Turion beats Dothan

dvandervelde · Aug 30, 2005

Looks like the Turion puts up a good fight against the Dothan, although no contest in battery performance.

Likely on both accounts, it has much to do with the chipset.

Check it out - http://www.laptoplogic.com/resources/articles/42/1/1/

Super Nade · Aug 30, 2005

Mate,

Thanks for the link! Quite a through article with good background info :thup:

What I found promising was the WinRar encoding benchmark and Multimedia benchmarks. Quite interesting that the Turion beat the Dothan in traditional Intel Forte's. Not that in no test did the Turion get comprehensively smashed.

Also interesting to see the Dothan holding its own in games. The lines are blurring out here. I believe the Intel has an advantage because of the chipset. AMD chipset support is not quite there yet.

David · Aug 30, 2005

As the P-M is based more on the P3 than the P4 I would not be surprised if the Dothan did not have the same strengths and weaknesses.

CCUABIDExORxDIE · Aug 30, 2005

wow, that was a great article. looks like with some work in the AMD chipset, we could see a tide turning in the laptop world.

Sentential · Aug 30, 2005

dvandervelde said:
although no contest in battery performance.

I agree. Turion is far better in terms of peformance, however I disagree that it is better overall. Frankly I wouldnt even consider them competing chips at all.

Dothan is not designed to be for peformance but for battery-life. And on that account, it absolutly slaughters it. Since AMD made the turion to compete on that end, I think sadly they have failed miserably at delivering something capable of defeating it. Even with much better technology.

I think the core issue here is not the chip, but the chipset. Sadly twas ever thus for AMD. Third party chipsets are never as good as the genuine article.

9mmCensor · Aug 30, 2005

Sentential said:
Third party chipsets are never as good as the genuine article.

nForce 2, 3, and 4?

Sentential · Aug 30, 2005

9mmCensor said:
nForce 2, 3, and 4?

compared to what? i865PE, i875?

johan851 · Aug 30, 2005

compared to what? i865PE, i875?

Exactly. Intel chipsets teamed with Intel processors acts very differently from the VIA/nVidia + AMD setups I've had. AMD chipset support has always been a strike against them in my book, despite the otherwise great CPU design.

Spion · Aug 31, 2005

great article. it really went into depth on the pro's and con's of each

Quailane · Aug 31, 2005

Sentential said:
Dothan is not designed to be for peformance but for battery-life. And on that account, it absolutly slaughters it. Since AMD made the turion to compete on that end, I think sadly they have failed miserably at delivering something capable of defeating it. Even with much better technology.

Dude, did you even READ the article? Under normal usage they should last the same. Especially if wireless is being used. Most normal people I have seen use their laptops for typing or browsing the web while going wireless. Under these non-stressful conditions they would run the same.

I seriously don't know if you are an intel PR guy in disguise, but even then they don't talk about their competitors like that. Just look at the facts.

Saying that the dothan slaughters the turion and that amd failed miserably isn't an opinion, it just defies all the hard facts.

Sentential said:
I think the core issue here is not the chip, but the chipset. Sadly twas ever thus for AMD. Third party chipsets are never as good as the genuine article.

Sorry but you are wrong again. That only applies to the intel side. Anyone who is not a fanboi can tell you that.

johan851 · Aug 31, 2005

Sorry but you are wrong again. That only applies to the intel side. Anyone who is not a fanboi can tell you that.

AMD hasn't had a chipset since the 761, which people absolutely loved and was the best performing chipset for the platform.

Folks, try not to turn this into another "ur a fanboi no ur a fanboi shut up" flamewar.

Jon · Aug 31, 2005

johan851 said:
Folks, try not to turn this into another "ur a fanboi no ur a fanboi shut up" flamewar.

Don't worry. First one who does gets an all expenses paid 3-day vacation. :]

Avg · Aug 31, 2005

I don't care about third party chipset or how the Turion beats the p-m but has less battery life, what I find interesting is that AMD did this by spending a lot less then Intel must have spend to make the p-m.

johan851 · Aug 31, 2005

I don't care about third party chipset or how the Turion beats the p-m but has less battery life, what I find interesting is that AMD did this by spending a lot less then Intel must have spend to make the p-m.

This is true. All in all, the product looks a lot more competitive than I thought it would be.

diggingforgold · Aug 31, 2005

Wow. I never thought I would see AMD coming close to Intel in the mobile market.

One thing I didn't like about the test was the fact they tweaked the RAM to 400 instead of using the stock 333. Most manufacturors do not use DDR400, even though that's what the chip supports. I also didn't like how they tweaked one video card as well. They should have done the benchmarks with tweaks and without tweaks to show a real world result.

But in the end, the article did show that AMD competed with Intel. I am impressed. I also agree that it's shocking to see that AMD simply threw together what they had, while Intel no doubt spent quite a bit of time and money into R&D--- and they are both competing with each other.

Sjaak · Aug 31, 2005

Keep in mind that Centrino is three years old. It would be more interesting to see Turion vs. Yonah.

Lol. From the review:

''Intel dominating the notebook market''

''the incredibly succesful opteron server line''

They're generally being a little over-enthousiastic if you ask me.

Jimbob7 · Aug 31, 2005

Another review, with very different results not in laptop form this time. Link

Tebore · Aug 31, 2005

The Dothan was designed from the ground up using P3 tech to be a low power chip.

The Turion is a tweaked desktop chip, and NOTHING MORE.

In theory the TDP of the Turion looks more promising but unlike the Dothan it is unable to shut off sections of the chip that isn't in use while keeping the others active. It's either on or off. The Dothan can shut off sections of itself while keeping others active.

That above point is where the Turion fails to save power, when typing a word doc the Dothan will have longer battery life. At full draw the two chips will be pretty close in Battery life.

At this point I'd have to give it to the Dothan until AMD can refine it's platform. This is another point where AMD loses out, Intel has a platform where AMD doesn't. ATI at this point is AMD's best friend with the Xpress200M chipset otherwise they got nothing. Intel has the 855 series and 915 series able to support all types of Video cards and Wireless card. The platform itself has tonnes of performance and power savings unlike the AMD side that has a new comer as a chipset maker as their best friend.

Sjaak · Aug 31, 2005

Jimbob7 said:
Another review, with very different results not in laptop form this time. Link

Omg, check the game benches there. Turion being spanked around the room.

David · Aug 31, 2005

Interesting... looks from review #2 (at a glance) that turion uses a bit more power at idle and quite a bit more at load.

Also the Turion gets beaten for gaming whereas the Dothan gets beaten at multimedia! Unlike the typical P4>A64 for encoding and A64>P4 for gaming....

Turion beats Dothan

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