AMD Athlon 64 4000+ & FX-55: A Thorough Investigation
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 19, 2004 1:04 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Multitasking Content Creation
MCC Winstone 2004
Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004 tests the following applications in various usage scenarios:
. Adobe® Photoshop® 7.0.1
. Adobe® Premiere® 6.50
. Macromedia® Director MX 9.0
. Macromedia® Dreamweaver MX 6.1
. Microsoft® Windows MediaTM Encoder 9 Version 9.00.00.2980
. NewTek's LightWave® 3D 7.5b
. SteinbergTM WaveLabTM 4.0f
As you can see above, Lightwave is part of the MCC Winstone 2004 benchmark suite. As an individual application, Lightwave does manage to get a healthy performance benefit with multithreaded rendering enabled, especially when paired with Hyperthreading enabled CPUs like the Pentium 4s here today. The latest MCC Winstone patch allows for a selection of how many threads to launch during the Lightwave test, the options range from 1 - 8 threads.
Based on our tests it seems as if 4 threads yields the highest performance on the Pentium 4 platform, and thus we used that setting for all of our tests. The Athlon 64s perform identically with 1 or 4 threads as they are not multithreading capable processors, so the AMD scores did not change.
Despite the inclusion of Hyperthreading support, MCC Winstone 2004 still shows AMD performing much better in an area where Intel once dominated. While the Prescott based Pentium 4 560 is at the front of the Intel pack, it is still outperformed by the Athlon 64 3400+.
Here the single vs. dual channel memory gap shrinks to under 3% when we compare the 3400 and 3800+ processors, but also worth noting that the added cache of the 4000+ is also only responsible for about a 2% performance gain. Put the two together and you've got a decent combination in the Athlon 64 4000+, but separately the features don't bring much to the table to justify the added cost.
ICC SYSMark 2004
The first category that we will deal with is 3D Content Creation. The tests that make up this benchmark are described below:
"The user renders a 3D model to a bitmap using 3ds max 5.1, while preparing web pages in Dreamweaver MX. Then the user renders a 3D animation in a vector graphics format."
Intel has historically done very well under SYSMark 2004, especially when it comes to Internet Content Creation applications. Here we've got a number of very NetBurst friendly applications running at the same time and the results aren't too surprising.
For once we have the Pentium 4 560 out on top, distancing itself from the Athlon 64 FX-55 by almost 5%. The Prescott core flexes its muscle as the longer pipeline does it no harm, with the Pentium 4 550 performing on level ground with the Northwood based 3.4EE.
The three 2.4GHz AMD chips settle in the middle of the pack, followed by the Pentium 4 530 and the remaining Athlon 64s and Athlon XP. 3D rendering continues to be a strongpoint for the Pentium 4, with the combination of 3D rendering and animation giving Intel the much needed lead here.
Next, we have 2D Content Creation performance:
"The user uses Premiere 6.5 to create a movie from several raw input movie cuts and sound cuts and starts exporting it. While waiting on this operation, the user imports the rendered image into Photoshop 7.01, modifies it and saves the results. Once the movie is assembled, the user edits it and creates special effects using After Effects 5.5."
The race is much closer in the 2D Content Creation test, with the Pentium 4 560 virtually tied for the lead with AMD's Athlon 64 FX-55.
Once again we see no difference between the 512KB L2 3800+ and the new 4000+ armed with a 1MB L2 cache. There continues, however, to be a slight performance impact when going down to the single channel Athlon 64 3400+.
Looking at the Athlon XP we see just how important the Athlon 64 has been
to AMD, without it we'd be analyzing another Intel dominated test.
Here's another situation where Prescott seems to be breaking even when
it comes to performance. Remember that Prescott's lengthened pipeline should
penalize it significantly, but thanks to Prescott's other core optimizations
and larger cache it manages to perform just as well as the Northwood based
Extreme Edition here.
The Internet Content Creation suite is rounded up with a Web Publishing performance test:
"The user extracts content from an archive using WinZip 8.1. Meanwhile, he uses Flash MX to open the exported 3D vector graphics file. He modifies it by including other pictures and optimizes it for faster animation. The final movie with the special effects is then compressed using Windows Media Encoder 9 series in a format that can be broadcast over broadband Internet. The web site is given the final touches in Dreamweaver MX and the system is scanned by VirusScan 7.0."
The situation remains mostly unchanged in SYSMark's final Internet Content Creation test. The Pentium 4 560 heads up the pack, followed very closely by the Athlon 64 FX-55 as well as the Pentium 4 550 and 3.4EE.
Mozilla + Media Encoder
While AMD dominated in WorldBench 5's Mozilla test, encoding a file using Windows Media Encoder in the background not only makes this test more appreciative of the Pentium 4 but also of Hyper Threading.
Despite the seemingly perfect Hyper Threading scenario, it doesn't help Intel win the lead here. The Athlon 64 FX-55 and the 4000+ manage to win here, followed by the 3.4EE. Without any spatial locality between the two very different applications being run enabling Hyper Threading essentially gives each one of the applications half of the cache they would have running solo, thus giving the 3.4EE an advantage over the Pentium 4 560.
We also see that the cache advantage is clearly present on the AMD side as well, with the 4000+ enjoying a 6.7% advantage over the 3800+, with the only difference between the chips being an additional 512KB of L2 cache.
The rest of the results are no surprise given the leaders, the Athlon 64 continues to be quite strong here.
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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.