AMD Athlon 64 4000+ & FX-55: A Thorough Investigation
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 19, 2004 1:04 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Business/General Use Performance
Business Winstone 2004
Business Winstone 2004 tests the following applications in various usage scenarios:
. Microsoft Access 2002
. Microsoft Excel 2002
. Microsoft FrontPage 2002
. Microsoft Outlook 2002
. Microsoft PowerPoint 2002
. Microsoft Project 2002
. Microsoft Word 2002
. Norton AntiVirus Professional Edition 2003
. WinZip 8.1
AMD has always dominated performance under business applications, which is why in the past they have always been known as a good CPU maker for office applications. Obviously with the K7 and K8 series of processors AMD changed the rules of the game a bit, offering top of the line performance in far more than just office applications. However, despite AMD's improvements in performance elsewhere, the Athlon 64 continues to hold on as the fastest processor for business applications.
Here we see that there is no performance difference between the three 2.4GHz parts, which is to be expected considering the relatively small datasets and correspondingly low bandwidth nature of business applications.
Even the entry level Athlon 64 3200+ is able to outperform Intel's top of the line Pentium 4 560 here. While Intel will argue that performance here doesn't matter, what does matter is that AMD is faster at a lower price point. Even the old Athlon XP 3200+ is able to offer performance similar to the Pentium 4 550.
Office Productivity SYSMark 2004
SYSMark's Office Productivity suite consists of three tests, the first of which is the Communication test. The Communication test consists of the following:
"The user receives an email in Outlook 2002 that contains a collection of documents in a zip file. The user reviews his email and updates his calendar while VirusScan 7.0 scans the system. The corporate web site is viewed in Internet Explorer 6.0. Finally, Internet Explorer is used to look at samples of the web pages and documents created during the scenario."
While the Athlon 64 FX-55 and 4000+ manage to land on top, it isn't by a huge margin. The FX-55 holds just under an 8% performance advantage over Intels Pentium 4 3.4EE. The Pentium 4 550 and Athlon 64 3800+ tie in the middle, while the 3400+ offers statistically similar performance.
What's interesting to note here is that the Athlon XP 3200+ manages to outperform, ever so slightly, the newer Athlon 64 3000+, thanks to a somewhat shorter pipeline and higher clock speed. What these results tell us is that the Communication test is much less dependent on the memory subsystem, rendering the on-die memory controller advantages of the Athlon 64 relatively useless. Our theories are confirmed by the fact that there's virtually no difference in performance in the single and dual channel memory configurations of the Athlon 64. There is, however, a boost in performance when going from a 512KB cache to a 1MB cache (3800+ -> 4000+), indicating that the datasets here are too big for a 512KB cache, but fit much better in a 1MB cache.
The Pentium 4 does relatively well here, with the Prescott based 90nm 560 offering similar performance to the Northwood based 130nm 3.4EE, with the higher clock speed able to make up for Prescott's other shortcomings.
The next test is Document Creation performance, which shows very little difference in drive performance between the contenders:
"The user edits the document using Word 2002. He transcribes an audio file into a document using Dragon NaturallySpeaking 6. Once the document has all the necessary pieces in place, the user changes it into a portable format for easy and secure distribution using Acrobat 5.0.5. The user creates a marketing presentation in PowerPoint 2002 and adds elements to a slide show template."
The inclusion of a speech recognition test as a part of this next benchmark immediately excludes the older generation of processors from being in the running for top performance spots. The lack of an on-die memory controller keeps the Athlon XP 3200+ at the end of the pack, while the more bandwidth friendly Pentium 4 and Athlon 64 platforms battle it out for the lead here.
The Athlon 64 FX-55 manages to secure a small 5% lead over the 3.4EE and the Pentium 4 560. It's not a noticeable performance lead in the real world, but it does stand on paper (or on web if you prefer). We once again see that there's no huge benefit to the 4000+'s 1MB L2 cache, but the dual channel configuration of our Socket-939 platforms clearly comes in handy, resulting in a 7% performance boost for the 3800+ over the single channel 3400+.
The final test in our Office Productivity suite is Data Analysis, which BAPCo describes as:
"The user opens a database using Access 2002 and runs some queries. A collection of documents are archived using WinZip 8.1. The queries' results are imported into a spreadsheet using Excel 2002 and are used to generate graphical charts."
Although not quite the enterprise level server database, MS Access does get used quite frequently in small to medium sized business environments to handle light database loads.
Here the Pentium 4s completely dominate, with the Prescott core truly extending the performance lead here. None of the AMD chips even stand a chance, not to mention the thrashing that the XP 3200+ gets. The Data Analysis tests do prove that despite the performance in other areas, there are a few pedestals that the Pentium 4 does continue to stand quite high upon.
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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.