AMD Athlon 64 4000+ & FX-55: A Thorough Investigation
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 19, 2004 1:04 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Gaming
Doom 3
Our Doom 3 CPU Battlegrounds article already made it quite clear that Intel did not have what it takes to be the highest performer in Doom 3. The release of the Athlon 64 4000+ and FX-55 further extend AMD's lead in Doom 3.
Even the entry level Athlon 64 3200+ has no problems outperforming the 3.4EE
and Pentium 4 560. Doom 3 does continue to show us the ~7% performance improvement
we've been seeing thus far from going to a dual channel Socket-939 setup
over Socket-754. The added cache of the 4000+ manages to yield a 3% performance
improvement over the 3800+, definitely not worth the added premium over an
already expensive chip.
Prescott does well here (for Intel), but the Extreme Edition still takes the
cake.
Counterstrike: Source
The next big game after Doom 3 is, of course, Half Life 2. And while the game is still not out, Valve's Visual Stress Test that comes with Counterstrike: Source gives us a good glimpse into future performance under Half Life 2.
Just like Doom 3, Half Life 2 is strictly an AMD dominated game. The Athlon 64 FX-55 outperforms the fastest Intel CPU here by a whopping 18%. Prescott performs horribly, with the Pentium 4 560 only able to outperform the Athlon XP 3200+, not even the Athlon 64 3000+.
What is extremely interesting here is the impact of memory bandwidth on the Athlon 64 platform. The impact of a dual channel memory controller is nothing short of 14%, which is almost double of what we've seen in other tests. The Athlon 64 4000+ also shows a similarly impressive performance improvement due to its larger L2 cache, putting it a full 8% faster than the 3800+.
So far in gaming, AMD takes it 2 for 2.
Halo
The gaming performance dominance continues under Halo 1.05, with AMD taking the top three spots. We see much less of an impact from a larger L2 cache on the Athlon 64 platform than we did in the CS: Source VST, but dual channel is still worth close to 6% for the Athlon 64.
Prescott once again doesn't fare very well, with the 3.4EE leading the pack from Intel.
That's 3 for 3 for AMD.
Starwars Battlefront
We recently introduced Starwars Battlefront into our GPU tests last week with the release of NVIDIA's GeForce 6200. This week we're using the same test for AMD's CPU launch.
Overall we see that there's not much variance with CPU speed in Battlefront; obviously the XP 3200+'s performance is a bit dated, but the majority of the contenders here end up performing rather similarly to one another.
AMD does end up on top once again, which is not a surprise considering what we've seen in the past three tests. It would be very safe to say that AMD's Athlon 64 architecture with its on-die memory controller is very well suited for gaming performance.
Battlefield Vietnam
Battlefield Vietnam is similar to Starwars Battlefront not only in its gameplay but also in its performance; there's no real difference between any of the top performers here. Almost all l of these CPUs end up being GPU limited at 1024x768.
Unreal Tournament 2004
UT2004 sends AMD back to the top of the performance charts, with the top four spots once again belonging to AMD. We also find that the 4000+ improves performance by about 5% due to its larger cache, while the 3800+ continues to make a 6.7% argument in favor of Socket-939 over Socket-754.
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val - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link
for me is AMD unacceptable until there are good chipsets. All i have ever seen or had in my computers was big garbage with permanent problems and mysterious difficulties.Even SIS chipsets looks much better for intel than SIS for AMD. Its not anymore about CPU, CPU are fast for many tasks and that few percent of price or performance makes no deal, but overall quality talks strongly for Intel.
Save your time AMD fanboys to reply me something like that your AMD platform runs perfect and you had problems with intel and so on, its cheap and cannot anyway motivate me for change.
And yes, i have 2 AMD and 2 Intel computers and many i had or seen before (at home, work, school, projects, customers).
Gnoad - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link
3GHZ! Wow, I already was an AMD fan, but that just totally blows me away. Crazy stuff.GoHAnSoN - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
nice article. Thxcoldpower27 - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
Very nice, I await the day AMD releases a 3GHZ Athlon 64. These processor are niced but priced in a range where volumes are rather low, they have nice bragging rights though :PDa DvD - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
3GHz on air :SAMD's really out of trouble for the coming year(s)
I can imagine K8@90nm scaling well beyond 3GHz...
(lol, or even top Prescott clockspeeds? That would be insane..)
Wesley Fink - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
#30 and #43 -Once AMD informed us that strained silicon was used in the FX55 I couldn't resist a bit of a run with overclocking the FX55. The nForce4 Reference boad is not really intended or designed for overclocking, since it doesn't have any CPU or memory voltage adjustments. However it does support a wide range of multipliers so I could try a few settinngs.
I had no probelm at all running at 14.5X or 2.9GHz at default voltage. At that speed I ran quite a few benchmarks and a Quake 3 of 604.2 FPS. The FX55 actually booted at 3.0GHz but it never made it through a stable XP boot. I suspect with just a bit of CPU voltage 3.0GHz would be possible with the FX55 on air. All cooling was just the new AMD stock fan which now includes copper fins and heat pipes.
verybusy - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
There is some FX55 and 4000+ overclocking info at http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.cfm?page=2&...Assuming that my request from above is granted regarding other overclocking of 3500+, 3200+ and 3000+, I'd like to see just how overclocking turns out with the retail heatsink and fan. I hope that's not too much of a request.
Thanks...
verybusy - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
I liked the review of the Athlon 64 4000+ and FX-55 and it was nice to see it compared to the other Athlon 64 3200+ and 3000+ processors running at stock speeds.Unfortulately, with this review following so closely behind the 3500+ and 3000+ review (.09 Athlon 64: Value, Speed and Overclocking), it would have been very useful to see the 3500+, 3200+ and 3000+ overclocked to 2.6GHz as well. Afterall, the .09 3500+/3000+ @290x9 is faster than the FX53 (2.4GHz-1MB) err I mean Athlon 64 4000+). The overclocked 3500+, 3200+ and 3000+ could be pretty much as quick as the FX55 couldn't it?
That's what I want to see anyway.
ViRGE - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
#39, Anand mentions that it's multiplier locked.Zebo - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
Guys the 3400 newcastle is a way underated chip. It should have been, by all rights, called a 3600. I guess they did'nt want the 3500 to look bad agains a "old" 754 newcastle though.As for the review, total AMD performance domination at low relative speeds temps and power consumption.:) Youd have to be a fool to buy intels netburst crap right now.