AMD's Athlon 64 3400+: Death of the FX-51
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 6, 2004 4:35 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
DivX Encoding Performance
We have been using a DivX encoding test as a part of our CPU benchmarking suite for quite some time now, however the performance test has never been truly realistic as it wasn't geared towards producing a high quality DivX rip - rather it was designed to stress CPU performance.
We have since revised our benchmark and now follow the DivX 5 encoding guide published at Doom9.net . For our test title we use Chapter 9 from The Sum of All Fears DVD. We conduct a 2-pass encoding process and report the encoded FPS from both passes averaged together. The results are lower than our previous Xmpeg tests, however they are much more applicable to real-world usage.
Hyper-Threading along with other features of the NetBurst architecture give Intel the performance advantage in video encoding as you can see by our DivX results above. The Athlon 64 3400+ performs respectably but it isn't the CPU that's best for these sorts of tasks.
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Insomniac - Wednesday, January 7, 2004 - link
DAVIDS: Those are real important numbers. I know my favorite applicatiomn is Sandra and game is 3DMark...Seriously, those are just theoretical. It's nice to know what a processor CAN do, but it is much better to see what it ACTUALLY does.
Insomniac - Wednesday, January 7, 2004 - link
Thanks Jason!DAVIDS - Wednesday, January 7, 2004 - link
It seems like Anandtech chose to ignore certain benchmark tests like Sandra or 3Dmark where the FX will clearly outclass the 3400+. If you look at the benches done by Amdzone, the FX annihilates the 3400+ in any test involving memory bandwidth.mkruer - Wednesday, January 7, 2004 - link
Last time I checked the "NewCastle" core was suppose to have a new memory controller, that would allow for dual channel. This core is not the NewCastle it’s just AMD pulling some of their under spec’ed chips disabling 1/2 the cache and re-branding it as a different model. Usually I would have a huge issue with this, but after looking at a bunch of benchmarks, I see the 1/2 the cache is not a big hindrance at all. All the information that I have and seen says the NewCastle core will be the 130nm equivalent of the Paris core, that’s it.But on top of that what I am surprised about was no mention that the AMD64 is handy caped at the moment. I am sure once 64-bit OS comes out and 64-bit Apps are available all the “multimedia” wins that the Intel chips currently have will instantly flip. Rule of thumb says that “multimedia” will benefit the most from the increase in bits, and in the case of 3DSMAX don’t be too surprised if you see 100%+increase in performance. Don’t believe me take a look at the LAME encoding on 64-bit OS with 64-bit lame.
mkruer - Wednesday, January 7, 2004 - link
destaccado - Wednesday, January 7, 2004 - link
well at least he didn't publish anything until page 2 this time :)raskren - Wednesday, January 7, 2004 - link
Please don't feed the trolls.CRAMITPAL - Tuesday, January 6, 2004 - link
I must ask the obvious because it clearly escaped most folks here. Do you think AMD would release the 3400+ and kill FX51 sales and profits if it didn't have an FX53 ready to roll next month when Pisscott the Flame Thrower paper launches??? You folks must think this is AMD's first day on the job or something. You may recall AMD is the same company who made the PIII obsolete (4) years ago with the launch of Athlon and AMD made the Piss 4 and Xeon obsolete (6) months ago with Opteron/A64...If only you knew! :>))
TrogdorJW - Tuesday, January 6, 2004 - link
Hey, is it just me, or is the Intel system rather handicapped by running on an Intel D875PBZ motherboard? From what I've seen on benchmarks, that board routinely finishes 2 to 10% slower than the top enthusiast boards. Given that Anandtech in the past has praised the Asus P4C800 (and P4C800-E), not to mention the A-Bit IS7 and IC7-MAX, why use the standard Intel 875 motherboard?No, it wouldn't help the P4 win the overall title. But it would have been a more accurate portrayal of the top performance we can expect from the systems. A 5-10% increase on several of the benchmarks would have closed the gap between A64 and P4.
The end result, of course, is that the 3400+ still beats the best P4s in games and scientific work. With office type applications, it's probably pointless to argue for one or the other, since they're so fast. And the P4 still wins on 3D rendering and media encoding.
So it's not a really major flaw, but I still have to ask: Why? Did you really have no other P4 enthusiast motherboards available? And yet you had an Intel motherboard. Seems a little odd, at best. It's the type of thing that makes people wonder.
edub82 - Tuesday, January 6, 2004 - link
The message is clear!!! AMD and Intel both offer great CPUs at similiar price points.