 7000 series processors: they used a standard quad-core Agena die from Phenom X4. Just like Phenom X3 (Toliman) processors are built from Agena with one disabled core, the new Athlon X2 7000 (codenamed Kuma) are built from the same Agena with two disabled computational cores. In this case, however, it would seem more logical to name the new dual-core processors Phenom X2, but AMD marketing specialists base their decisions not that much on logics, but on how well the trademark is recognized by the community.
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