AMD Athlon 6400+ Black Ed Processor

Black Edition is the fastest dual core processor from AMD and runs at 3.2

GHz. It is about 200 MHz faster than the top end 6000+ series processor. The

basic architecture remains the same and like other Athlon 64 X2 dual core

processors this one has an integrated memory controller. It's based on

HyperTransport technology and the extra features that it boasts of are Extended

fast system call (SYCR), Extended MMX technology, 3DNow technology, No execute

page protection (NX), and the patented AMD64 technology.

To test this processor we used an Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard along

with ATI HD Radeon 2400 Pro graphics card and 1 GB of DDR2 RAM with 120 GB (7200

rpm, SATA) HDD. A score of 4785 in PCMark05 proves its multimedia capabilities.

In Cine Bench10, it obtained a score of 2728 for single CPU and 5319 for

multiple CPUs. In POV ray, it took only 20 min and 20 seconds to render around

147456 pixels at 120.82 pps (pixel per second), which was expected, given its

high frequency.

We used Maya and Photoshop simultaneously on two different monitors each

running at 1280X1024 resolution. We used Maya to render a scene and Photoshop to

edit a JPEG image. After finishing three tasks, when we checked the processor

utilization, we were surprised to find that there



wasn't even a single instance when processor was stressed to its optimum level.
The maximum level to which we could stress it was 90%, while the average was

stressed around 79%. Only when the rendering process in Maya starts the

processor is utilized to its maximum limits. We even tested it for video

encoding and found that a single core took longer time to encode a 500 MB movie

in WMV format around 167 min, compared to the time taken when we used both

cores. While playing 'Company of Heroes' it managed an average score of 11.5

fps, which is less. However, this score can be improved by using a better

graphics card.

BottomLine: An enviable option to go for if you are looking for a

processor with good multitasking abilities