AMD Athlon 2650e & X2 3250e - Better than Atom for SFF Desktops
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 31, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Memory Bandwidth & Latency - Much Improved
Intel’s latest Atom processor (codename: Pineview) finally integrated the memory controller. It just wasn’t that impressive.
Overall performance improved a bit, but memory latency was still unusually high for some reason. It’s either due to a horribly unoptimized IMC, or an unusually potent memory controller in the previous Atom platform.
Either way, the Athlon 2560e’s is better:
| Processor | Memory Latency | Memory Read Bandwidth |
| Intel Atom D510 (1.66GHz) | 95.3 ns | 2997 MB/s |
| AMD Athlon 2650e (1.6GHz) | 75.0 ns | 4768 MB/s |
You get lower memory latency and more memory bandwidth. Two ingredients for much better performance. Which brings us to the next section...
Performance: As Expected
Both the 2650e and the X2 3250e are in our Bench database, but I’ve pulled out a few relevant numbers to help characterize their performance here.
In single threaded applications, the 2650e is roughly twice as fast as Intel’s Atom D510. This is important because the majority of desktop applications are still bound by the performance of a single thread.
I ran a couple of lighter benchmarks to put it all in perspective. Futuremark’s Peacekeeper benchmark is a browser performance test. The scores vary depending on OS and browser version, but I kept both variables static for this comparison (Windows 7 x64 + Chrome):
Simply browsing the web should be roughly two times faster on the single core Athlon 2650e compared to even Intel’s latest Atom.
The situation gets complicated the moment you add a second CPU intensive thread. The Atom D510 and 330 are both dual-core processors with Hyper Threading. They can work on four threads of instructions at the same time. Look at any of the multithreaded workloads and the Athlon 2650e loses out:
Fortunately for AMD (and Dell), the majority of those workloads are things like video encoding or 3D rendering. Two tasks you simply shouldn’t be doing in any serious fashion on something this underpowered. The exception would be video encoding for publishing on the web (e.g. YouTube); a reasonable usage case for even the most entry level machine.
That’s where the Athlon X2 3250e comes into play. You get the single threaded performance of the 2650e, but better multithreaded performance than an Atom D510.
Mix single and multithreaded workloads and the Athlon 2650e is still a bit faster than the Atom D510.
There are some workloads where the Atom D510 is able to persevere, but they are limited.
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Alouette Radeon - Wednesday, March 10, 2010 - link
The Athlon 64 2650e is the CPU in my Acer Aspire 5515. It's by no means a scorcher but I often have 10-15 Firefox tabs open with no noticeable decrease in speed. I think RAM might be the difference here. As for power use, keep in mind that you're comparing the latest Atoms to an Athlon 64 that's about 2 years old. There's not much really to expect there. Remember just how low these numbers really are. Those performance bars look big but the scale must be taken into account. We're splitting hairs. I doubt we'd really notice from one to the next except in very isolated circumstances.FlyTexas - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
Dell wants $65 to upgrade to the dual core CPU, right?NewEgg sells an Intel dual core CPU at 2.4ghz for $52 that will run rings around any of these CPUs... It is almost as fast as the one in the review.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
So, what am I missing? This is an overpriced computer from Dell in a fancy mini case. Maybe that makes it expensive, but lets be honest, you're paying for the small pretty case, not the weak computer inside.
Just buy a Dell Inspiron 537s slim desktop, it even comes with the rubber mounts to put it flat with the rest of your components, looks good (in the right color of course) with your XBox/PS3/DVD Player/Whatever...
How much? About the same $450 this thing costs, and it comes with a 2.6Ghz Pentium Dual Core. It just lacks the super small case.
Just my opinion... :)
bearshat - Tuesday, January 5, 2010 - link
Small form factor and attractiveness is definitely a feature you have to pay a premium for but that doesn't make it overpriced. I can think of a few other things in this world that small and pretty is better than fast and powerful. :)I bought the Zino with Neo X2 6850e and Radeon 4330. I wish I could see the test benchmarks with that configuration.
orionmgomg - Sunday, January 3, 2010 - link
Thanks for the great article and info on these AMD CPUs.Been building AND selling performance systems for years using only intel until just a few months ago, when I had a client insist on an AMD Quad Core CPU for his gaming system.
I was SHOCKED to see that for less than 200$ dollars (Phenom II X4 965) I could get a Quad Core CPU with 8MB cache and clocked at 3.4 factory, using a sub 100$ASUS AM3 EVO mobo and Radeon 5870 GPU all for the price of a single Intel QX9650! (999$)
Umm, lets just say I have been using AMD ever since - in these touch economic times, and out here in the mid west of the US in the middle of winter - people need the very best bang for their buck, dual cores are even "enough" for most people and at the higher end price points - Intel products just become un-necessary... (for the average consumer who cares about base performance and not how much cache or microseconds his latencies run at)
Of course for me…
PS: My current system is:
Core i7 920 @ 3.3
Cooler Master V8
ASUS P6T Deluxe V2
6GBs DDR3 OCZ Gold
EVGA GTX 280FTW
Samsung DVD & 3x1TB HDDs
Corsiar TX850W PSU
No case - spagetios!
Dream Build:
Intel i7 980XT (or just a i7 920 with D0 stepping:)
Cooler Master V8
ASUS P6X58D Premium
6 GBs DDR3 OCZ Gold
ASUS Radeon HD 5970
Samsung DVD & 4x1TB HDDs - or the new OCZ SDD you just reviewed!
Corsiar PSU 850
Cooler Master CosmosS 1100
marraco - Sunday, January 3, 2010 - link
A bit late, but:Thanks for a great work in 2009.
Have an excelent 2010, Anand!!
jaydee - Saturday, January 2, 2010 - link
Wonder how the Neo x2 stacks up...Cogman - Saturday, January 2, 2010 - link
Come-on, from a tech site I would expect a little more :P.x264 is an H.264 encoder (or MPEG-4 AVC if you prefer). There is no such thing as x264 video format as it adheres very strictly to the H.264 standard.
You meant to say H.264 acceleration, not x264 acceleration.
Cogman - Saturday, January 2, 2010 - link
The exact line is on page two, "The first test is H.264 decode acceleration. I fired up the latest version of Media Player Classic and tested x264 acceleration."You got the first right, the second slipped in as an x264.
Penti - Sunday, January 3, 2010 - link
Actually it's right as that's the solution for accelerated bitstream decoding(-only) x264. They didn't test acceleration for H264 blu-rays for example. Then it also does motion compensation and IDCT on the GPU-hardware. So the description is correct in that he tested x264 acceleration. As in x264 encoded videos in MKV format not (fully) supported by standard commercial codecs. And not as in commercially encoded downloaded H264 or H264 BD. Formats matter even if it's details especially when the decoding is done with different decoders and software. The test and x264 reference is valid.Cogman - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
x264 follows the H.264 standard. Any optimizations for "x264" apply to all H.264 film, that is the standard.There is NOTHING that says that an x264 output stream has to be shoved into an MKV. It can be put into an MP4, AVI, whatever. It is a H.264 video stream, so it can go anywhere that the H.264 video streams go.
x264 acceleration would be a test to see how long it takes to encode a video.