AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+

How we configured our test systems: When configuring our test systems for this article, we first entered their respective system BIOSes and set each board to its "Optimized" or "High performance Defaults". We then saved the settings, re-entered the BIOS and set memory timings for DDR2-800 with 4,4,4,12 timings. The hard drives were then formatted, and Windows XP Professional (SP2) was installed. When the Windows installation was complete, we installed the drivers necessary for our components, and removed Windows Messenger from the system. Auto-Updating and System Restore were then disabled and we set up a 1024MB permanent page file on the same partition as the Windows installation. Lastly, we set Windows XP's Visual Effects to "best performance," installed all of our benchmarking software, defragged the hard drives, and ran all of the tests.

HotHardware's Test Systems AMD & Intel Inside!

We began our testing with SiSoftware's SANDRA XI, the System ANalyzer, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant. We ran six of the built-in subsystem tests that partially comprise the SANDRA XI suite with the Athlon 64 X2 6000+ (CPU, Multimedia, Multi-Core Efficiency, Memory, Cache, and Memory Latency). All of the scores reported below were taken with the processors running at their default clock speeds of 3.0GHz.

Preliminary Testing with SiSoft SANDRA XI
Synthetic Benchmarks

Athlon 64 X2 6000+ @ 3.0GHz CPU Arithmetic	Athlon 64 X2 6000+ @ 3.0GHz MultiMedia	Athlon 64 X2 6000+ @ 3.0GHz Multi-Core Efficiency
Athlon 64 X2 6000+ @ 3.0GHz Memory Bandwidth	Athlon 64 X2 6000+ @ 3.0GHz Cache and Memory	Athlon 64 X2 6000+ @ 3.0GHz Memory Latency

The results reported by the various SANDRA test modules fell right in line with our expectations. The Athlon 64 X2 6000+ outperformed all other AMD dual-core processors, but it couldn't quite keep up with the higher-clocked Core 2 and Xeon processors.  Memory bandwidth and memory latency proved to be strong points for the CPU, as it racked up over 8.5GB/s in SANDRA's buffered memory bandwidth test, and posted the lowest latencies with block sizes up to 1MB. Once block sizes exceeded 1MB, the Core 2's larger 4MB cache allowed it to take the lead.