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Intel Hardware

Intel Yonah Performance Preview 200

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the gastrointestinal-marine-research-lab dept.
illusoryphoenix writes "Anandtech has an interesting preview of the successor to Dothan (Pentium M's second generation), Yonah, with tests run on an engineering sample. It seems like latest Pentium M is still lagging in the floating point area, but has gained some ground overall. It's also interesting to note their comparisons to the Pentium D/Netburst based dual core."
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Intel Yonah Performance Preview More

Intel Yonah Performance Preview

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  • Wow (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sinryc ( 834433 ) on Wednesday November 30, 2005 @05:57PM (#14151686)
    I really have to wonder when Intel will start using this technology in desktops. It really does seem like a good idea. From TFA "At 2.0GHz, Yonah is basically equal to, if not slightly slower than an Athlon 64 X2 running at the same clock speed in virtually all of the tests we ran. " That right there should show that Intell is should switch its R&D and support the Pentium M as a desktop chip.

    • Re:Wow (Score:3, Informative)

      by xWeston ( 577162 )
      This review was done with a desktop motherboard for the Pentium M...

    • Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)

      by darkmeridian ( 119044 ) <william.chuang@NOSPaM.gmail.com> on Wednesday November 30, 2005 @06:16PM (#14151859) Homepage
      Of course, it may have to get rid of its inventory of desktop Pentium 4 chips and might conflict with Intel commitments to Dell not to obsolete all of their offerings. Intel has to change fabs to make the new chips in larger amounts. All of the marketing about higher clock speeds have to go out the window, too. Furthermore, Intel has to concede that it made a huge mistake and that AMD was right all along with regard to the performance per cycle/pure megahertz debate.
      • Governments and corporations never have to admit they're wrong. They just hire someone to handle the PR mess or brush it under the rug as gracefully as possible, and call it good.

    • My view all along has been that Intel developed the Pentium 4 as the processor technology to carry them ahead for a few years while their labs in Israel (where a lot of the R&D for Pentium M takes place) worked on improving the Pentium III, which the PM is based off of. By having two processor lines in the work they ensured decent competitiveness and lots of sales for a few years without compromising another processor technology. The P-M is maturing, the P-4 is showing its age, and Intel can make the

    • The Yonah core uses 92W at idle. While that may be okay for a desktop, it's 50% more than my entire laptop draws. I would be surprised if this is the chip that makes it into laptops - maybe they'll manage some tuning before the official release, but it doesn't look promising. For comparison, you could have 6 G4s at around 1-1.5GHz for the same power budget.
      • If I'm reading the same graph you were when making that comment then the 92W figure is for the entire system, not just the processor.

      • Re:Wow (Score:3, Informative)

        by drsmithy ( 35869 )
        The Yonah core uses 92W at idle.

        The power draw figures given on the last page are for the *entire system*, not just the CPU.

    • Let's put it in another way :
      - A chip, which is only available for testing, lacking motherboard support, which will be sold as a laptop CPU, and which is considered to be an indicator of what Intel will be producing next year, is a little bit *slower* than a rival technology from AMD that has been already available for some time and can be found in machines running today.

      In another way :
      - Tomorrow's Intel hope are as good as today's reality from AMD.

      So yes, it's good that Intel is realising that they must c
    • I really have to wonder when Intel will start using this technology in desktops.

      Not in a big way until Conroe [endian.net] in the second half of 2006. I'm pretty sure "desktop" use of Yonah will be limited to a few small form factor desktops like Dothan is used today [shuttle.com].

      Yonah will still be 32-bit while Intel's entire "desktop" line of CPUs (including Celeron) have adopted EM64T. I don't think this is that important, but Conroe will add EM64T and other enhancements to the "Pentium M core."

      65nm Pentium 4/D processors (

    • Re:Wow (Score:2)

      by kabz ( 770151 )
      It's been over for the Pentium 4's since Dell launched the Precision M60/M70 Pentium M laptops that kick the ass of the middle to high end desktops with 3.0 Gig P4s.

      I wouldn't have believed it, but the M60 conclusively hammered my desktop VC++ box when running a full compile of our gas pipeline software.

      The Pentium M is a great chip, fitting, since it springs from the Pentium Pro, itself a very very good chip for its time.
      • Posting this on an M70. I have to agree with you: it'a a complete beast of a machine, it's even got a Quadro FX Go1400 for the graphics! It blasts through our CAM package test macro run 25% faster than my desktop used to. 2.13GHz M vv 2x2GHz AthlonMP - the second proc didn't help much as the package is single threaded. Now, if only it ran OS X...
    • I really have to wonder when Intel will start using this technology in desktops.

