Athlon 64 X2
The Athlon 64 X2 is the first dual-core desktop CPU manufactured by AMD. It is essentially a processor consisting of two Athlon 64 cores joined together on one die with some additional control logic. The cores share one dual-channel memory controller, are based on the E-stepping model of Athlon 64 , and depending on the model have either 512 or 1024 kB of L2-Cache per core. The X2 is capable of decoding SSE3 instructions (other than those few specific to Intel's architecture), so it can run and benefit from software optimizations that were previously only supported by Intel chips. This enhancement is not unique to the X2, and is also available in the recently released Venice and San Diego single core Athlon 64's.
AMD officially started shipping the Athlon 64 X2 at Computex, on 1st June 2005.
The main benefit of dual core processors like the X2 is their ability to process more software "threads" at the same time. The ability of processors to execute multiple threads simultaneously is called thread-level parallelism (TLP). By placing two cores on the same die, the X2 effectively doubles the TLP over a single core Athlon 64 of the same speed. The need for TLP processing capability is dependent on situation to a great degree, and certain situations benefit from it far more than others. Certain programs are currently only written with one thread, and are therefore unable to utilize the processing power of the second core.
Programs often written with multiple threads and capable of utilizing dual cores include many music and video encoding applications, and especially professional rendering programs. High TLP applications currently correspond to server/workstation situations more than the typical desktop. These applications can realize almost twice the performance of a single core Athlon 64 of the same specifications. Multi-tasking also runs a sizable number of threads; intense multi-tasking scenarios have actually shown improvements of considerably more than two times [1]. This is primarily due to the excessive overhead caused by constantly switching threads, and could potentially be improved by adjustments to operating system scheduling code.
It is commonly thought that 3D games use a single thread; however, examination of the source code of the Quake 3 engine shows calls to pthreads on Linux and Sys_InitStreamThread and family on Microsoft Windows, as well as Mac OS X threading code. It is possible other games use threading as well.
Having two cores, the Athlon 64 X2 has an increased number of transistors. The 1 MB L2 cache X2 processor has 233.2 million transistors [2] whereas its Athlon 64 counterpart has only 114 million transistors [3]. As a result, a larger area of silicon must be defect free. These size requirements necessitate a more complex fabrication process, which further adds to the production of fewer functional processors per single silicon wafer. This lower yield makes the X2 more expensive to produce than the single core processor.
CPU Cores
Manchester/Toledo (90 nm SOI)
Dual-core CPU
- Manchester = 2×512 kB L2-Cache, Toledo = 2×1024 kB L2-Cache
- CPU-Stepping: E4 (Manchester) and E6 (Toledo)
- L1-Cache: 64 + 64 kB (Data + Instructions), per core
- L2-Cache: 512 kB(Manchester) or 1024 kB(Toledo), fullspeed, per core
- MMX, Extended 3DNow!, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, AMD64, Cool'n'Quiet, NX Bit
- Socket 939, HyperTransport (1000 MHz, HT1000)
- VCore: 1.35 V - 1.4 V
- Power Consumption (TDP): 89 to 110 Watt max
- First Release: April 21, 2005
- Clockrate:: 2000 - 2400 MHz
- 3800+: 2000 MHz, 2×512 kB L2-Cache (Manchester)
- 4200+: 2200 MHz, 2×512 kB L2-Cache (Manchester)
- 4400+: 2200 MHz, 2×1024 kB L2-Cache (Toledo)
- 4600+: 2400 MHz, 2×512 kB L2-Cache (Manchester)
- 4800+: 2400 MHz, 2×1024 kB L2-Cache (Toledo)
CPU codes
Source: www.amdcompare.com
- ADA4800DAA6CD AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 4800+ 2400 MHz Socket 939 1.35-1.40 V 110W
- ADA4600DAA6CD AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 4600+ 2400 MHz Socket 939 1.35-1.40 V 110W
- ADA4600DAA5BV AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 4600+ 2400 MHz Socket 939 1.35-1.40 V 110W
- ADA4400DAA6CD AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 4400+ 2200 MHz Socket 939 1.35-1.40 V 110W
- ADV4400DAA6CD AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 4400+ 2200 MHz Socket 939 1.35-1.40 V 89W
- ADA4200DAA5BV AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 4200+ 2200 MHz Socket 939 1.35-1.40 V 89W
- ADA4200DAA5CD AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 4200+ 2200 MHz Socket 939 1.35-1.40 V 89W
- ADA3800DAA5BV AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 3800+ 2000 MHz Socket 939 1.35-1.40 V 89W
- ADA3800DAA5CD AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 3800+ 2000 MHz Socket 939 1.35-1.40 V 89W