The Inq: Dual Core Turion X2 in May - Page 3

I'm sorry, but Idle Power Consumption is the one area where Turion completely excels.

It's due to the special mobile process that AMD uses with thickened gate oxides.

If that's the case, why does the Z60t average around 14W power consumption vs the slower clocked Turion based L2000 which averages 17W in the Reader test?

http://www.laptoplogic.com/reviews/d...rt=full&page=9

Too bad Intel didn't actually sell a line of lower voltaged Prescotts then, because then they wouldn't have deserved the reputation of space heaters if they were competitively priced.
Doubtful, their system overheated to the point where the CPU was throttling. If the Turion actually had this problem there'd be other reports of it.

Neither the Techreport or matbe power consumption testing were as extensive, only measuring total system consumption using a wattmeter as opposed to measuring the voltage and current of the +12V AUX line that feeds the CPU.

The point about Turion is that it didn't offered advanced power saving techniques; it is essentially a tweaked Athlon 64.

Newer Turions WILL have advanced power techniques. One of the main drawbacks of the Turion was the lack of dynamic cache activation, wich is something AMD included in newer designs. I find it very difficult to belive that they will match newer Yonahs in power consumption being 90nm, but they certainly have better control over that manufacturing process than intel ever did. Once they are released in 65nm, I bet they will get the crown again.

Nice to see you quoting LaptopLogic (this is sincere, not sarcastic)

Just doing a topical glance at both laptops, I would assume the difference in power consumption is due to factors other than CPU, such as the different chipsets, LCD brightness, etc. Although LCD brightness is always set to "medium" in the tests, the brightness would still vary between different LCDs. I would suggest reading a review where the platforms are kept as similar as possible, with the only difference being the CPU.

For these tests, the laptops keep their included software, which may also influence power consumption.

http://www.laptoplogic.com/resources/detail.php?id=17
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The current Turions do have SOME power savings implemented in the architecture, but not a lot. The main reason the Turions are called "Turion" and not "Athlon 64" is because of the change in mobile process.

You know, honestly, I trust AMD to have a longer product cycle and a better upgrade path than Intel at the moment. You'll have to buy a whole new lappie to get a Merom. Meanwhile it is very, very likely that you'll get larger cache and 65nm Turion X2's that will drop into that notebook you buy now. It's not everyone's cup of tea to upgrade, however it is nice if you can buy a little longer life from your lappie imo.

After S1 that is.

As for Merom, you'll be able to drop it into existing Yonah laptops, if you're just going for the 667MHz FSB ones. The 800MHz FSB refresh will require a new laptop. But that's the result of the non on-die memory controller. If you think about it, AMD can essentially plug in a new memory controller and get all the benefits that Intel upping the FSB would do.

But we need to see IBM or Dell laptops based on AMD. I don't trust other brands.

www.anandtech.com

This has been more or less confirmed now, AMD states Q2 roll out for Socket S1 Turion X2, it looks like Socket AM2 will have more pins and be Desktop only.

Socket F is also coming with over 1200 pins for Opterons and will support Quad Core in 2007.

Any links for this 'rumor'? I'm very interested in that possibility.

Chuck232, how sure are you that Merom will be allowed to be dropped into a Yonah laptop even with a BIOS upgrade??

The only reason why i question you, is because i am skeptical about this stuff.

I remember back then (8 months ago) where the ASUS Z71v stated it would support Yonah... well LOL you all know how that turned out...

So where are you getting ur info regarding yonah is upgradable to Merom.

Of course time will tell...but to notebook buyers on a budget and running out of time to buy (can't wait)...we would love the option of Merom.. because 64bit and my fav... increase in batterylife by alot lol.

but who knows..

Thanks in advance,

MysticGolem

From Intels site http://www.intel.com/technology/arch...icro/index.htm

"The Merom processor will work within the Intel® Centrino Duo® mobile technology-based platform and Merom is targeted for introduction to align with the 2006 holiday buying season."

hmm,, interesting and how easy or hard will it be to install Merom...

Will it just be install and play? (plug and play)

Or would it require a bios update??

Are there specifics are how to get merom to work when it comes...

Thanks,

MysticGolem

More than likely, you'll need a BIOS update from the manufacturer, so really it'll be up to those companies to actually write an updated BIOS. If you look around you'll find some interesting articles about Yonah, stating that it actually has 64bit instructions in there, but disabled in the die. At first, I was aslo very skeptical about the drop in working since I thought, hmmm Yonah's not 64bit, so the chipset probably isn't designed with that in mind. Will they respin the Napa chipset? But it would seem like the whole platform may have been designed with 64bit in mind already.