      About 1997 -- or early 1998 if you consider the Pentium Pro purely a server chip and consider the Pentium II as the first of this line on the desktop.

      --
      The universe is a figment of its own imagination.

    • > I really have to wonder when Intel will start using this technology in desktops.

      You should start seeing them in January. See the various news reports around the web about Intel dropping their classic "Pentium" branding starting next year.

      > That right there should show that Intell is should switch its R&D and support the Pentium M as a desktop chip.

      That's been the stated plan for more than a year now.

  • There goes my new laptop... (Score:4, Funny)

    by pingveno ( 708857 ) on Wednesday November 30, 2005 @06:02PM (#14151743)
    I just bought a brand-new Pentium M (Dothan) laptop a few weeks ago, and then this new uber processor comes out. Well, that's the computer industry for you...

  • Not impressed. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dr. Spork ( 142693 ) on Wednesday November 30, 2005 @06:05PM (#14151775)
    Wow, a 65nm chip consumes slightly less power and performs slightly worse compared to AMD's bottom-of-the-line 90nm X2. Who's amazed? Aren't we just applauding because we see Intel as the big retarded kid who's just managed to tie his own shoes? What I'm trying to say is that this is no big accomplishment. If AMD's 65nm chips were turning out these sorts of performance numbers, we'd all scream about how this is a huge letdown, a step backwards, is this finally the end of AMD, etc.. So let's keep some perspective.
    • This is a _mobile_ chip being compared to _desktop_ chips. You _should_ be impressed. And when the next generation comes out in 2H2006, Merom, any remaining performance gap will probably be gone, plus it'll then be 64-bit, too, though of course, AMD will hopefully keep making strides in the meantime, with their upcoming socket M2-based offerings.

      That this is likely the Intel chip to be used in upcoming Macs is a very good sign for future Mac owners like myself.

      • Re:Not impressed, because you didn't pay attention (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Jeffrey Baker ( 6191 ) on Wednesday November 30, 2005 @06:16PM (#14151854)
        Why should we be impressed again? AMD's top mobile CPU, the Turion 64 ML-37, is equivalent to the Athlon 64 X2 3800+, which is the CPU that beats Yonah in all these tests. So the only thing to be happy about here is that Powerbook and iBook battery life will probably be pretty good. And of course those models are currently using ass-slow G4 chips, so anything is an improvement.

        But for iMac and Powermac buyers what this means is being stuck with Intel CPUs that really can't hang with AMD's offering. I mean seriously, AMD currently offers FIVE models that are faster than this Yonah thing, all of which are also faster than the best of the Pentium 4 line.
        • A Turion isn't equivalent to an Athlon X2 (even if the Turion was dual-core, which it isn't); they've also got different FSB speeds, AFAIK. I've also not (yet) seen any tests comparing any kind of Turion to a Yonah. If you have, please show me a link, I'd be quite interested to see it.

          I'd especially like to see the MT Turion (the 25W TDP version as opposed to the 35W TDP ML series) tested, but it seems to be the redheaded stepchild of the AMD line, as far as the computer makers are concerned. Too bad; it lo

          • Re:Not impressed, because you didn't pay attention (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Jeffrey Baker ( 6191 ) on Wednesday November 30, 2005 @06:28PM (#14151956)
            Yeah sorry, I was only thinking about single-threaded performance. I too would like to see the MT Turion compared, but I believe there's no 2.0GHz part in that line (yet). You'll hear no argument from me about Intel's 65nm process and wonderfully low power consumption. It's obviously going to make from great mobile Macs.

          • Re:Not impressed, because you didn't pay attention (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Dun Malg ( 230075 ) on Wednesday November 30, 2005 @06:57PM (#14152182) Homepage
            A Turion isn't equivalent to an Athlon X2 (even if the Turion was dual-core, which it isn't); they've also got different FSB speeds, AFAIK.

            FWIW, unlike Intel which is still bottlenecking memory access over the FSB through the northbridge, for AMD64 series CPUs the FSB speed is largely irrelevant to performance. FSB only really matters when you're using it to talk to RAM, and all the AMD64's have HyperTransport on-die memory controllers running at 800mhz. At present the Turion is only single-core and has only a single channel on-die memory controller, compared to dual core, dual channel for the X2. As I understand it though, the Turion will be dual core and dual channel as well Q2 2006.

