Loongson 3A6000 CPU which is made for China's domestic PC market has reached performance parity with Intel's 14th Gen CPUs in clock-to-clock tests.

Loongson 3A6000 CPU Shows Strong Clock-To-Clock Performance Against Intel's Latest CPUs, Can Be A Game Changer For China's PC Segment If Not For The Low Clock Speeds

Last month, we got our first true taste of the much-awaited Loongson 3A6000 CPU which is a brand new chip designed to serve China's PC market. In the preview, we saw that the chip managed to get on par with the latest Intel and AMD Desktop CPUs in terms of IPC and now, we have new tests that further show the capabilities of this processor.

In terms of specifications, the Loongson 3A6000 CPU features a quad-core design (4C/8T) and an operating frequency of 2.5 GHz (peak). The CPU uses a 4th Generation Dragon architecture which integrates LA664 cores with support for 128-bit vector processing extended instructions (LSX) and the 256-bit advanced vector processing extended instructions (LASX) along with SMT2.

The performance of the chip was measured within SPEC CPU 2006 and UnixBench benchmarks. Starting with SPEC CPU 2006, we first have the single-core tests where the Loongson 3A6000 CPU offered up to 75% performance uplift over its predecessor, the 3A5000. The chip also ended up very close to the Core i3-10100 while consuming lower power (42W vs 52W). The difference is that the Loongson 3A6000 CPU was running at a clock speed of 2.5 GHz whereas the Core i3-10100 peaked at 4.3 GHz. In multi-core tests, the chip once again showed almost 2x the performance uplift over the 3A5000 predecessor while offering nearly similar performance as the Core i3-10100 (4.3 GHz).

So to make things fair, the Loongson 3A6000 was pitted against the Core i3-10100 and Core i5-14600K at the same 2.5 GHz clock speeds. This allowed the 3A600 to easily surpass the Core i3-10100 CPU with a lead of up to 40% while the chip was also faster than the Core i5-14600K in the integer tests while falling slightly behind in the Floating Point tests.

Lastly, we have the UnixBench which showcased a similar story and it goes off to show that the Loongson 3A6000 CPU can end up being a very competitive solution in China's domestic market. The clock speeds can be improved in the coming generations but for now, it looks like the chip can only reach around 2.6 GHz clocks with 3 GHz requiring LN2 cooling as demonstrated by ASUS's Tony here.

The motherboard used for the overclocking demonstration is the XC-LS3A6M which is designed by ASUS specifically for the Loongson 3A6000 CPUs and comes with DDR4 support and the 7A2000 PCH. There are a range of I/O features and ASUS states that we can expect further OC updates in the future.

News Sources: Bilibili, CNBeta