Just reading that site that jiopi provided, I found this:

The rest, Woodcrest and Conroe state they're slated for a third quarter launch. Only Merom is saying 'holiday-season'. That sounds a whole lot like Q4 to me.

http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/20...0124034376.htm

extrapolate larger lower power cache technology and what AMD's answer might be to Merom/Conroe.

Wouldn't be hard to bring this online at the same time as the shift to 65nm.

Drop in cpu upgrades...

http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardw...eports/6173/1/

Refers to Opteron, but again, an easy thing to do in the same socket, which is something that AMD takes advantage of.

So indirectly you could have larger cache 65nm dual core Turion x2's in early 2007 that would drop into your S1 socket.

Nice hmm?

Couple this thought with the possibility of a low power 7900 Go or G80 Go in SLI and things get crazy

From IDF Spring 2006: http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/...spx?i=2715&p=2

"Earlier today Justin Rattner mentioned that Merom platforms would offer more than a 20% increase in performance relative to the current Core Duo T2600 (2.16GHz) processors with no impact on power consumption. During a separate briefing, Intel's Mooly Eden showed a benchmark pitting a Dell Core Duo system against the same system with a Merom processor (Eden literally swapped out the Core Duo CPU and stuck in a Merom processor, partly to showcase its backwards comptability). The benchmark was a custom Quake 4 timedemo, with the Core Duo system scoring 106.6 fps while the Merom system scored 134 fps: advantage Merom by just over 25%. We don't know any of the specifics of the settings on the systems, other than they were claimed to be identical. Given the results we've seen with Conroe on the desktop, this sort of a performance increase does not seem out of the ordinary."

ok kool, interesting.

Ok so we would roughly see a 20% increase in performance from a Yonh 2.1ghz to a ?? Merom.

That's nice, but I want more batterylife... I want to be able to take a 15.4" performance notebook something like a 15.4" with Merom + X1600 and last over 5 hours.

I've seen one notebook get 5 hours and 9 mins of batterylife, the Acer 1964, but this was on a german forum and i could barely understand it with translations.. lol.

And here in the qoute is says
"Earlier today Justin Rattner mentioned that Merom platforms would offer more than a 20% increase in performance relative to the current Core Duo T2600 (2.16GHz) processors with no impact on power consumption. During a separate briefing, Intel's Mooly Eden showed a benchmark pitting a Dell Core Duo system against the same system with a Merom processor (Eden literally swapped out the Core Duo CPU and stuck in a Merom processor, partly to showcase its backwards comptability). The benchmark was a custom Quake 4 timedemo, with the Core Duo system scoring 106.6 fps while the Merom system scored 134 fps: advantage Merom by just over 25%. We don't know any of the specifics of the settings on the systems, other than they were claimed to be identical. Given the results we've seen with Conroe on the desktop, this sort of a performance increase does not seem out of the ordinary."

The first line addresses power consumption...it doesn't say anything about incerase battery life, nor decrease, but states increase in performance...

Also remember what happened to Yonah's release, we all expected the Acer 8204 to hit the market in December 2005, but got pushed well back to late Jan and early Feb of 2006. I doesn't matter when they really release Merom, it all matters of when the first available notebook is up for sale and ready to be shipped.

So i can definately see Merom notebooks doing the same as Yonah... Merom will most likely be release late Q4, and by Jan/Feb of 2007 you will see some Merom Notebooks.

BUT there's a chance that Merom will be released early Q4, so that companies can quickly refresh their laptops with merom for the new year. This would hopefuly result in a spike in purchases + sales.

But who knows...

Thanks,

MysticGolem

well if they literally swaped out the chips it sounds cool merom is dual core +64 bit + 4mb cache right? so about the only disadvanage it would have would be lack on integrated memory controller and higher price??? Not so bad I might have to rethink my processor decisions now!!!!

The lack of an integrated memory controller is not a disadvantage as long as Merom is faster.

yeah but we don't know the true performance of the new athalon 64's x2 with the new socket and ddr2 yet. So Merom might not be faster. Also (i could be severely wrong on this point) amd could come out with an enhanced version a year from now that supports ddr3. then the advantage could swing to amd.