Anandtech Reviews the Athlon64

LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciersEagle River, Alaska Icrontian
edited September 2003 in Science & Tech
Speculation has churned for months over whether AMD could reach the release speeds necessary for Athlon64 to compete effectively with Pentium 4 and the upcoming Prescott processor. The other concern was whether 32-bit performance would be good enough to make the Athlon64 the winner that AMD needs right now. If Athlon64 is released as a 2.0GHz chip, as rumors have reported, then it looks like Athlon64 will be a Processor that is competitive with the best Pentium 4 in all areas, with compelling performance in several areas.

Review here.

Comments

  • TheBaronTheBaron Austin, TX
    edited September 2003
    goddamn right its 54% faster in DX9 tests. i want an athlonFX SOOOOOO BAAAAADLY. screw my new 2.8c
  • SimGuySimGuy Ottawa, Canada
    edited September 2003
    40-50% faster in the X2 DX9 benchmark? That's highly impressive.
    Looks like the Athlon 64 is a winner, mopping even the Dual 3.06 HT Xeon system (i875P-based) in all gaming benchmarks and almost tying in Workstation/Video Editing benchmarks.

    Looks like an Athlon FX for christmas :D
  • a2jfreaka2jfreak Houston, TX Member
    edited September 2003
    Pretty amazing, especially given it's 2/3 of the clockspeed of the p4 and uses ECC. If the A64FX (as it's being called, is that really going to be the name?) is 2.2GHz (10% higher clock than the Opteron in the article) and uses non-ECC CAS 2 DDR400 memory (dual channel, of course) then I think even the weakest area of the new chip--multimedia encoding--will be much more competitive. Don't know if it will beat the p4, as it would have to improve performance ~30%, but with tweaks to the motherboard, CPU core, 10% higher clock, and non-ECC CAS 2 RAM, I think 15% is definitely possible.
  • mmonninmmonnin Centreville, VA
    edited September 2003
    a2jfreak said
    but with tweaks to the motherboard, CPU core, 10% higher clock, and non-ECC CAS 2 RAM, I think 15% is definitely possible.
    it's 2/3 of the clockspeed of the p4

    The 10% increase in clockspeed could make up 15% by your own calculation that its at 2/3 the speed of an intel. Then with other improvements it would be well over 15%.
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited September 2003
    It's not even really an Athlon 64 review! He reviewed the same chip I've got and then overclocked it by upping the FSB multi to 222 ...

    Is that what we call it? How do you refer to the FSB when there's no FSB?

    Ahhh, the newness of it all!
  • Mt_GoatMt_Goat Head Cheezy Knob Pflugerville (north of Austin) Icrontian
    edited September 2003
    Keep in mind that this was a simulation and not the real deal. I have a feeling that the real A64 will no doubt trump all comers. This is the best news I have seen in a vry long time.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited September 2003
    WTF!

    Their nForce3 + Opteron benchmarks were great.
    Our nForce3 + Opteron benchmarks sucked.

    WHY?!
  • Mt_GoatMt_Goat Head Cheezy Knob Pflugerville (north of Austin) Icrontian
    edited September 2003
    Thrax said
    WTF!

    Their nForce3 + Opteron benchmarks were great.
    Our nForce3 + Opteron benchmarks sucked.

    WHY?!
    My suggestion would be to disect the article for all the info you can get then try emailing them to find out what settings they used in the bios and elsewhere.
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited September 2003
    That's what we need to do. I'll have this system in the shop until at least Thursday when the vid card comes in. I want to figure this crap out.
  • Omega65Omega65 Philadelphia, Pa
    edited September 2003
    I just LOVE seeing this Benchmark! (Take THAT P4 lovers ;D )

    Uncle BART! This one's for You!

    (A P4 3.2ghz should scale to ~ 411)
  • a2jfreaka2jfreak Houston, TX Member
    edited September 2003
    No, it's 2/3 the clockspeed.
    2GHz = 2/3 of 3GHz.

    2GHz + 10% = 2.2GHz
    15% would be 2.3GHz.

    Unless AMD made some really nice changes to the core, I don't think a 10% higher clock will yield 15% more performance. But 10% more clock, plus a tweaked core plus a tweaked chipset plus lower latency RAM, yeah, I could see 15% from that, perhaps even more.
    mmonnin said
    a2jfreak said
    but with tweaks to the motherboard, CPU core, 10% higher clock, and non-ECC CAS 2 RAM, I think 15% is definitely possible.
    it's 2/3 of the clockspeed of the p4

    The 10% increase in clockspeed could make up 15% by your own calculation that its at 2/3 the speed of an intel. Then with other improvements it would be well over 15%.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited September 2003
    Ya. I was already thinking about writing an email, but I figured Prime has the machine, so now it's his job. ;D
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