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
DirectX 9 Performance – AquaMark 3
For Aquamark3 (and all our subsequent game tests), we followed the same procedure that we used in our recent video card articles. For this test, we only looked at the free version of Aquamark3, as that is what our readers use. Aquamark uses DX8 and DX9 pixel and vertex shaders.
Even at 1024x768 with a Radeon 9800 Pro we are primarily GPU limited and thus don't see any real difference between the contenders here.
If we isolate the CPU's contribution to the overall performance we can see that the Pentium 4 takes the lead, with the Extreme Edition sitting pretty just beyond the 10,000 mark. Although CPU-only scores like these are not representative of real world performance they are interesting to look at to get an idea for what performance differences do exist among the CPUs, in this case we see that there isn't much at all.
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Jeff7181 - Tuesday, January 6, 2004 - link
I found fault with the article... no FS2004 benchmark. Can I have it please? :DJeff7181 - Tuesday, January 6, 2004 - link
I agree with everyone so far =)But I think AMD may have shot themselves in the foot by releasing the 3400+, which performs exactly the same as the insanely priced FX-51. Unless they have some tricks up their sleeve with socket 939 that will improve performance, why would anyone spend twice the money on the FX-51 when the 3400+ provides 98% of the performance of the FX-51?
Jason Clark - Tuesday, January 6, 2004 - link
The print article issue is fixed.Cheers
AlexWade - Tuesday, January 6, 2004 - link
I liked the compile times benchmark! Please have it all new reviews of CPU's.PrinceXizor - Tuesday, January 6, 2004 - link
Nice review! I especially liked the price/performance charts. It should be interesting to see how AMD handles the transition from 754 to 939 sockets.The thing I find most impressive is that AMD is staying ahead of Intel as far as performance, something many of us did not think possible given Hammer's seemingly endless wait.
Intel had to rush out an EE version to remain competitive while it waited for Prescott (I'm not intel bashing, I'm sure Prescott will compete nicely).
In the meantime, AMD is the one hitting the "3400+" performance arena before the 3.4Ghz Prescotts hit. The question always was, can AMD execute with the Athlon 64 as well as they did with the Athlon XP? The answer seems to be yes. Very well done AMD!
P-X
Insomniac - Tuesday, January 6, 2004 - link
I meant hints. ;)Insomniac - Tuesday, January 6, 2004 - link
Nice article. Any hits on how the battle will look when Prescott hits? :)I noticed in the print view, none of the charts are showing up.
FearoftheNight - Tuesday, January 6, 2004 - link
great review...hope to see socket 939 coverage coming soon :D