As we look toward the introductions on September 23rd, some things are starting to become clearer about Athlon64. Announcements from AMD and word-of-mouth all point to the performance of Athlon64 and Opteron being very close if not identical. We also are hearing rumors from the Inquirer and elsewhere that the 754-pin Athlon64 will likely be introduced initially at 2.0GHz, with a revised (and more realistic) Performance Rating that will place it somewhere around 3200+, which is the current highest PR of the top Barton. However, no one has really done much in answering how the Athlon64 will perform compared to current Athlon and Pentium 4 CPUs. While the delay of Microsoft’s 64-bit Windows XP still will not allow us to test 64-bit Athlon64 performance, we do have the tools at hand to give a good idea of what to expect from 32-bit Athlon64 performance when it is introduced in the next few weeks.
When Anand Shimpi first tested Opteron in April, there were only server-based boards available for testing. The single-CPU nVidia nForce3, which has real AGP 8X and Enthusiast-level overclocking options, would not be released for a couple of months. With nForce3 for Opteron now available in the market, and the expectation of a 2.0GHz Athlon64 introduction, we went back to our nVidia nForce3 reference board with an Opteron capable of running 200FSB to see where Athlon64 might land.
With the AGP/PCI lock and FSB overclocking of the nForce3, we were able to reach a stable 2.0Ghz (222x9) at default voltage with our 1.8 Opteron, even though we were running 2GB (512MBx4) of Dual-Channel ECC memory. With full support of AGP 8X, we were also able to use our standard ATI Radeon 9800 PRO for benchmarking.
With the nForce 3 running Opteron at 2.0Ghz with a Radeon 9800 PRO, we had the platform to give our readers a decent preview of Athlon64 performance. So how will Athlon64 likely compare to the best Pentium 4 CPU’s and current Barton processors?
When Anand Shimpi first tested Opteron in April, there were only server-based boards available for testing. The single-CPU nVidia nForce3, which has real AGP 8X and Enthusiast-level overclocking options, would not be released for a couple of months. With nForce3 for Opteron now available in the market, and the expectation of a 2.0GHz Athlon64 introduction, we went back to our nVidia nForce3 reference board with an Opteron capable of running 200FSB to see where Athlon64 might land.
With the AGP/PCI lock and FSB overclocking of the nForce3, we were able to reach a stable 2.0Ghz (222x9) at default voltage with our 1.8 Opteron, even though we were running 2GB (512MBx4) of Dual-Channel ECC memory. With full support of AGP 8X, we were also able to use our standard ATI Radeon 9800 PRO for benchmarking.
With the nForce 3 running Opteron at 2.0Ghz with a Radeon 9800 PRO, we had the platform to give our readers a decent preview of Athlon64 performance. So how will Athlon64 likely compare to the best Pentium 4 CPU’s and current Barton processors?
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StuckMojo - Friday, September 5, 2003 - link
I'd like to see some benchmarks where the opteron's advanatges could really be used:
1) some database or rendering benchmarks on workstations with more than 4GB of ram and large worksets that use more that 4G.
x86/pentium cpus have to use a segmented memory architecture becuase of the 4G address space, so it's kind of like swapping, and is alot slower than direct access that a 64 bit chip has.
2) how about some 64bit benchmarks on linux?
Quake3 runs natively on linux, why have I seen none? Laziness, or lack of technical knowledge?
sprockkets - Friday, September 5, 2003 - link
Intel will have a 100w toaster oven to compete with AMD, that and probably SSE3 just to make everyone recompile and distance AMD again. That and of course a 1mb cache.Isn't that Xenon have a 1MB but L3? That means it has 1.5MB, and still lags.
PointlesS - Friday, September 5, 2003 - link
Impressive cpu but it would've been nice to see how much of an improvement the extra 200mhz made...unless I'm missing something here...does anyone have a link that has a 1.8ghz opteron and a 9800 pro?Anonymous User - Friday, September 5, 2003 - link
Minor correction on page 2. nForce was the first AMD based board to use HyperTransport IIRC, not the nForce2Anonymous User - Friday, September 5, 2003 - link
Hrm, as I am sure Intel has samples of the Opteron CPUs, its kinda surprising to see them not have anything significant ready to counter.. I highly doubt the Prescott will perform more than 10-20% better than the fastest Northwood P4.. If can't, then it'll definitely be slower than these new Opterons.. Let's see if Intel can counter, or else its gonna be a bloodshed for them..Evan Lieb - Friday, September 5, 2003 - link
#13,Because CPU supply right now is EXTREMELY tight. Wait until the end of the month for more info on dual Opteron/A64 performance numbers. :)
Take care,
Evan
Anonymous User - Friday, September 5, 2003 - link
This is all very exciting stuff for AMD fans...but as a dually enthusiast, I wonder why there are no benchmarking stats for a top-end Athlon MP workstation/gaming solution? Why include the Xeon dually and not an Athlon dually? Certainly in the Content Creation areas we'd see a landslide for the good old dual MP mobos...imagine a 150 MHz FSB PC3200 2.6 GHz overclocked Barton 2500+ dually w/ the Radeon 9800...best price/performance ever IMHO...Wesley Fink - Friday, September 5, 2003 - link
As Anand and many others have been saying for months, Athlon64 is supposed to be single-channel Socket 754 and able to use unbuffered memory. Since the rumored FX Enthusiast version is said to be Socket 940 it will fit Opteron boards like the Asus SK8N, so will be dual-channel. Thus far the only ones I have seen from these aleady RELEASED motherboards have required registered memory - ECC or non-ECC - but that could of course change with later releases.tazdevl - Thursday, September 4, 2003 - link
Also, I was under the impression that the socket 939/940 boards will support unbuffered memory.tazdevl - Thursday, September 4, 2003 - link
I'd like to see a temp comparison between all the CPUs.