AMD Turion vs Intel Core 2 Duo

I am looking to buy a laptop and have zeroed in on these two:

http://is.gd/5yMms : HP Pavilion dv6-2005ax

http://is.gd/5yMn4 : HP Pavilion dv6-1308TX

They have everything in common except the processor.

2005ax has AMD Turion™ II M500 2.20GHz 1MB L2 cache

1308tx has ntel® Core™2 Duo T6600 2.20 GHz, 2 MB L2 Cache, 800 MHz FSB

and the difference in their prices, here in India is Rs. 5000 i.e roughly $100.

I have never used an AMD powered PC. Are their any software or hardware compatibility issues with AMDs? Any reason why I should go with the Intel box?

 

They are roughly the same speed. Absolutely no compatibility issues with AMD products, actually the 64 bit design on common x86 processors are an AMD work.
If the notebook will cost you less, take it with absolutely no worries!

 

Definitely go with the AMD. The new Turion II are basically just as good as C2D and if it will save you $100.

 

Intel is faster . Check here http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Processors-Benchmarklist.2436.0.html

I have the AMD M520 and don't have temp problems .

 

I would go with the AMD processor. The new Turion II's are really good.

 

on the safe , side i would recommend intel... it's way better uprgadeable processor wise... u can easily uprgade to a T9900 , will would pwen the best AMD one..

 

Please, for your own sake, go with Intel.

You will get a much cooler CPU and better battery life. The HP forums are littered with users complaining of hot running AMD machines...

 

Thanks a lot everybody. I was always reluctant to go with AMD, I'll go with the Intel one.

 

Sure, how much it will costs? You can buy another notebook for the price of a single t9900 processor

 

That's because HP poorly designed heat dissipation system. Other brands have no such problems, even cheap acer machines.

Also, you're talking about older AMD notebooks (65nm parts), these are new 45nm parts that are much cooler and much faster too, since they share the same K10 architecture of Phenom II and Athlon II desktop processors.

 

That table is far from accurate: positions are approximated because there are no benchmark results, and many benchmarks are purely synthetic (and obsolete, like superpi...) benchmarks, which have no real life meaning.

ps: having a closer watch, it looks like there are also some pretty invalid values. It's nice to see that a M520 Turion takes 61 seconds to complete a wprime32, while my older ZM-80 Turion takes 38 seconds (tested by myself just now)...

 

To date I have tried to upgrade my AMD Processor twice.
However for both I have returned them due to condition of their overheating state.
Original RM-72
Tried ZM-87
Overheat to 91 degrees and CPU throttle down
Almost Zero undervolting margin
Tried ZM-82 ES
Overheat to 100 degrees and CPU throttle down
Slightly more undervolting margin but still worse than my RM-72

 

Weinter, what is the "threshold" for throttling on ZM-series?

 

HP have poor designs regarding heat? Through the entire product line? How does the dv7 series compare?

 

Yes they have some errors. I corrected some, and when i'll have time will contact them again. Mine M520 does that in 33sec, anyway 6600 is a bit better than mine M520 in Cinebench rendering tests.

 

AMD have better integrated video that pawns any Intel integrated GPU to date.

 

AFAIK dv7 are a bit better.
IMHO HP put less metal in heatspreaders than other brands to get lighter notebooks. Also they are using aluminium instead of copper (copper is much better than alu) to reduce costs.

 

Predefined at 100°C, but is adjustable.
Many vendors however disable the processor thermal throttling feature, such as HP do.

 

The new amd turions perform pretty well up to about m600 level



the m600 competes right in the same ballpark as the t6600 from intel

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=AMD+Turion+II+Ultra+Dual-Core+Mobile+M600


except the base graphics option on the amd machines is the hd 4200, much more powerful than the intel graphics part. The hd 4200 supports uvd2 for h.264 decoding, and the intel?

yeah.


Now once you need to go faster than that level, that is where intel starts on the solo path. But below that things look decent for amd.

 

See, here's the thing man. This isn't an AMD/Intel battle-royal. I am not attacking AMD and saying Intel is a better company and what not, which is what your point about HP making poor designed systems alluded to.

All I'm saying is that, the OP is looking at an HP DV6, not an Apple, not a Sony, not a Dell... an HP. So your point is completely useless, that is, unless we were having an AMD vs Intel FIGHT! postathon, which we're not.

In regards to the OP's question, he would be wise to opt for the Intel machine... or as many of us around these parts know, in a few months he will be posting asking why his temps are so high.

 

As someone already said, there are also intel users that have overheating (read my opinion about overheating below) problems on the forum, so this is generalized HP problem.

On the opposite side, newer Athlon II and Turion II processors produce fairly much less heat (and consume less power) than previous Athlon/Turion mobile processors since they are built on 45nm instead of 65nm.

