.09 Athlon 64: Value, Speed and Overclocking
by Wesley Fink on October 14, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Gaming Performance
Gaming Performance was consistently faster on the new 90nm than the existing 130nm processors. This varied from 2% in Aquamark3 and Doom3 to 7% in Quake 3. Overall, gaming averaged about 3% faster on the new 90nm chips. While 3% is not a huge increase and it will likely not even be noticed by the average user, it was still impressive to see the new 90nm chips perform a little better than the older 130nm chips.
We have talked in past reviews about how some games respond well to CPU and memory speed increases, while others seem to be most influenced by the graphics card. This is nicely illustrated in comparing benchmarks of the 3000+ at stock speed to the same benches at 2.6GHz (290x9). Here, we see games like Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Unreal Tournament 2003, Quake 3, and Comanche 4 improve 34% to 42% as we move from 1.8Ghz to 2.6Ghz. At the other end of the spectrum, Halo and Aquamark 3 only improve 12% to 13% while the CPU speed increases 45%. Doom 3 falls in the middle with a 24% increase in frame rate for the 45% boost in CPU speed.
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Zar0n - Thursday, October 14, 2004 - link
Great article.Great CPU, now all we need is PCI-E bords.
PrinceGaz - Thursday, October 14, 2004 - link
I haven't finished reading the article, but in the overclocking section of the review, you say the 3500+ overclocked from 2200 to 2610MHz at the default core voltage of 1.5V, and that the 3000+ went from 1800 to 2610MHz just by raising the core voltage from the default of 1.5V up to 1.6V.I was under the impression that the default core voltage for the 90nm parts is 1.4V! Was the mobo BIOS version used not correctly setting 1.4V by default, or is the default actually 1.5V?
If as I believe the default is 1.4V, both chips were overvolted to reach 2610MHz, and the 3000+ in particular had to be raised from 1.4V to a much higher 1.6V. Its good that it still seemed to be running at a normal temperature!
xsilver - Thursday, October 14, 2004 - link
wesley, One more thing -- as a future idea for an article -- a comparison of typical systems running different memory speeds -- I was under the impression that the price / performance ratio is very poor ... eg. ddr600 is 80% more expensive but only gives 10% more performance?KHysiek - Thursday, October 14, 2004 - link
So this memory (double 512MB pack) was running at 580MHz ?! Wow.What timings then ?
xsilver - Thursday, October 14, 2004 - link
thanks wesleyalso found this article for those who want to know -- no athlon xp's though , but you can guess -- I look at the ut03 botmatch table, they seem to be comparable over these three articles (correct me if im wrong)
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...
For those who cant be bothered here's an interesting stat
prescott 2.8 - ut03 botmatch 67.9 fps
3500+/3000+ OC @290x9 132.7 fps
for those who are mathmatically challenged -- THATS DOUBLE!!! time to upgrade
Zebo - Thursday, October 14, 2004 - link
I dislike overclcoking reviews that don't show a pentium equivalent in thier test.What I want to know if I buy a 3.2C or E for the same price and overclock it with similar cooling how it would compare too....does'nt everybody?
Reviewers really need to work these ideas in.
Wesley Fink - Thursday, October 14, 2004 - link
#11 - Mem:FSB was 1:1 in overclocking. At 290 we were still running 1:1.Wesley Fink - Thursday, October 14, 2004 - link
#3 and #9 -Results for the FX53 and Intel 92X/915 running the nVidia 6800 Ultra are available at http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2128.
To help in comparisons we have added test results for the fastest current CPUs from AMD and Intel. The FX53 runs at 2.4GHz with 1MB of cache compared to the 512k on the 3000+ and 3500+. The Intel 560 runs at 3.6GHz and was tested on an Intel 925X chipset motherboard.
KHysiek - Thursday, October 14, 2004 - link
What was mem:fsb ratio in this overclocking (benchmarks) ?Wesley Fink - Thursday, October 14, 2004 - link
#1 - Table has been corrected.#4 - Corrections made. It should also be pointed out that Socket 939 nForce3 uses the Ultra chipset which already supports 1000 HT. It is the Socket 754 nF3-250 that normally supports just 800HT. All VIA 939 chipsets also support 1000 HT.