AMD's AM2: Athlon 64 FX-62 & X2 5000+

MP3 Encoding:

DBPowerAMP, Moby - Play, WAV to 192kbps MP3.

The Athlon 64 FX-62 returned the same time as the equally clocked single core Athlon 64 FX-57 chip. The transition to Socket AM2 meant a single second reduction in encoding time, while the X2 5000+ encoded our MP3s in the same time as the Socket 939 FX-60; the cache cost the X2 5000+ a single second over the equally clocked FX-60.

Image Manipulation:

Fireworks MX, 162 images; grayscale, 50% scale, export.

The Athlon 64 FX-62 managed to complete our MP3 encoding test in exactly 60 seconds - this was two seconds faster than the equally clocked Athlon 64 FX-57. When the new AM2-based Windsor core is compared clock-for-clock with the Socket 939 Toledo core, it yielded a single second performance improvement. The reduced cache on the Athlon 64 X2 5000+ resulted in a 3% performance deficit.