AMD Athlon 64 4000+ & FX-55: A Thorough Investigation
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 19, 2004 1:04 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
The Battle for Value: Athlon 64 3200+ vs. Pentium 4 530
In a review of processors selling for close to $1,000, it's important to look at some of the more affordable CPUs to see how they stack up against each other as well. With the introduction of the first 90nm Athlon 64 parts, AMD has been able to bring the Socket-939 Athlon 64 CPUs down below $300, making for an interesting value comparison.
Using our RealTime Pricing Engine we found that for just over $200 you could either have an Athlon 64 3200+ or a Pentium 4 530 (3GHz). While this doesn't take into account motherboard cost, 925X boards and Socket-939 boards are in the same general price ranges. You can get a Socket-939 nForce3 board for $133, and you can get an ABIT 925X board for $150.
So the question becomes, based on our plethora of benchmarks, which CPU do you buy? In order to find out, we'll break down the benchmarks by category once again.
In our Business/General Use tests, the Athlon 64 3200+ won 6 benchmarks, tied in 1 and lost 3. In the 6 benchmarks that the Athlon 64 3200+ won, its average win percentage over the Pentium 4 530 was 17.6%. In the 3 that the Pentium 4 530 won, its average win percentage was also a hefty 9.6%. Overall it would seem that the Athlon 64 3200+ is the better buy for Business/General Use, although the Pentium 4 did manage to outperform it in some tests.
In our Multitasking Content Creation tests, the Athlon 64 3200+ won 2 benchmarks and the Pentium 4 530 won 3 benchmarks. In the two benchmarks the 3200+ won, it outperformed the 530 on average by 12.8%. In the three benchmarks the 530 won, it outperformed the 3200+ by 10.2%. Although the Athlon 64 won fewer benchmarks here it won by a larger overall percentage so we'll call this one a draw.
Next up is Video Creation/Editing and Photoshop performance, where the 3200+ won 2 out of the three tests by outperforming the 520 by 22.8% on average. The Pentium 4 won one test by a margin of 2.5%. The clear winner here is AMD.
Audio/Video encoding gave the Athlon 64 two wins at an average of 11.9%, while the Pentium 4 530 had 3 wins at an average of 11.3%. Given the virtually equal performance wins with a slight difference in the number of wins, we'll call this one a slight victory for Intel.
If you're a gamer, the choice is clear, the Athlon 64 3200+ won 10 out of 10 gaming benchmarks with an average performance advantage of 13.9% over the Pentium 4 530.
In our 3dsmax 3D rendering tests, the Athlon 64 won twice while the Pentium 4 one once. However the one test the Pentium 4 won in was actually a composite of 4 separate 3dsmax tests which we also included in our results. The Athlon 64 advantage in its two wins was 7.7%, while the Pentium 4 advantage in its wins was an average of 7%. With 4 actual victories over AMD's 2, our recommendation here would be leaning more strongly towards Intel but the win is definitely not clear cut.
Finally in our workstation tests, the Athlon 64 won 7 benchmarks, the Pentium 4 won one by 1% and failed one. The performance advantage here was an average of 8.4%, giving the advantage to AMD.
In the end, here's our scorecard for the Athlon 64 3200+ vs. Pentium 4 530:
Business/General Use - Athlon 64 3200+
Multitasking Content Creation - Tie
Video Creation/Editing and Photoshop - Athlon 64 3200+
Audio/Video Encoding - Pentium 4 530
Gaming - Athlon 64 3200+
3D Rendering with 3dsmax - Pentium 4 530
Workstation Performance - Athlon 64 3200+
Depending on your usage our recommendation may vary, but the best overall performer at the $200 price point appears to be the Athlon 64 3200+.
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southernpac - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link
It has been reported elsewhere that the FX55 runs 15 degrees hotter than the 4000+, and that Cool & Quiet are available on both. True? Also, does the new AMD stock fan (with the copper fins and heat pipe) come with the 4000+?ThePlagiarmaster - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link
Val,Sounds like you don't know how to build a PC properly. With a good PSU and QUALITY memory (corsair, kingston, crucial etc) you won't experience any problems with AMD systems (with any motherboard). If you still experience problems turn off that damned SPD. Config the memory yourself and problems go away. I don't even use SPD's when setting up customers PC's these days. If there is a way to turn it off and config the memory myself it's the first thing I do.
All SPD's are not created equal (nor are PSU's). Tons of them out there will make your machine run like crap. A simple fix is to kill it and config the memory yourself in the bios.
Learn to read forums and how to troubleshoot your PC.
