Intel Yonah Performance Preview - Part I: The Exclusive First Look at Yonah
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 30, 2005 2:50 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Multitasking Content Creation
MCC Winstone 2004
Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004 tests the following applications in various usage scenarios:
. Adobe® Photoshop® 7.0.1
. Adobe® Premiere® 6.50
. Macromedia® Director MX 9.0
. Macromedia® Dreamweaver MX 6.1
. Microsoft® Windows MediaTM Encoder 9 Version 9.00.00.2980
. NewTek's LightWave® 3D 7.5b
. SteinbergTM WaveLabTM 4.0f
All chips were tested with Lightwave set to spawn 4 threads.
While the 2.0GHz Yonah processor is faster than the Pentium D, the X2 3800+ manages to hold a marginal 6% lead over Intel's newcomer. This is somewhat of a disappointment, given the enhancements Yonah has that are specifically designed to improve performance in situations like this. While Yonah is doing better than Dothan here, it's not good enough to beat AMD.
ICC SYSMark 2004
The first category that we will deal with is 3D Content Creation. The tests that make up this benchmark are described below:
"The user renders a 3D model to a bitmap using 3ds max 5.1, while preparing web pages in Dreamweaver MX. Then the user renders a 3D animation in a vector graphics format."
The situation changes dramatically when we look at SYSMark's ICC performance, here the 2.0GHz Yonah is right on the heels of AMD's Athlon 64 X2 4200+, maintaining just under a 7% lead over the identically clocked X2 3800+.
Next, we have 2D Content Creation performance:
"The user uses Premiere 6.5 to create a movie from several raw input movie cuts and sound cuts and starts exporting it. While waiting on this operation, the user imports the rendered image into Photoshop 7.01, modifies it and saves the results. Once the movie is assembled, the user edits it and creates special effects using After Effects 5.5."
Yonah continues to fall in between the X2 3800+ and the 4200+, this time being much closer to the former.
The Internet Content Creation suite is rounded up with a Web Publishing performance test:
"The user extracts content from an archive using WinZip 8.1. Meanwhile, he uses Flash MX to open the exported 3D vector graphics file. He modifies it by including other pictures and optimizes it for faster animation. The final movie with the special effects is then compressed using Windows Media Encoder 9 series in a format that can be broadcast over broadband Internet. The web site is given the final touches in Dreamweaver MX and the system is scanned by VirusScan 7.0."
Once more we see that Yonah isn't perfect, being outpaced by the X2 3800+ by around 8%. Of course power consumption matters, but we'll save that comparison for the end of this article :)
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lee1026 - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
They still can't beat the A64 3800+? sad, intel, sad.Pythias - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
Graphs I looked at, it appeared the two were neck and neck. And the yonah cosumes less power.Darth Farter - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
well, what about the RAM power consumption difference... is this censored or something?Yonah's 1.8V DDR2 ram opposed to the Athlon X2's 2.6V DDR ram
if the reviewer really measured "Total System Power" this will factor in... the same reason why the Pentium M is still king of Battery Life on mobile platforms...
When Socket M2 arrives Q2 2006 it could prove better for performance and less for power requirements again.... and without being transitioned to 65nm process yet.
anyway, this is not cpu isolated and therefore I'd suggest just mentioning it includes the worse DDR power consumption (apples to apples) before the community blames the cpu only like in the comments here.
(btw, if there would be any way to isolate the cpu power usage only without motherboard and ram I would really like to know. (I thought I saw something like that on overclockers.com a few moths back.)
anyway could my point matter on the graphs on last page Anand?
coldpower27 - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
This is the price you pay for having an On Die Memory Controller, Intel can adopt new memory technologies quciker then AMD can as they don't need another revison of a CPU plus a Socket change due to the memory controller, this is the price AMD paid to get the added performance, and reduced power cosumption of having the memory cnotroller on Die and not needing a Northbridge. This is AMD's choice and they have to live with the consequences of this choice.Zebo - Friday, December 2, 2005 - link
Nevermind they did change thier socket.coldpower27 - Sunday, December 11, 2005 - link
I think they wanted to make sure that only the i945M Chipset series is compatible with the Dual Core Yonah and not run the risk of people sticking these into older i915M and the currently available desktop Pentium M boards.This is a move for profit of course, as Intel wants to sell their new i945M chipsets as a Centrino bundle with Yonah.
nserra - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
AMD 64 2.0Ghz at .13 at full load does 68WAMD 64 2.0Ghz at .09 at full load does 43W
AMD 64 2.0Ghz at .65 at full load maybe ~27W
AMD 64 2.0Ghz at .13 at idle does 19W
AMD 64 2.0Ghz at .09 at idle does 13W
AMD 64 2.0Ghz at .65 at idle maybe ~9W
tayhimself - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
90nm 3800x2 is around 68 W. Take out 8 or so for the northbridge. There is no 130nm x2 IIRCnserra - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
Sorry I forgot to mention, its single core amd processors not dual.Viditor - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link
Someone who doesn't know the difference between TDP and power usage...