Have you tried a machine with such newer processor or had overheating problem with such processor? Have you read at least a review talking about overheating issues about newer processors?

If you're not, then why should he be wise to opt for the Intel machine, do they really have advantages? I just see a disadvantage here: $100 more for more or less the same performances.

I have an older Turion, and with heavy synthetic stress test my processor reached 100°C (so the probe said), but I'm happily gaming with it (half life, tomb raider, splinter cell, not pacman or donkey kong...) and had no issues at all, never had a crash! The system is still as stable as the first day, the keyboard gets a bit warm but it is still absolutely comfortable and... that's all! People that care about the temperature is just taking care about *a number* and the possible consequences. I had never seen people claiming about AMD processor malfunctions and such other similar things on this board, just worrying about temperature. Since we are geek people, we just don't want to deal with failures, so we take that number under costant control. But, AFAIK, noone of ourselves had a failure related to AMD processors.

 

like what most people are saying,
I would say that Intel Processors are superior to AMD processors because they do not heat up as much and their specs are years apart(as in Intel's specs are way better than AMD's specs)

 

also the intel one is more like to have a GDDR3 4650 meaning that it would have much better performance than the 4650 in the AMD one... which has to be DDR2 ...

 

Sorry, but you're wrong here....

Mine in sig is GDDR3. Do you have any source showing a DDR2 4650 in an AMD-based lappy?

 

I wasn't going to say anything in this thread but I cannot resist anymore... As a owner of an AMD processor I can tell you it doesn't run any hotter than any Intel dv5 I know of. The problem isn't the processor but HP's poor cooling designs. My previous acer also had an AMD processor and it never ran hot because the cooling design was more efficient.
As for the Intel advantage in processing power well are we launching the space shuttle here? No we are not...the average user will never notice the difference between modern dual core processors from AMD and Intel so I always advise people to go with what is cheaper, forget the hype!

GDDR3 (Graphics Double Data Rate 3) has nothing to do with the DDR3 ram specification...

 

And what are those superior Intel specs you talks about?

The larger cache? AMD has an Integrated Memory Controller (=faster), Intel has not. People talks about caches, but not about the IMC, how strange...

The productive process? Both processors are 45nm

The heat production? Both processors have 35W TDP

Frequency? They share the same frequency.

FSB? No meaning, AMD has something different than old FSB Intel is still using in their mobile processors.

Instructions per Clock? Give me a benchmark where the T6600 beats up Turion II M500 by an order of magnitude.

Power consumption? They share the same TDP and the same manufacturing process, plus recent Athlon II X2 processors for desktop computers consume very little power (see here for a *3Ghz* processor reference: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3572&p=10) and since mobile Athlon II and Turion II are practically mobile versions of dekstop Athlon II X2 processors, they share the same low power requirements.

These are the specs: just a bunch of black smoke to attract untrained people.

 

And this is why no one wants to discuss AMD vs. Intel...it always degerates to "Tastes Great, Less Filling" only slightly less civil than throwing Rush Limbaugh and Nancy Pelosi into a steel cage together.

AMD did recently release new 45 nm CPUs, with a 35w TDP. Most Intel Core2Duos are also 45 nm, and currently run at 25w, but I'm not sure offhand what the upcoming Arrandales will be at. They don't share the same TDP though, and Arrandale will be at 32nm.

AMD kinda missed the boat on laptop CPUs, and they've been behind for a long time as far as CPUs being warmer than they really should be. They're really starting to come on lately, especially now that they're making use of the K10 cores. They're still behind, but not by very much, and their lower price offsets that anyway. Not to mention the fact that he who buys AMD will never be cursed by Intel graphics: Intel may have the better CPU, but AMD may have a better overall platform when considering both CPU and IGP graphics.

 

Intel undoubtedly produces good processor but AMD showing a good progress. IMHO, there is not much significant different between both of processors in term of performance, TDP and heat.

Please keep in mind that T6600 do not have VT feature not fancy Virtual box with this processor. For $100 and no future needed of VT, I might say go for Intel.

 

Without a doubt, we need more reviews and information on the Turion II-series CPUs.
TDP is not everything, and real world info from customers is needed bad!

Dry specs are fine, and a few user reviews here and there, but still, info is scarce. Reminds me of the Turion Ultra ZM-series. Just a little bit of info, not enough owners I guess (we know Intel owns the market).

To me, Turion II m520 and up+HD4650 is a nice affordable platform.

Passmark give a performance reference, no too sure about real-life VS synthetic benchmarks in this case.
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/mid_range_cpus.html
My ZM-82 (2.2GHz, 2Mo cache) scores 1 073.
Turion II M520 scores 1 493
Intel T6600 scores 1560.

