AMD Athlon 64 & Athlon 64 FX - It's Judgment Day
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 23, 2003 1:25 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Where is the software?
AMD sent out evaluation systems with a beta copy of Windows XP 64-bit Edition, and if you remember back several months the alleged point of delaying the Athlon 64's launch was to coincide with the release of Windows XP 64-bit Edition. From what we're hearing, although a beta of the OS will be available very soon, the final release will not be until Q1 2004.
We managed to do some 32-bit performance testing on the 64-bit Edition of Windows XP, however out of our entire benchmark suite - only one test would complete and that test was actually slower under Win64. The latest build of the beta is supposed to have better performance, but for now don't expect 64-bit Windows to be a reality. Without application support, the 64-bit "experience" is quite anticlimactic. We browsed the web in 64-bit Internet Explorer for a while before rebooting the system and getting some work done in 32-bit Windows.
The story is much different under Linux, where we managed to run tests under Red Hat Enterprise 2.9.5WS (Taroon), also a beta release. We will talk more about our results under Linux later in the article.
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AgaBooga - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
Where is the P4EE in the memory tests?Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
Personally this was rather anti-climatic for me. It's certainly not a Intel killer that all the hype proclaimed. AMD for business, Intel for content, and a throwup for gaming. Same as it has been for awhile.Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
#27 & #28 (amd fanboy double post)It SHOULD be up there with the P4EE because the PRESCOTT will be coming right around the corner! Face it, AMD did not put out a killer and Intel is sitting pretty in 2004.
Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
#20 are you serious? Did you just comment in the forum without looking at the review or did you actually look at the review. AMD is not "lagging" behind Intel. They are right up there with them. Look at the benchmarks and you will see the CURRENTLY AVAILABLE Athlon64 easily matches a NOT CURRENTLY AVAILABLE P4EE.Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
#20 are you serious? Did you just comment in the forum without looking at the review or did you actually look at the review. AMD is not "lagging" behind Intel. They are right up there with them. Look at the benchmarks and you will see the CURRENTLY AVAILABLE Athlon64 easily matches a NOT CURRENTLY AVAILABLE P4EE.Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
AMD, Pamela Anderson called. She want's to know how she can get a bust as big as yours. I have two words for AMD- "Segway" and "Scooter."Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
nForce3 performance bugTime to re-do the benchmarks, Anand.
Your FX-51 benchmarks are inaccurate.
http://www20.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030923/athlon_...
Nvidia: NForce-3 Bug
The extremely low AGP performance of the NForce3 can be clearly attributed to problems with the HyperTransport channel interface to the Northbridge. That is proven by the benchmark results and the performance differences of up to 33.2 percent. Details about this can be found in the benchmark section of this article.
Originally, Nvidia had planned to also integrate a SATA RAID controller in the Southbridge. Although the controller is included in the current NForce 3, Nvidia deactivated this feature. The reason was that error-free operation was not possible. For this reason, we decided to use additional boards based on the VIA K8T800 chipset.
Nvidia (Athlon 64 FX, or alternatively GeForce FX - related names) may be a more high-profile partner for AMD than VIA. However, we would point out that VIA, with the K8T800 chipset, currently offers a clearly better solution for the Athlon 64.
Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
What is that smell?AMD just let loose with a huge turd!
Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
#4 You may be right (I don't think so but let say you are), but then ask yourself - where is the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition? There is no mention of this CPU at Intel web site at all, there is no datasheet and no batch numbers. Today, it is only a prototype CPU, such as Prescott is. They managed to build few Gallatin B1 cores that are able to work at this frequency and then remarked them. This CPU is not reality, only OEMs can buy it in very limited quantities, but end users can't. I think a 3 GHz Athlon 64 FX on 90nm prototype would perform far the best in this review... and it would be the same policy as with this Pentium 4 Extreme Edition.Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
#17 Answers:1. Athlon 64's memory controller is very fast as you can see from the benchmarks. Dual channel is only needed in some situations to give decent performance. HT operates at 800 MHz with DDR and 16 bits, thus giving 3.2 GB/s each way (6.4 GB/s). Not so bad for a I/O and AGP interface only bus
3. S754 is a lower end platform while S940 is an Opteron platform. AMD will introduce S939 early next year and will continue to produce CPUs for all those sockets. S940 A64 FX will, however, disapper in the end of next year.
6. HyperTransport "Tunnel" system allows for practically unlimited number of chipset combinations, thus a PCI Express will only require to add another Tunnel or integrate it into current chipsets.