The 3400+ was announced on January 6th - just in time for CES. On launch day, Anand published a detailed analysis of the 3400+. Since that article, readers have been asking if AnandTech could do a follow-up, benchmarking the Athlon64 series using our standard motherboard benchmarks on the top motherboards for the Athlon64, Athlon64FX, and Pentium 4. That is the purpose of this Part 2 follow-up, which tests the top CPU's from Intel and AMD on the top-performing motherboards that we have tested for each platform.
The top-line Athlon64 FX51 is designed for Socket 940, dual-channel Registered memory; it has 1Mb of on-chip cache, and runs at 2.2 GHz. The 3400+ runs at the same 2.2GHz speed and also has 1Mb of cache, but it fits Socket 754 and works with single-channel unbuffered DDR memory - the memory most users already own. With the speed and cache-size of the 3400+ and FX51 being the same, it is natural to ask how the 2 processors compare in performance using the best-performing hardware that we have tested at AnandTech. As you suggested, we also put the 3.2GHz P4EE and the standard Pentium 4 3.2GHz through our standard benchmarks on an Asus P4C800-E to see how the best from Intel compares with the Athlon64 line.
The 3400+ becomes the 3rd member of the Socket 754 family, which now contains 3000+, 3200+, and 3400+ processors. Like the other Socket 754 Athlon64 chips, the 3400+ is built on an organic substrate with the full heat-spreader that has been used on all the Athlon64 family. One more Socket 754 speed bump is expected later this year before the move from .13 to .09 manufacturing process.
While the Socket 754 and the Socket 940 require different boards and function in different ways, they are exactly the same size, and all of the Athlon64 family chips are physically larger than current P4 chips.
Above, you can see the differences in the 2500+ Barton/Athlon XP, Socket 754 Athlon64, and the Socket 940 Athlon64 FX/Opteron. While the Athlon64 socket is smaller than the older Socket A, it is still larger than Intel's Socket 478.
A few on-line shops jumped the gun by advertising the 3400+ before it was launched on January 6th. The good news is that the price of the 3400+ is about the same as the price of the 3200+ before the launch of the 3400+. With the 3400+ around $430 and the 3000+ around $220, the 3200+ has now settled in the middle at about the $300 price point.
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EglsFly - Tuesday, January 13, 2004 - link
"AMD suggested that end-users check their list of approved power supplies for the 3400+ on the AMD web site."Can someone post the link to this power supply list? I did not find it on AMD's web site.
Wesley Fink - Monday, January 12, 2004 - link
Yeti Studios has been on the web at http://www.yetistudios.co.uk/ The link appears to be down right now. Zoo Digital released the original Gun Metal game with Yeti and their link to Gun Metal is working at http://www.zoodigitalpublishing.com/article.asp?id...brett1 - Monday, January 12, 2004 - link
Hey I'm glad to see that gunmetal (2?) is one of those games that actually relies on the VIDEO card VPU/GPU instead of the processor. Let's hope anandtech keeps it for future video card only tests.Speaking of gunmetal 2....why is there no website dedicated to the game itself? Yetistudios.com does not exist and there are little to no references to the actual game when doing a google search.
Jeff7181 - Monday, January 12, 2004 - link
#5 Please don't tell me you're saying the 9800 Pro 128 MB was a bottleneck and caused the P4 to be outperformedShinei - Monday, January 12, 2004 - link
Because the difference between the 9800 Pro and XT is marginal, and if they made the GPU less powerful the benchmarks would be GPU-bound instead of CPU-bound.KillaKilla - Monday, January 12, 2004 - link
Why do they have a 9800Pro 128? Wouldn't it make sense to make the CPU as much of a bottleneck as posible?CRAMITPAL - Monday, January 12, 2004 - link
Nice to see a quality review of all the latest and greatest chippies without bogus memory settings and benchmarks to skew the results. As most folks probably knew the 3400+ is the most practical choice for top of the line performance on a budget. FX51 which will be replaced shortly by FX53 will raise the bar for those looking for the absolute fastest X86 system available, period. The A64 3000+ is the sweet spot for most folks and the A64 3200+ ain't bad either for only $60. more.Intel's gonna have their work cut out for them Spinning how Prescott is worth purchasing when it's slower than EE and A64 by a long shot.
KristopherKubicki - Monday, January 12, 2004 - link
i play quake... on my cell phone!http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1945&p...
KristopherKubicki - Monday, January 12, 2004 - link
i still play quake... :(Icewind - Monday, January 12, 2004 - link
Wow, the differences are very minumual between all these CPU's, especially the FX vs the 3400+. Makes me wonder how the newer 128bit Channel version of the A64 will do this summer when I upgrade from this 2.8@3.3ghz P4c. The extra cost overhead for the EE as well as the FX can't be justified by any means from this comparison. I guess if you got the money though.....Well done Anandtech. Though i'd love to see a BF1942 benchmark in the future, The quake 3 bench has simply gotta go. Its no longer a rellavent and viable benchmark anymore.