          • I'd indeed like to see this.

            AMD's laptop processors have typically provided good power efficiency at low load (my entire 15.4" system with an Athlon 64 3400+ and discrete GPU runs on 20W) but drink power at high load (at full frequency my system uses ~50W).

            The Pentium M doesn't use that much power (27W for the proc, so probably around 35-40W for the system) at high load, either.

            Since only low frequency performance matters for battery life, the Pentium-M's lower high-frequency power use doesn't mean that P-M
        • "..., is equivalent to the Athlon 64 X2 3800+, which is the CPU that beats Yonah in all these tests. "

          not true.
          The 2Ghz does not beat it in all tests, and infact, almost all test are withing a margin of error.
          Even thought the 2.2 GHz AMD is 10% faster then the Intel it never beats it by 10%
      • That's a mobile chip? 90W power dissipation?

        That thing will toast your testicles for sure.

        I think I'll stick to my PowerPC @ 15W.
      • The Opteron 270 HE [amdcompare.com] dualcore CPU would be a better choice to compare against Yonah. Dual 2GHz cores, each with 1MB L2 cache, 55W TDP. Same speed but twice the cache of the Athlon 64 X2 3800+. Mind you that's a 90nm chip, not 65nm like Yonah. Consider that to be the baseline for what a dualcore Turion will do. I suspect they'll cut the clockspeed back a bit in order to bring the wattage down even further.

        I'm looking forward to the dualcore Turions. Dualcore 32-bit CPUs seem... silly.
    • and the performance of AMDs 65nm chip is...?
    • Give me a break. AMD is using 17 more Watts at idle, 36 Watts at full bore. And that's after power supply efficiency losses.

      But, how much power are these chips using? The Intel is rated at something like 25W? Less?

      That means the Intel is using perhaps 15W at idle and the AMD is using 32W?, or double?
      At full bore, perhaps the Intel is using 25 Watts, and the AMD 61 Watts. More than double.

      And yet the Intel keeps up with and beats the AMD much of the time.

      And you crow about these numbers?

      Go ahead and rejigger
      • Either way, AMD is getting skunked.

        Hoo-wee. Mobile processor uses less power than desktop processor, film at 11.

        • Mobile processor also outperforms desktop processor in most tests while using 2/3rds the power. Film at 11.

          Also note that AMD doesn't have a separate laptop line (well, they do, but it's no different except in name) so this means Intel is also skunking AMDs mobile processors on performance/power ratio.

          Again, this could change when AMD hits 65nm. And also as a mitigating factor, Intel hasn't released their own 65nm chip yet (this is a prerelease), so it's theoretically possible AMD could even beat Intel to t

  • Belly of the sea monster? (Score:3, Funny)

    by BarryNorton ( 778694 ) on Wednesday November 30, 2005 @06:08PM (#14151797)
    With a name like Yonah (aka Jonah), what are they saying about their motherboards?!

    • Re:Belly of the sea monster? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      That they're peaceful?

      (FYI: the Hebrew word Yoh' nah is transliterated as "Jonah" and translated as "dove" or "pidgeon". It, like the dove symbol, could also be used as a symbol of peace or serenity.)

  • Front Side Bus speed? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MLopat ( 848735 ) on Wednesday November 30, 2005 @06:11PM (#14151820) Homepage
    One thing that's always put me off of the Pentium M's has been the 533MHz Front Side Bus speed when the P4 FSB's are at 800MHz and some extreme editions at 1066MHz. Does anyone know what the FSB speed is off this chip? -- its not mentioned anywhere in TFA.
    • From a different article :
      "Pricing will stay level, too. The T1600 Yonah--which runs at 2.16GHz, comes with a 2MB cache and a 667MHz bus--"
      so it seems theve upped it a bit, exactly the same jump from 400 to 533 for the dothan.
    • Does it matter? They benchmarked it against AMD systems running 400MHz DDR memory, and the AMD systems perform better.

      Furthermore, faster RAM = more expensive RAM... why pay more money, when I could pay less, buy AMD, and get better performance than Intel?

  • Not so great? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by taskforce ( 866056 ) on Wednesday November 30, 2005 @06:19PM (#14151879) Homepage
    While the rhetoric in the article is pretty positive, if you actually read what they're saying and not how they're saying it, it's not that great.