So, to me, the newer TurionII "Caspian" is a lot better than previous Turion "Griffin".
I've yet to hear from a dissatisfied Turion II owner (heat-wise). We need to know!!!!

 

You're right, we need a lot of objective measurements. That's unfortunately difficult, since few manufacturers use AMD chips (though it's more than it used to be). The other problem is when people say you can't do a direct comparison because you can't put them on the same chipset. That means you need to either test the platform (CPU + IGP + Chipset) and not the CPU alone, or make sure the get the same GPU. This probably means buying a lot of dv7 machines, but the problem there is that Pavilion dv-series cooling is generally considered inadequate, so measuring heat there might not be the best idea.

The other problem is that Arrandale comes soon, which means comparing something with an on-board DDR3 controller with an on-board DDR2 controller. It'd be interesting to see ( I wonder if Arrandale can finally use the extra bandwidth) but so much of a different platform that it'd inspire more "Tastes Great Less Filling" arguments.

Anyway, AMD can't rest. With the Arrandales coming, AMD needs to push out their next-gen DDR3 CPUs not too long after.

 

DDR3 is not discriminant in terms of performance.

There's no such "extra bandwidth" to be used. DDR3 is almost purely a market manouver since it just offers a slightly lower power consumption at the same frequency (nothing that can't be obtained with a refined manufacturing process). DDR3-1066 (the highest frequency officially accepted by nehalem architecture) is too slow to beat good DDR2-800 due to generally higher timings of DDR3.

AMD will have no "next gen DDR3 CPU", they just have current CPUs which are compatible with both DDR2 and DDR3 memories. Next generation of AMD cpus will come in late 2010 or 2011

This article: http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=2989&p=7
shows that DDR2-800 5-5-5 and DDR3-1066 7-7-7 share the same performances on a decent P35 intel chipset.

 

What i meant was that the shared system RAM has to be off the same type to it to be used.... so if the main RAM is DDR2 , the GPU is more likely to be DDR2... although there are some exceptions..

 

None of the above matters. DDR3 is a selling point. Joe Enduser sees the machines in BestBuy, sees the AMD with DDR2-800 and the Intel with DDR3-1066, notices the Intel numbers are higher, thinks it means it's automatically faster, and then buys the Intel. That one's all about perception and marketing.

And I think you mean generally higher LATENCY of DDR3, right? If they ever get that down, it's going to be noticeable...

 

Let's be clear.

If the graphics is integrated, it shares some memory from main system memory, so there's no questioning about.

To be honest, there's an exception: AMD 7xx chipsets can use sideport memory, a sort of small cache of 64Mb or 128Mb. Sideport memory can be DDR2 or DDR3, indepentently from main memory. However I think there are no notebooks with sideport feature enabled, instead there are some desktop boards with sideport memory.

If the graphics is discrete (like hd4650), it has its own memory modules that can be DDR2, DDR3, GDDR3, DDR4 or even GDDR5 indepentently from main memory.

Oh, about this I perfectly agree with you. That's the reason why I said that DDR3 is just a market manouver: people thinks that there's a great advance in memory technology and feel the need to update, while it's still almost the same.

Yes, latency is directly related to access timings. Higher timings means higher latencies.
To build high frequency DDR3 memories, producers had to "relax" timings, so the frequency goes up, but the access latency goes up too. Sellers just talks about frequency letting people think that DDR3 are better than DDR2, but don't tell anything about latencies (where DDR2 are far better than DDR3).

BTW the same happened in the transition from DDR to DDR2: DDR2-800 Mhz are just a bit better than good DDR-400 Mhz, while their speed is doubled!

 

Thanks for clarifying that one up. Too many people are saying that those HD4650 are using DDR2 Graphics RAM.

OK, on the DESKTOP version of the HD4650, the RAM is often of the DDR2 variety (slow for GFX RAM).

The MOBILITY version of the HD4650 (at least for HP and dHELL) are using Graphics DDR3 (called GDDR3)

 

Mine M520 in DV7 gave me more than 5 hours on, it went from from 100% battery to 9%. In that 5 hours about 2 hours were sleeping and the others were viewing video and trying to connect to a TV via HDMI, not really a great CPU push but i was happy compared to my old Clevo with 1 hour battery no matter what....

 

Current HP AMD Turion II notebooks with Radeon 4200 integrated graphics include 128MB of sideport memory.

 

This statement is too broad to be accurate.


Here are some better statements.

Intel has the fastest processors on the market now.

AMD has competitive processors on the market now.


Both statements are true, On the high end intel has no real competition, at the mid level dual core mobile cpu area they have a great deal of competition.


the m600 is JUST AS GOOD as the intel T6600


After that, the intel chips take the decisive lead, but saying some variant of "Intel chips are superior" implies they are better in all cases at all pricepoints at all performance levels.

