The Athlon 64 FX-53: AMD's Next Enthusiast Part
by Derek Wilson on March 18, 2004 11:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
| Performance Test Configuration | |
| Processor(s): | AMD Athlon 64 3000+ AMD Athlon 64 3200+ AMD Athlon 64 3400+ AMD Athlon 64 FX51 AMD Athlon 64 FX53 Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz EE Intel Pentium 4 3.4GHz EE Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz Intel Pentium 4 3.2EGHz Intel Pentium 4 3.0EGHz Intel Pentium 4 2.8EGHz |
| RAM: | 2 x 512Mb OCZ 3500 Platinum Ltd 2 x 512Mb OCZ 3200 EL ECC Registered 2:3:3 2 x 512Mb Mushkin ECC Registered High Performance 2:3:2 |
| Hard Drive(s): | Seagate 120GB 7200 RPM (8MB Buffer) |
| Video AGP & IDE Bus Master Drivers: | VIA Hyperion 4.51 (12/02/03) Intel Chipset Drivers |
| Video Card(s): | Sapphire ATI Radeon 9800 PRO 128MB (AGP 8X) |
| Video Drivers: | ATI Catalyst 4.10 |
| Operating System(s): | Windows XP Professional SP1 |
| Motherboards: | Intel D875PBZ (Intel 875P Chipset) FIC K8-800T (VIA K8T800 Chipset) ASUS SK8V (VIA K8T800 Chipset) |
For the Athlon 64 FX-53 system, we employed the registered OCZ RAM, as there was apparently an issue with the SPD of the RAM that AMD sent us to test with, which kept it from running at higher than DDR333.
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johnsonx - Tuesday, March 23, 2004 - link
I looked at the FX-53 benchmarks on THG, and their benches vs. the FX-51 are right in line with what they should be... I don't see any descrepency as with AT's tests.From this I conclude that AT must indeed have tested the FX-53 with the OCZ memory, but used the Mushkin memory with the FX-51. That difference must explain the higher than expected performance of the FX-53.
That also suggests that OCZ memory is pretty good stuff...
nourdmrolNMT1 - Monday, March 22, 2004 - link
yea, i ment registered, my bad.MIKE
johnsonx - Saturday, March 20, 2004 - link
To #27: that's my point. For the FX-53 to perform more than 9.1% faster than the FX-51, *SOMETHING* must be different. FactMan (#25) suggests the FX-53 is indeed a new stepping with some improvements.In my second note, I also observed that AT tested the FX-51 & FX-53 with different memory, though the article is none too clear on this point.
Finally, as I pointed out in post 23, ECC is NOT required for the Athlon64 FX. The FX clearly *supports* ECC, but it is not required. Registered memory IS required for both the Opteron and Athlon64 FX.
nourdmrolNMT1 - Saturday, March 20, 2004 - link
why cant the fx-53 perform more than 9.1% better? it could have some revised coding within it which allows for better allocation of data, and improved prefetch, etc.it requires ecc. so you have to run with ecc
MIKE
truApostle - Friday, March 19, 2004 - link
According to AMD and factually speaking after running a slew of benchmarks, the FX-53 performs only 108% faster than the speed of the 64 3400 Athlon. This number was in overal~gaming prowess, period. I'm not too concerned with encoding, compiling, blah blah blah so I leave that to the folks who are. Man it's too hard to justify the extra cost of the FX-53 in relation to the 3400 with only 6-8% difference in speed, which at any rate is most likey un-noticeable anyhow. For me, and this is purely my humble opinion, the extra money price difference would better be suited a mess load of BAWLS.FactMan - Friday, March 19, 2004 - link
In Reply to 16There are two things that are likely to be the reason for the superlinear performence improvement.
1) The integrated memory controller runs at core speed, hence increased clockspeed makes the mem controller faster and reduces latency.
2) It's build upon the newer CG stepping. This stepping fixes and improves several things, mainly to the memory controller.
bldkc - Friday, March 19, 2004 - link
WHY CAN'T THEY COLOR CODE THE CHARTS! I have to spend three times as long reading each chart to determine who placed where as I do on a color coded chart such as those posted on Toms site. It is really annoying. I color code my charts at work. Every college class teaches color codeing. My 6 year old daughter color codes her drawings! Come on!!johnsonx - Friday, March 19, 2004 - link
TO #18, Athlon64Boy: The Athlon 64 FX retains the Registered requirement of the Opteron, but they were able eliminate the ECC requirement.After I posed my question, I did look around a bit for PC3200 Registered Non-ECC memory: it is something of a rare animal, but it does exist. (I think it's pretty A64FX specific). On Newegg.com, only CorsairXMS is offered in Reg/Non-ECC. Their website specifically touts this memory as being tested in AthlonFX motherboards:
http://www.corsairmicro.com/corsair/products/specs...
I suppose AT may have run their tests with ECC disabled, which as far as I know would eliminate any extra performance penalty. It may also be that the A64FX memory controller runs ECC and Non-ECC with equal efficiency... but there's always been a performance penalty in the past with ECC, registered or not.
yumarc - Friday, March 19, 2004 - link
I've been hearing "Hold off til socket 939" for almost 6 months now. It appears Anandtech.com has become a PR mouthpiece for AMD, or at the very least, become irresponsible to the point of recommending hardware that no one has publicly tested, priced, or seen. The future is now and socket 940 exists now. Don't forget the definition of the term, "vaporware".Xaazier - Friday, March 19, 2004 - link
when is socket 939 due?