    It consumes less than a 3800 X2? Isn't the fact that a laptop chip is even being *compared* to a dual core desktop chip in terms of power consumption quite worrying? And for that same "little big less power" they're getting a "little bit less speed"? I thought this was all about performance per Watt?

    • Yeah surprisingly it doesn't take much from the AMD camp to beat the Yonah...

      I still don't see the draw for it. As a desktop chip it's a slower chip than the X2, while it takes less power it isn't by much [say compared to a Xeon]. And I'm sure AMD will have even lower power X2s out next year meanwhile the P6 design is still underperforming. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad they're moving away from NetBurst but I'd rather see them improve their core first before going dual.

      In the world of OSS I don't see why
    • Are you saying there's a product on the market that beats the performance per Watt of this chip? True they compared it to a 3800 X2, but it uses less power at peak than the 3800 X2 at idle, so it's not like they're close.

      I am a disappointed to see it uses about 4x the power of my current Pentium-M 1600, and 92W at idle. But on the other hand, with two cores, both faster than the one I have now, it would easily exceed 4x the performance. For all the talk about how fast the Pentium-M is, I've always bee

  • Moore's law (Score:3, Interesting)

    by digitaldc ( 879047 ) * on Wednesday November 30, 2005 @06:35PM (#14152022)
    it costs Intel just as much to make a dual core Yonah, as it did for them to make a single core Dothan.

    Considering it is the same price for much improved technology, this proves Moore's law is correct?

    see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law [wikipedia.org]

    • Re:Moore's law (Score:3, Informative)

      by tomstdenis ( 446163 )
      Technically the statement isn't true. What they're alluding to is the smaller the chip the more per wafer means more # of chips [same % of failures]. What they missed though is the more features [e.g. transistors] the more likely some are not aligned or otherwise created properly. That creates "worst case" chips which operate slower than they should.

      For instance, if you double the transistors but simulaneously half the size you make a huge gain in yield but lower the # of high end models. To truly lower
      • What they missed though is the more features [e.g. transistors] the more likely some are not aligned or otherwise created properly. That creates "worst case" chips which operate slower than they should.

        ------- So then you would just return it for a new one that is significantly better for the same price?

        I was assuming here that both of them were performing optimally.
        • Um, they just mark them down...

          You think your 1.8Ghz Sempron is a specially made from a 1.8Ghz-only photomask? No, it's the same design they use for their 2Ghz parts [or whatever] and it just happens that one is either only capable of safely working at 2Ghz [either outside margins theoretical or not [*]] or they just want to sell it as 1.8Ghz.

          [*] This is why some chips are overclockable. The real margin for error may be [say] 7% but they use 10% just to be safe.

          Also a correction, the 65nm Yonah wouldn't
          • I guess I was assuming they had rigorous testing standards, but apparently not from what you are saying.

            I was aware that it costs roughly the same amount of money to make a Pentium chip as does a Celeron chip...I heard they slow down the Celerons intentionally, but I am not sure.

            • Re:Moore's law (Score:3, Insightful)

              by tomstdenis ( 446163 )
              I suggest you look up the overview of how they make processors. You'll see it's an entirely "analogue" procedure.

              A simpler analogy would be egg "production". They take 100s if not 1000s of animals laying eggs, a certain percentage are duds [e.g. not fit for human consumption], certain percentage are small, medium, large, etc. The same basic process is used in each case. Feed animal, wait, capture egg, rinse, repeat.

              It isn't that they "shrinkray" some eggs and sell them as "small" it's that they ended up
              • Thanks for the insight. I am curious as to what the next material will be used to make chips and how they can make them reliable. Electron switches, nano tech or some design. Mitichlorian design ;)

  • Yonah (Score:5, Funny)

    by momerath2003 ( 606823 ) * on Wednesday November 30, 2005 @06:59PM (#14152196) Journal
    Many Dothans died to bring us this information.

  • How much lunch can you eat? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by FishandChips ( 695645 ) on Wednesday November 30, 2005 @07:18PM (#14152332) Journal
    Just my 2 cents, but sooner or later the PC world needs to break away from this fixation on legacy desktop PCs with their Heath Robinson contraptions of wires, grouchy PSUs and naked circuit boards, not to mention size and noise. The line that caught my eye in this review: "A 2.0GHz Yonah under 100% load consumes less power than an Athlon 64 X2 3800+ at idle."

