Diffference Between AMD Athlon and AMD Turion

AMD Athlon vs AMD Turion

AMD Technology Company is one of the top microprocessor producing company nowadays. Two of which are their Athlon and Turion microprocessors. Each of them are continually enhanced and developed. But how do they differ from each other? And which one is more superior?

Athlon is the first PC processor to run on AMD’s 64 bit platform. This technology enables a simultaneous 32 bit and 64 bit computing while maintaining compatibility with the existing software and operating systems. Later on, Turion was also designed for the 64 bit platform. Although these two processors have the same performance, the underlying technology used is different. Turion chips are built from low-voltage transistors that have less electrical leakage, and the layout of the chip has been designed for less power consumption. And Turion has a thermal control feature that prevents the processor from creating too much heat.

Although Turion chips consume less electrical power, it does not mean that they would also be much slower in speed. The chipís design is to reduce the maximum clock speed that the Turion can support. The effect of the slower transistors can be seen in the range of clock speeds for each processor: 1.6 – 2.4 GHz for Turion chips and 1.8 – 2.8 GHz for Athlon chips. So it is assumed that Athlon chips should be better overclockers than Turion. However Turion seems to be more advantage when it comes to their Hyper Transport technology (technology for high-speed I/O communication on system bus) feature. Turion can go up to 14.4 GB Hyper Transport I/O bandwidth while Athlon can go up to 8 GB Hyper Transport I/O bandwidth.

Another major factor for which we can compare these two processors is their cache capacity differences. Turion has its own L2 cache memory for each core. A total of 2MB capacity for L2 cache of Turion x2 ultra dual ñ core mobile processor, and a total of 1MB capacity for L2 cache of Turion x2 dual ñ core mobile processor. This enables a simultaneous independent core access to cache. While Athlon has a 64KB L1 instruction cache per core and 64KB L1 data cache per core, plus up to 1MB (socket 939) or 512KB (socket AM2) L2 cache per core.

As both processors are made by the same company, both have a lot similar architectural features. Only that one of them is more improved in one feature and the other on another feature. However, the AMD Company has done a good job selling Turion for notebooks or laptops. So people probably assume that it is less powerful than Athlon. That’s why more people still turn to Athlon. But whatever differences these two have, you should only choose whatever that best fit’s your needs.

Summary

1. Turion is more energy-saving because its chip is designed for less power consumption.

2. Turion has thermal control for a cooler PC.

3. Athlon has a faster clock speed but slower in Hyper Transport I/O bandwidth technology feature.

4. Turion has its own two L2 cache memory for each core with 2MB for Turion x2 ultra dual-core mobile processor and 1MB for Turion x2 dual-core mobile processor while Athlon has two types of L1 cache per core with 64KB each, and one 1MB or 512KB L2 cache per core.

5. Turion is widely used for notebooks while Athlon is widely used for desktops.

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