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 Test
In addition to our usual tests we've included PC World's WorldBench 5, an application based test suite much like Winstone and SYSMark that incorporates many popular applications. Unlike the aforementioned benchmarks, WorldBench does not test multitasking power, rather focusing on single application performance, making it very complementary to our existing benchmarks.
Our hardware configurations are similar what we've used in previous comparisons, with one addition - our Athlon 64 testbed now uses the recently released nForce4 chipset. For a review of that chipset read our own Wesley Fink's review of NVIDIA's latest chipset with SLI support.
AMD Athlon 64 Configuration
Socket-939 Athlon 64 CPUs
2 x 512MB OCZ PC3200 EL Dual Channel DIMMs 2-2-2-10
NVIDIA nForce4 Reference Motherboard
ATI Radeon X800 XT PCI Express
AMD Athlon XP Configuration
Athlon XP 3200+
2 x 512MB OCZ PC3200 EL Dual Channel DIMMs 2-2-2-10
ASUS A7N8X Deluxe nForce2 400 Motherboard
ATI Radeon X800 XT AGP
Intel Pentium 4 Configuration
LGA-775 Intel Pentium 4 and Extreme Edition CPUs
2 x 512MB Crucial DDR-II 533 Dual Channel DIMMs
3-3-3-12
Intel 925X Motherboard
ATI Radeon X800 XT PCI Express
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
89 Comments
View All Comments
Live - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
Splendid reading! This site is doing a great job right now. I really would love more of these very informative articles that help you so at seeing the big picture.A really helpful article.
Disorganise - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
I’m a bit disappointed by you inconsistency…The comparison with Intel over who wins….slightly inconsistent but no biggie.
What really is bad though, is the penultimate page – is socket 939 worth it?
I agree it is but…..
You’ve taking an identical chip and found it about 5% quicker than on socket 754. OK, no problem. But AMD have wacked a whopping 12% increase in rating, to 3800+ from 3400+. It doesn’t gel, the numbers don’t work.
The 3800+ is also more expensive than the 3400+ to the tune of about 250% here in Australia and about 220% over there in the U.S. a 5% increase in performance does not warrant a doubling in price.
Dave
at80eighty - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
way to go Anand...excellently comprehensive article.../waiting for those HDD articles you promised : p
SLIM - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
Going along with what #6 said:Athlon 64 4000+ - 2.4GHz - 1MB - 128-bit
Athlon 64 3800+ - 2.4GHz - 512KB - 128-bit
Athlon 64 3400+ - 2.4GHz - 1MB - 64-bit <---should be a socket 754 3700+ right?
Athlon 64 3400+ - 2.4GHz - 512KB - 64-bit
Athlon 64 FX-53 - 2.4GHz - 1MB - 128-bit
SLIM
ViRGE - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
#12, even GPUs aren't going anywhere fast. There's still a shortage of something or other needed to make the Ultra/PE parts, and there isn't a planned refresh for 2004. ATI/Nvidia have another speed grade of RAM to jump to(1.6ghz GDDR3), and can die-shrink down to 90nm once TSMC gets there, but they're so close to CPUs right now, they're destined to hit the same wall too.Anand, someone has been a busy beaver.;-) That was a long, but well thought out and informative article; you've basically written the definitive CPU article for now until the multicores come out.
Tides - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
Ah I read the conclusion wrong.Tides - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
why is this site putting down an amd performance gain and making excuses for intel at the same time.Doormat - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
Its a shame the processor wars are coming to an end. I see dual core as neat, but a dud performance wise. It'll be another year or two before the GPU wars start to die out... hmmm..-CPU performance levels off
-HD capacity levels off
The only interesting stuff going on is GPU stuff.
dvinnen - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
Best artical from Anandtech I've read in a long time. Good job Anand.skiboysteve - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
wait nevermind, you put your comments ABOVE the graphs. threw me off cause this isnt what you usualy do...