Plag
nastyemu25 - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link
what the hell did val just say?Philbill - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link
Sounds to me as though the Intel fanboys are worried :)val - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link
53: yes and Acer on all their notebooks and servers :-). And Britney never touched Sprite. Please try to discover what PR means. Google will help ya.val - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link
51: to your 820 and other sarcastic notes, everybody makes mistakes, but with intel you have allways choice. If you dont like to buy intel chipset with limited warranty with purpose to be used on cheapest office PCs, you can buy workstation or server based chipset . But what you can choose for AMD? Is there any high durable VIA chipset? Or nvidia, SIS? Dont make me smile.(note: i have 820 in my HTPC and since installed it runs fine)
Sunbird - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link
Ferrari uses AMD..... Word!val - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link
51: that AMD madness will end one time, and AMD chips (and specialy chipsets for AMD) have not one bug - there is one difference: intel is serious respected company, which doesnt depend on how few overclockers will like or dislike them. They must publish the bugs for this reason. AMD is not publishing any, even that stupid one with JPEG was hidden under carpet as much as was possible. And should we discuss chipsets for AMD now? Like VIA deleting harddrive with ATI card, and many others?Reason why many of them are not scared to install AMD servers is, that demand is not so high. If you have single purpose server with backup, you can run it even on ATA drives and ALI chipset to reach 99.3%.
Name me one company which prefers AMD and doesnt produce intel, name me one industrial computer who support AMDs, one automotive rack test system provider, hospital equipment, avionic systems, and so on. Its not like that few overclockers will not see their page for a ten minutes, its about lifes and lot lot of moneys. And trust me, its not about marketing or idiocy, its about quality and support what you will never get from AMD/taiwan.
Get Intel, and dont fall to temporaly madness.
I know that Hyundai is popular now, but it is not BMW (even when you can get three hyundais for one BMW and even when one is able to drive on straight road same top speed). Respected companies doesnt change so fast.
About benchmarks? I like to see once, where is compared how many interupts and system calls is CPU able to handle. Benchmark with network and soundcard, mouse, keyboard and other utilization. You will be surprised.
Zebo - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link
#49 like to spread FUD much? Total BS. That's why Anands, you know the guy who reviews hardware professionally seeing thousands of products a year, been using AMD servers for four years now, right because thier unreliable?? IMO ihere is actually no more effective endorsement of the stability and reliability of AMD platforms than the fact that AnandTech uses them as the sole platform for the web serving of its main site.Need we bring up intels i820, grantsdale, alterwood disasters? Even the prescott has 31 bugs which will blue screen your comp under certain sofware instances. Thus far opteron/A64 has one. Hav'nt you heard about intel recalling processors? Hav'nt you heard about Northwood sudden death syndrome? Hav'nt you heard about HP Recall Thousands of pentium Notebooks for chipset problems?
If there's any instability to be had it's with Intel simply because AMD "offloads" about 80% of a chipsets work to the CPU's interated mem controller now.
Those "AMD bad chipset" museings were all FUD way back when too. No need to rehash them, I will if you want. But Just look what Intel man, TOM's hardware says way back then. http://www.tomshardware.com/mainboard/01q1/010122/...
"The most important finding was the enjoyable fact that each of the tested boards ran 100% stable even at the fastest possible memory timing settings. VIA's upcoming DDR chipsets may not look too impressive right now, but the Apollo KT133A is a matured, fast and solid product that offers good performance."
http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/00q4/001017/athlo...
"AMD Processors are significantly less expensive than Intel processors although they are at least on par in terms of performance. - FACT"
"AMD processors are incompatible. - LIE
Not that the average guy who just heard that phrase would know what the heck 'incompatible' is, but it sounds really bad, doesn't it? Well, even the people who do know that 'incompatible' means that a product wouldn't work reliably with other components (which of course is bad) are wrong if they accuse AMD's Athlon or Duron processors of it. In our labs we are testing all kinds of Athlon platforms with all kinds of different components and I can definitely say that I cannot see any difference between the compatibility of AMD products and platforms compared to the same from Intel."
"Chipsets for AMD processors are inferior to Intel chipsets. - LIE
Yeah, sure, the earth is flat and politicians are honest ... I am still amused when I see people posting the above message in news groups or as their response to articles. How many more times does Intel need to screw up their chipsets (i820, MTH, ...) until you guys get the message? . . . Incompatibilities are more a problem of the motherboard BIOS than of the chipset right now. Thus both chipset makers, Intel as well as VIA, are actually in the same situation."
Stop the hate budda. Get AMD, everyones doing it.:)
val - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link
also should the countries to do something with AMD/Intel NVIDIA/ATI cartels. CPU / GC costs so much more than whole mainboard. Thats crazy. More competitors to the battlefield or some kind of regulation is needed.