That is false, and sloppy.

I would gladly take an m600 over a t6600 for the better base graphics option and native virtualization support.


Would I take it over a p8600? Hell no, but that is a higher end chip and we are not comparing the same things.

 

Base graphics is only relevant if there isn't any dedicated graphic card.

 

haha i got that laptop
2044-ca AMD Turion II Dual Core m500

and i was exactly debating the same thing with myself before i bought it.
intel t6600 or amd??

i fell for the benchmark scoring system but in the end, i went with AMD because they had far superior graphics to the intel one that was in one of my choices.

you know it's running like a fine computer, heat is average and just using it as a normal computer, it's fine, nothign bad. lots of goods, too!

 

I just got my new ProBook...The Turion II Ultra M600 is running great...the subjective "feel" of it is that things are as fast as on a C2D P8400, which are the laptops I buy for work...so far anyway.

Oh and it's running COOLER than the Compal in my sig, and quieter...and lighter. That Compal has a rather annoyingly noisy fan that had to spin up any time I remotely stressed the CPU (and this is WITH AS5 mind you) but this thing is deasd quiet even with stress. This is with no stress on the GeForce chip, mind you, JUST the CPU.

I'm extremely impressed with both this chip and this laptop. Now, it's not as fast as a 9000 series C2D I don't think, that's true. And once Arrandale arrives AMD may fall behond again. But for now I'm thinking anyone looking for an 8000 series could deal with these and never notice a difference.

Of course, for a business laptop, this thing sure comes with a lot of crapware. Still cleaning it out. But given the lack of reviews out there, I may write something more extensive up somewhere.

 

Extremely appreciated! Exactly what's needed. Reporting on temperatures would be nice!

Also, full specs on the machine would be nie. I assume that it's an Integrated Graphics laptop right?
So your temps will be lower.

 

Yep, integrated. There's no external GPU option on these. Then again, I really don't game anymore in a big way...strategy stuff is the worst I'd throw at the GPU, and old strategy stuff at that (though I may take a shot at Starcraft 2).

The heat coming out of the vent is still significantly cooler than the Compal, and I'm cranking the CPU right now (while NOT cranking the Compal incidentally). As I sit here with the HP on my lap and the Compal 6 feet away, I hear the fan....on the Compal. Definitely a batter cooling design here. Design-wise you can see a resemblance too...I'm pretty sure Compal does some of HP's business line.

I don't really have much to compare this against, but I'll see if I can get some of the standard CPU benches that they use in other reviews, and find something to do thermals with (wish I had one of those infrared thermometers right now).

 

You can install HWmonitor to get your temps! It's nice and free!
Also, from the same site, your get CPU-Z, that will give you your CPU info, along with the speeds at different power stages.

As an example, my ZM-82 has 3 power stages: 25% load, 50% load and 100% load. So, 550mhz, 1100mhz and 2200mhz.
Not too sure about the powerstages on a Turion II.

 

Funny how there is no info on AMD's notebook Processors page about Turion II.

http://www.amd.com/us/products/notebook/processors/Pages/notebook-processors.aspx

 

Intel eats AMD...... Hands down!

 

Oh don't worry, sometimes amd site is not updated or shows wrong things... That's normal

BTW: I read somewhere that newer Turion II have 5 pstates, but had no confirmation yet.

 

Hope you realize that the better AMD becomes, the cheaper your next Intel will cost you! Win-Win situation IMHO!

True, I found a thread on AMD's forum, along with screenshots:
http://forums.amd.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=34&threadid=121484

Turion II M500 (2.2GHz), 5 power states: 800mhz,1100mhz,1500mhz,2ghz and 2.2ghz.
Interesting!

 

agreed.. M600 is the best u can go on an AMD notebook but on an intel one with T6600.. u can go to T9000 or P9000 series which pwens AMD....for upgradability , Intel is what u want...for now AMD not good enough... BTW who the hell wants a T6600... its so slow... my T9400 eats it... for lunch..

 

You haven't actually USED one of these thing yet, have you? I was a little worried myself: I buy P8600s (Thinkpads and Latitudes) for the salespeople in my company, and I spend at least a day with them before shipping them out to their users. I was willing to try this Turion II Ultra because I could live with a T6600 for my own personal machine, and I just couldn't find an Intel machine that met my needs as well as this AMD one. Lo and behold I'm holding a laptop that performs just as well as those P8600 machines I buy for work, runs just as cool, and costs less. Oh, and has an IGP that isn't completely worthless.

Now, someone who needs the power of a 9000 series C2D or a quad-core would not be well-advised to touch one of these AMDs. But anyone else might be pleasantly suprised. AMD is finally some good competition for Intel in the mobile market, which means Intel will have to agressively court us, the consumers instead of coasting and sticking it to our wallets.