AMD's Athlon 64 X2 4800+ & 4200+ Dual Core Performance Preview
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 9, 2005 12:02 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
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."
The next test is Document Creation performance:
"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 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."
Microsoft Office XP SP-2
Here, we see in that the purest of office application tests, performance doesn't vary all too much. 
Mozilla 1.4
Quite possibly the most frequently used application on any desktop is the one we pay the least amount of attention to when it comes to performance. While a bit older than the core that is now used in Firefox, performance in Mozilla is worth looking at as many users are switching from IE to a much more capable browser on the PC - Firefox. 
ACD Systems ACDSee PowerPack 5.0
ACDSee is a popular image editing tool that is great for basic image editing options such as batch resizing, rotating, cropping and other such features that are too elementary to justify purchasing something as powerful as Photoshop. There are no extremely complex filters here, just pure batch image processing. 
Ahead Software Nero Express 6.0.0.3
While it was a major issue in the past, buffer underrun errors while burning a CD or DVD are few and far between these days, thanks to high performance CPUs as well as vastly improved optical drives. When you take the optical drive out of the equation, how do these CPU's stack up with burning performance?As you'd guess, they're all pretty much the same, with the slight variations between chips falling within expectations. Any of these chips will do just fine.
Winzip
Archiving performance ends up being fairly CPU bound as well as I/O limited. 
WinRAR 3.40
Pulling the hard disk out of the equation, we can get a much better idea of which processors are truly best suited for file compression. 
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fitten - Monday, May 9, 2005 - link
The zealotry is strong in this thread.The main issues that will cover all the g4m3rz in here is this:
(Regardless of brand)
a) Dual-core is not going to help you play games better in the short term. You're better off sticking with single core.
2) Dual-core isn't going to overclock as well as a single core of the same core, for obvious reasons.
D) The most cost effective gaming platform will still be a single core machine. If you just want to spend all that money, buy a higher clocked single core that is at the same price as the dual core. Your games will be better. When prices of the dual cores fall (sometime next year) it may be time to start looking at dual-core.
If you do almost nothing but play games on your PC, getting a dual core as soon as you can pretty much just shows that you are out for the big ePenis showing you can spend a bunch of money on a gaming rig (kinda like a fart cannon muffler on the back of a Civic - it's useless, but at least it's expensive). In fact, serious gamers will probably laugh because their single core machine will still beat you at less cost. Nothing I've mentioned above hasn't been already said on many review sites.
wharris1 - Monday, May 9, 2005 - link
Is the Seagate HD used in these tests NCQ enabled. Sorry if this has been discussed, but I remember an article earlier stating the sizable performance benefit to NCQ that can be observed during multitasking using dual core chips and was wondering if NCQ was enabled in this performance comparison.L3p3rM355i4h - Monday, May 9, 2005 - link
wow. All I can say is wow...I just bought a winchester. Now i have to go sell my right kidney for an X2 machine....xsilver - Monday, May 9, 2005 - link
#35I dont believe anand is biased, I was saying that IF there are accusations of bias, it should be aimed at amd, not intel.... #37 has some ideas of what could be done
Netopia - Monday, May 9, 2005 - link
Hey Anand,I've noticed of late that although Premier Pro is out, you guys are still using Premier 6.5. Pro is supposed to be very optimized for Intel and though I'm not in favor of any program that slants benchmarks, the fact is that in this case it is simply a real life scenario.
Any plan on Premier Pro in the near future?
Joe
GoatMonkey - Monday, May 9, 2005 - link
Doesn't the Athlon 64 x2 have SSE3? I wonder how much of that content creation and multimedia performance increase is due to that. Were the Athlon 64s in the test the latest core with SSE3? I don't know of an FX version that has that yet.ceefka - Monday, May 9, 2005 - link
Great article again. WOW! These X2s are impressive. The 4400+ is expensive, but not outrageously.Release date games.... hmmm, are they multithreaded?
Anemone - Monday, May 9, 2005 - link
Foul...You should (not that they would have done super well) have at least put a single core P4 out there. If you wanted to be really thorough since Intel may well go this way, you could have put a 2.13 P-M out there also on the Asus 478 adaptor and seen how well it worked compared to the others too. I feel if you put a single core A64 into the mix you should have at least put a single core P4 in the mix too, say top speed either EE or the 3.6 6XX series.
$.02
nserra - Monday, May 9, 2005 - link
It would be nice to see both processors running at the same speed to see the impact of 2MB L2 vs 1MB L2.And also some overclock?
Viditor - Monday, May 9, 2005 - link
"If anything I think AT is more biased towards AMD, not intel"I disagree...I really haven't seen much in the way of bias on AT at all, but I have seen what appears to me to be extreme circumspection at times. Anand is VERY careful not to let bias interfere in his reviews, and there are times when his caution appears somewhat extreme.
That said, crisagatie (while so far over the top that his nose must be bleeding) has a small point. Most of the other reviews I've read so far show the X2 with a more substantial advantage than Anand's review does, but I certainly wouldn't call him biased in either direction!
BTW...Great review Anand and staff!