Intel’s Napa platform for laptops which we reported about earlier will be using Intel’s next generation mobile processor, Yonah. The name in stores will be Intel Core Duo, just to emphasize the fact that it is the first mobile processor with dual cores. The processor and Napa platform will be launched in January next year but at Anandtech they’ve already gotten their hands on a Yonah processor and have now published the second part of its performance comparion of it. They compare Core Duo (Yonah) with today’s Pentium M processor, but also AMD’s dual core processor series Athlon 64 X2. Since Intel’s new processor architecture, which will be launched during the summer, will have many similarities with Core Duo it is a very interesting comparison.
The results they get from their tests is that the Yonah core offers more or less identical performance as the Athlon 64 X2, only exception being the gaming performance where AMD still has a lead. It is pretty clear that Intel has chosen the right path with a more effective processor architecture.
“But what about the bigger picture? What does our most recent look at the performance of Intel’s Core Duo tell us about future Intel desktop performance? We continue to see that the Core Duo can offer, clock for clock, overall performance identical to that of AMD’s Athlon 64 X2 – without the use of an on-die memory controller. The only remaining exception at this point appears to be 3D games, where the Athlon 64 X2 continues to do quite well, most likely due to its on-die memory controller.”