    Unless it is for gaming or for special and demanding applications, who needs all this muscle? A few more steps in the Yonah development line and we may be able to see PCs that are far smaller, quieter and more frugal with the juice while still packing a punch.

    None of this means that the Ahtlon 64 isn't darn good, only that it is not appropriate for many computing situations. Right now, Yonah looks more like a stab at tomorrow whereas the Athlon 64 represents the apogee of yesterday.
    • Unless it is for gaming or for special and demanding applications, who needs all this muscle?

      A traditional desktop PC has it all over a laptop when you need a lot storage space - it isn't just CPU speed, but when you have a lot of data to house. That is a pretty common need given a movie takes up 5 GB, or a CD 3/4 a GB.

       
  • The review fails to mention that, unlike AMD's current mobile Turion CPUs, the upcoming Yonahs will not run 64-bit code. What is Intel thinking? With 64-bit OS and software support increasingly available, who will want to invest a lot in such a laptop? Yet dual-core laptops are supposed to be high-end, and, being a more expensive investment, ought to last longer.
    • How much 64-bit native software is really out there, and what does it use the 64-bit space for? The actual register size change really doesn't do jack in terms of virtually any app out there (2^32 is still more than big enough number to do just about anything with) while the advantage actually comes in the fact that you can address a whole lot more RAM. Since this is a laptop chip, it'd be really hard to make a low-power notebook with more than 4gb of RAM anyways. EM64T is slated for the next generation Pen

    • Re:Yonah is a 32-bits only CPU (Score:5, Informative)

      by MarcQuadra ( 129430 ) * on Wednesday November 30, 2005 @10:29PM (#14153424)
      It's for several reasons:

      1. There is no real support for Windows x64, there's no virus protection and very few device drivers. Why go out of your way to support 1% of your users who would actually run a native 64-bit OS?

      2. Intel's 64-bit extensions actually slow their chips down. That's right, they added 64-bit instructions to their microcode, but they still get broken down to the same old instructions on the i686 core that the old ones did, and the 64-bit ones take longer to digest. It was a move for buzzword compliance only.
                Want to prove it? Get a pentium D830 machine, compile Gentoo on it, first a 32-bit install, then the AMD64 install. Compile both with the same options, but one with 32-bit instructions, and one with 64. The Intel 64-bit Linux will be slower than the 32-bit. The opposite is true with an AMD K8 chip, because the core was designed from step one to be 64-bit.

      3. Intel doesn't forsee you needing (or being able to fit) over 4GB of RAM in a portable or business desktop for several years, after the lifetime of this chip revision. If you insist on a 64-bit Intel chip, you must be running a server, workstation, or other high-end rig, so fess-up and buy an appropriately-classed chip (the D830, EE, or Xeon).

      4. They need to deliver this chip to market NOW, Intel's stronglest lead right now is with mobile platforms. These chips are in demand as-is; Apple and other vendors want them NOW, not in a few months with 64-bit extensions.
  • [1]In those days Da-than begat Yo-nah, which was the fruit of his circuitboard, strong by nature and a good processor. [2]Now Da-than looked on Yo-nah and said, "Yea shall I call you the Slayer of the Amd-ites, for thou shalt go out into their pastures and you shall slay their benchmarks utterly; [3]for thou art pleasing and art born of good silicon." [4]But Yo-nah saw, when he went out into the land of Cun-sumer, how despised he was among the buyers of chips; and he did gnash his teeth and beat his transistors saying: [5]"Oh wherefore was I not left dead on the test-bench and why was my die not broken the day I was born? [6]for I am inferior to my brethren the Amd-ites who run much better than I and cost way the hell less." [7]And he went out into the dust and wandered for a year, until the new product cycle taketh him away.

  • Does dual core make sense for laptops? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mnemotronic ( 586021 ) <mnemotronic.gmail@com> on Wednesday November 30, 2005 @10:14PM (#14153324) Homepage Journal
    There are a lot of other factors to "system performance", like memory, video, and disk subsystem speed. How much of a gain will a dual core CPU buy if the system is waiting for a (relatively) slow disk? If you want to put in a 7200 rpm 2 1/2" [seagate.com], or a pair of 'em [toshibadirect.com] (or here [tadpolecomputer.com]), well ok. But then power consumption and it's cousin heat go up. Bigger batteries, Ok. Now you've got weight. I guess it's all about trade-offs, and what do you really want.

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