"What Athlon do I buy?" To begin to answer that question here is a compiled list of all the current platforms and brief outlines for each including my personal recommendations for what's hot and what's not.
The subject interrest me. Is it possible to add the Athlon XP M in the review ?. (I hope desktop PC will support this kind of CPU in a near future, in order to reduce power used).
do socket 940 chipsets still need registered RAM? If so that could do with mentioning as it bumps up the cost of a system and has performance implications...
Other than that a good write up, concise and informative
10. Unique to the Opteron platform is the necessity for registered memory. Such memory comes at a price-premium and has a minor performance impact. However, the stability of the Opteron-based system due to data parity and a more rigorous QC process on most registered DIMMs offsets the price gains and slight performance loss.
pg14 As for the gain you receive by overclocking the Sempron 3100+, we enjoyed a performance growth of about 25% by clocking our sample at 2.52GHz (40% frequency boost). Thanks to that, the overclocked Sempron 3100+ could outperform the Pentium 4 3.4GHz as well as the Athlon 64 3400+ by about 5% in average.
The DTR is mentioned under the socket 754 Athlon 64s, the mobile athlon XPs (as far as I know) are just pre-selected Bartons with the clock stepping enabled. Could do with mentioning that under the Athlon XP section I guess...
Excellent guide Thrax, gets to the meat of the matter without being overblown.
Only thing that made me think a little was choice of motherboard for Socket A. I think I'd take the DFI NFII Ultra B over the Abit NF7-S 2.0, but that's just me
Great article! I'm interested to know where the DDR2 comment comes from? Has any chipset vendor said they're interested in moving from DDR? Or is it simply inevitable?
It's pretty much inevitable, DDR2 (in theory at least) offers much higher speeds than DDR and both intel & AMD (well, VIA & nvidia) have committed to moving to the new standard in future chipsets. Currently though DDR2 isn't really offering much above and beyond DDR, it's more what it's expected to offer in future that has people excited.
- Since you mention SMP, you should include the Athlon MP - the only Socket A SMP supported
- What about the Socket 940 Athlon64 FX? It should be noted that the only difference between Opteron 1xx and FX-5x (e.g. Opteron-150 / FX-53) is the unlocked CPU multiplier.
- The 64-bit CPUs (Athlon 64, FX, Opteron) all support 16-bit protected mode execution state, if Micro$oft doesn't want to support it w/ the LoseDoze XP 64-bit Edition.
There are a couple of mistakes in the socket A Sempron section.
1. All Sempron socket A processors have 256Kb L2 cache except:-
2. The 3000+ which has 512Kb L2 and is not mentioned.
3. The 3000+ is a Barton core (2000MHz/512Kb/33Mhz).
Your commentary is excellent - maybe you could modify the article and do the comparison of various processors using a table? That's a quick and easy way to summarize the parameters under scrutiny.
8. Best motherboard to date? Arguably, the Tyan Thunder K8W (S2885). Supporting:
Up to two AMD Opteron™ processors
Eight 184-pin 2.5V DDR DIMM sockets for up to 16GB (400/333/266/200)
Four 64-bit (3.3V) PCI-X slots; one 8X AGP / AGP Pro110 slot
One GbE LAN controller; integrated FireWire controller
Serial ATA controller (option); integrated audio
SSI EEB v3.0 footprint (12"x13"; 304.8x330.2mm)
Tyan has positioned itself, yet again, as a world-class provider of quality enterprise/workstation products. This motherboard makes my heart race.
I'm not sure if IWill's DK8N was out when this was writted but it's the best dual opteron board around a step below the new boards with PCI-E.
Comments
quick, and to the point...
Other than that a good write up, concise and informative
10. Unique to the Opteron platform is the necessity for registered memory. Such memory comes at a price-premium and has a minor performance impact. However, the stability of the Opteron-based system due to data parity and a more rigorous QC process on most registered DIMMs offsets the price gains and slight performance loss.
Xbit Labs Sempron 3100+ Overclocking
dunno about the mobile A64s though...
Only thing that made me think a little was choice of motherboard for Socket A. I think I'd take the DFI NFII Ultra B over the Abit NF7-S 2.0, but that's just me
I was soon to be building a system with the Duron and it's a long time since I've seen any info abot it, but looks like I'll wait a bit now...
BTW ever thought about becoming a journalist & writing guides for a living??
~Cyrix
I have, but I've never seen something even remotely close to an opportunity regarding it. That would actually be my dream job.
- Since you mention SMP, you should include the Athlon MP - the only Socket A SMP supported
- What about the Socket 940 Athlon64 FX? It should be noted that the only difference between Opteron 1xx and FX-5x (e.g. Opteron-150 / FX-53) is the unlocked CPU multiplier.
- The 64-bit CPUs (Athlon 64, FX, Opteron) all support 16-bit protected mode execution state, if Micro$oft doesn't want to support it w/ the LoseDoze XP 64-bit Edition.
1. All Sempron socket A processors have 256Kb L2 cache except:-
2. The 3000+ which has 512Kb L2 and is not mentioned.
3. The 3000+ is a Barton core (2000MHz/512Kb/33Mhz).
[url=]http://139.95.253.213/SRVS/CGI-BIN/WEBCGI.EXE/,/?St=36,E=0000000000181574915,K=7205,Sxi=3,Case=obj(5080)[/url]
Aussie
i have already built two systems. your article will be helpful when i next build a system
Thanks
Teek
- Tapio Nuutinen
I'm not sure if IWill's DK8N was out when this was writted but it's the best dual opteron board around a step below the new boards with PCI-E.
*bowing before the author*
thanks,
-Ryan
Seen the k8we. Yowza. Great page, btw.