AMD Athlon 64 FX-57: The Fastest Single Core
by Derek Wilson on June 27, 2005 11:47 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Introduction
AMD is increasing the speed of their highest performing CPU today. The Athlon FX-57 is a 200MHz bump from the current FX-55, brining the clock speed of the highest performing single core CPU on the market to 2.8GHz. This modest 7.7% increase is not the be all, end all of speed bumps, but AMD is still in a much better position than Intel for extracting performance by tacking on an extra 200MHz. Intel's successive 200MHz increases on Prescott since it's existence have increased performance by smaller and smaller amounts 2.8 GHz to 3.8 GHz is a 35.7% increase in clock speed, which should be an overestimate of performance barring cache size increases. If we look at AMD's performance improvements from 1.8 GHz to 2.8 GHz, the upper bound on our performance increase is greater than 55%, plus any improvement for doubling cache size.Performance doesn't scale exactly linearly with clock speed in most cases, but the bottom line is that K8 started out faster than Prescott at a lower clock speeds. The result of the speed increases on current generation CPUs has been an increasing performance gap between Intel and AMD in favor of AMD. Even in the benchmarks where AMD's architecture traditionally loses to Intel, the gap is either decreased or the outcome has changed all together. There just isn't any way Intel's current architecture can compete in single threaded performance on the high end.
But as we have mentioned time and time again, steadily increasing clock speed over time is a losing proposition. The future of computing performance must increasingly rely on architectural enhancements. The first incarnation of this outlook has been the introduction dual core processors. This first generation shows some promising numbers in many areas, but a single thread's maximum performance won't increase with the addition of cores. The result of this fact is that those who demand extremely high performance will still demand high end single core processors.
While the focus of the industry is clearly elsewhere, both AMD and Intel still need to cater to the current state of the market. The FX-57 is very expensive and comes in at a whopping $1031 (in quantities of 1000 from AMD). While this is the fastest processor on the market, let's take a look at the benchmarks to see how much we get for the money.
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yacoub - Monday, June 27, 2005 - link
Er, instead of "in the time a 2.8Ghz chip can", let's clarify and say "in a single clock cycle than a 2.8Ghz chip can".manno - Monday, June 27, 2005 - link
I heard it has support for DDR I 533, any chance we can see some benches with that stuff slapped in it?yacoub - Monday, June 27, 2005 - link
So is this graph an example of where pure clock speed determines performance?http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/amd%20athlon%20...
And why is that? What about that test seems to be extremely tied to the pure "speed" of the chip? Is it a matter of a 3.8GHz chip being able to process 1,000,000,000 more instructions through it in the time a 2.8GHz chip can?
ultimatebob - Monday, June 27, 2005 - link
Why are you still doing Mozilla 1.4 testing? Almost no one uses Mozilla anymore, they use Firefox.Besides... the explanation of why you're still using it (posted below) doesn't make much sense. You might want to reword it.
"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."
The DvD - Monday, June 27, 2005 - link
1) What's up with the Communication Sysmark Business Application Performance bench?2) Why list the Gallating 3.46EE? It's not for sale..
3) Good work on the review.
dougSF30 - Monday, June 27, 2005 - link
Why didn't you guys test the DDR-533 memory divider support that comes with the FX-57? That would provide a nice boost in many scores.http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/27/amd_fx-57/
"AMD has upgraded the chip's integrated memory controller to work with 533MHz DDR SDRAM. Its predecessor, the FX-55, was limited to 400MHz memory."
phaxmohdem - Monday, June 27, 2005 - link
Yes way too pricey. AMD's latest round of pricings has me questioning their business direction. WTF? What happened to undercutting intel and giving teh end user a sweet deal?Starglider - Monday, June 27, 2005 - link
It is surprising that the processor wasn't stable at 3GHz, as every other FX-57 review I've read where overclocking was attempted achieved 3GHz stable on air (and in one case 3.5 GHz stable on phase-change). As Kocur suggests, perhaps this was a motherboard issue?Agree with the conclusion though.
AndreasM - Monday, June 27, 2005 - link
Loose, as in not tight.Lose, as in not win.
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finbarqs - Monday, June 27, 2005 - link
hrm.. is it based on the .09 micron process? Why is it clocked so poorly? is the San Diego core FX-55 better?