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
Multitasking Content Creation
MCC Winstone 2004
Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004 tests the following applications in various usage scenarios:. Adobe® Photoshop® 7.0.1All chips were tested with Lightwave set to spawn 4 threads.
. 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 we start looking at usage scenarios with multithreaded applications, we start to see some performance gains for dual core.
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."
Just as we saw in our preview, AMD's dual core Athlon 64 X2 line is unbeatable under the ICC SYSmark 2004 tests.
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 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."
Mozilla + Media Encoder
The WorldBench 5 multitasking tests agree with what we've seen elsewhere already - if you can take advantage of the two cores, performance is definitely improved over even higher clocked single core CPUs.
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FlakPanzer - Monday, June 20, 2005 - link
This looks very promising, my next rig is definately going to have one of these fine AMD X2 processors.cryptonomicon - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
anand, thanks for the preliminary overclocking results. me and my DFI compadres are very eager to see how this chip overclocks and hope you add an overclocking page section as soon as you receive a production X2.gamara - Thursday, May 12, 2005 - link
Would be interesting to also see if DC had any affect on SLI performance. Not sure if the driver work of splitting the duties for 2 video cards would be streamlined with a second core on the processor.coldpower27 - Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - link
#88 are you talking about the PD 3.0GHZ 356US or the PD 2.8GHZ 241US? The 3.2GHZ 530US is the worst price/performance DC in Intel's arsenal it cost more then twice as much as a single core and then some.Just like how the 4600+ and 4800+ are now costing more then twice the single core versions.
I don't understand why people are going to assume the motherboard is expensive. Why must you have the flagship 955X motherboard?
The lanuch pricing of the 955X is 50US, which is the same as the price of the 925X when it was launched.
There is also the 945P chipset to consider which also supports Dual Core and is a less expensive alternative price at 38US which is only 1 dollar more then what the i915P chipset cost at launch.
Since the chipsets base pricing match what the 925X and 915P were at launch we should logically assume that pricing of these chipsets will be similar to what i915 and i925 were at launch.
phaxmohdem - Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - link
Oh yeah baby 100th post... how often do you get that honor? even if you have to cehat to get it *cough* post 99phaxmohdem - Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - link
lalala ala al ala ala alaphilthedrill - Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - link
#97, are you being serious? Read my post on #81.Performance drops with HT when there are memory bandwidth intensive apps due to the shared data TLB. The shared FSB also hurts Intel, and it only gets worse as you scale up with more processors.
AtaStrumf - Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - link
Since the advent of HT on P4, AMD has been at a great disadvantage in multitasking scenarios and I thought dualcore would end that. Well, I guess P4 is just better at that. Really ironic, when AMD has touted K8 as being designed from ground up for DC and Intel just slapping two cores together - LOL.Nontheless AMD is still doing great with X2 chips, and I too can't wait to get one, since I think we all multitask non-stop, even if we don't realize it (AV, Antispyware, SETI, FAH, Word, IE, Firefox, Opera, Acrobat, ACDsee, Photoshop, Outlook, BT, eMule, ... and the we open a game on top of that). Just yesterday my A64 3200+ S754 / 1 GB RAM gave me real trouble with gazlion windows open, while writing my graduation paper. Had to restart the bastard, grrr.
Son of a N00b - Tuesday, May 10, 2005 - link
TY for including OC results...maybe a whole 'nother article on this?
Quanticles - Tuesday, May 10, 2005 - link
i think if ppl want AMD's prices to come down, then we should all pitch in and build a new fab for them