AMD Athlon 64 FX-60: A Dual-Core farewell to Socket-939
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 9, 2006 11:59 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Final Words
The prospect of dual core usually meant that you had to give up some single-threaded performance, but with the Athlon 64 FX-60, that tradeoff is no longer true. While it's still not clocked as high as the fastest single core processor, it is extremely close. It's close enough that the difference in clock speed makes single-threaded performance a non-issue.
The fact that the FX-60 and FX-57 are almost at a clock speed parity is important because it does mean that we are getting beyond the inflection point of the dual core/single core transition. The high end dual core chips are all but caught up to the high end single core chips of just six months ago. Intel still has a little way to go before the same is true for them, but with the FX-60, it does hold true for AMD.
Unfortunately, since the FX-60 is still built on the same 90nm Toledo core as the previous X2 processors, overclocking headroom is not that great. With a retail AMD heatsink/fan, the best that we could do is 2.8GHz at 1.40V. With more exotic cooling, you could probably manage better, but stepping up the voltage all the way up to 1.50V wouldn't yield a 3GHz overclock on air.
Then there's the issue of AMD's upcoming Socket-AM2; due out in another few months, you obviously won't be able to use any Socket-939 processors in the new motherboards and there will be no upgrade path beyond the FX-60 for current 939 owners. So, our recommendation would be to stay away from the FX-60 unless you absolutely have to build the world's fastest system today.
If the latter is true, then you can't go wrong with the FX-60; if not, however, you'll be better off waiting for AM2.
The prospect of dual core usually meant that you had to give up some single-threaded performance, but with the Athlon 64 FX-60, that tradeoff is no longer true. While it's still not clocked as high as the fastest single core processor, it is extremely close. It's close enough that the difference in clock speed makes single-threaded performance a non-issue.
The fact that the FX-60 and FX-57 are almost at a clock speed parity is important because it does mean that we are getting beyond the inflection point of the dual core/single core transition. The high end dual core chips are all but caught up to the high end single core chips of just six months ago. Intel still has a little way to go before the same is true for them, but with the FX-60, it does hold true for AMD.
Unfortunately, since the FX-60 is still built on the same 90nm Toledo core as the previous X2 processors, overclocking headroom is not that great. With a retail AMD heatsink/fan, the best that we could do is 2.8GHz at 1.40V. With more exotic cooling, you could probably manage better, but stepping up the voltage all the way up to 1.50V wouldn't yield a 3GHz overclock on air.
Then there's the issue of AMD's upcoming Socket-AM2; due out in another few months, you obviously won't be able to use any Socket-939 processors in the new motherboards and there will be no upgrade path beyond the FX-60 for current 939 owners. So, our recommendation would be to stay away from the FX-60 unless you absolutely have to build the world's fastest system today.
If the latter is true, then you can't go wrong with the FX-60; if not, however, you'll be better off waiting for AM2.
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Betwon - Tuesday, January 10, 2006 - link
Let's see the real test(better than anandtech).After OC, the tests bentween Intel 955 and AMD FX-60:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/athlo...">http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/athlo...
Cygni - Tuesday, January 10, 2006 - link
I have to say, im pretty surprised by the results in single threaded apps, like most games. Despite a 200mhz deficit, it still beats the 57... pretty interesting. Im guessing that the second core is getting SOMETHING to it... maybe the background OS procedures? Dunno.Betwon - Tuesday, January 10, 2006 - link
Stop surprising.Because The benchmark of Business Winstone 2004,Overall WorldBench 5 and Office Productivity SYSMark 2004 may be benefit from multi-core.(a little or more?)
For the multi-thread-paralle apps:
Not only Fx-60 but also PD 820 beat, beats FX-57.
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/amd%20athlon%20...">http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/amd%...lon%2064...
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/amd%20athlon%20...">http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/amd%...lon%2064...
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/amd%20athlon%20...">http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/amd%...lon%2064...
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/amd%20athlon%20...">http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/amd%...lon%2064...
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/amd%20athlon%20...">http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/amd%...lon%2064...
highlandsun - Tuesday, January 10, 2006 - link
Agreed. The only way you'd see truly single-threaded performance on a machine would be running something like DOS that has no task scheduler whatsoever.Betwon - Tuesday, January 10, 2006 - link
No surprise about games.FX-60 is defeated by FX-57 in most games.
Only in the SMP games, FX-60 beats the FX-57, And PD 820 beats the FX-57 too.
Betwon - Tuesday, January 10, 2006 - link
No surprise about games.FX-60 is defeated by FX-57 in most games.
Only in the SMP games, FX-60 beats the FX-57, And PD 820 beats the FX-57 too.
Avalon - Tuesday, January 10, 2006 - link
I'm still amazed at the performance difference in Quake 4 between the P-D 820 and FX-60, plus the fact that dual core optimizations in the game engine enable noticeable framerate gains.Xenoterranos - Tuesday, January 10, 2006 - link
Didn't Carmack himself day that that was basically a dry-run, that they didn't really how to go about multithreading it from the start. If Carmack is basically saying that the result we see here are preliminary and "rough", I can't wait until trully optimized code comes along to max both those cores out! Maybe then a quad-sli system will be able to do some damage without suffering the diminishing returns we've recently seen.latrosicarius - Tuesday, January 10, 2006 - link
I think the future of graphics will be single cards with multiple chips/cores.Furen - Tuesday, January 10, 2006 - link
Dont get me started on diminishing returns... lol