Athlon64 3400+: Part 2

by Wesley Fink on 1/12/2004 2:59 PM EST
Comments Locked

20 Comments

Back to Article

  • atlr - Thursday, January 22, 2004 - link

    Anyone seen any performance comparisons of 32-bit versus 64-bit versions of software and o/s on the A64?
  • milehigh - Tuesday, January 20, 2004 - link

    I'd like to 2nd #13's reply to include some older CPU's in these reviews. I've got a Barton 2500+ and seeing how it stacks up can help in not only help in upgrade decisions but I think it can help illustrate just how much faster these new CPU's are...

  • KingofFah - Thursday, January 15, 2004 - link

    I would be careful with most 350's, but, like #15 said, most FSP's (no matter which brand is relabeled on it) are marked much lower than what they are capable of doing. THG did a psu round up a while back showing that the FSP-300 was really capable of being completely stable at 390W consumption and the 350 (of which I am a owner) was capable being completely stable at 454W. I have not seen a review of the FSP-400 yet, but I am sure it follows the same trend as its predecessors. Most PSU's run very little over (or even under if it is a cheap one) their specified values, but Sparkle goes well over them.
  • TrogdorJW - Tuesday, January 13, 2004 - link

    As for dropping Quake 3, how about checking out this, first:

    http://speedycpu.dyndns.org/opt/

    I've read (from X-bit Labs) that the optimized DLLs boost Athlon XP/64 performance by 13 to 18 percent. Wow!

    See:

    http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/athlo...

    One last word of caution, though, is that if the DLLs in question are binary compiled as opposed to interpreted code, then id software's Jon Carmack says they are more open for cheats. In addition, there is the fact that a binary compiled DLL is already said to boost performance by up to 20%. Not sure about all this, but here's a last link if you want:

    http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/336
  • TrogdorJW - Tuesday, January 13, 2004 - link

    #15, as the review states, they could not get system stability with a 350W quality power supply and the 3400+. Maybe you have a better PS than their 350W, but I wouldn't count on that.

    There are those that claim the Prescott will be a flame-thrower. Maybe. What we know for sure, though, is that the 3400+ has raised the bar in power requirements. Looks like 450W PS will become the norm in the next year....
  • sprockkets - Tuesday, January 13, 2004 - link

    You can't go wrong with a 350 watt FSP-350PN power supply, from either Sparkle or Forton Power Source, with it's 12cm fan. Works fine for my system I built with a 3200+ and gf4 4600, soon to be 9800 ATI card.
  • rms - Tuesday, January 13, 2004 - link

    Congrats on the great article. Please STOP USING QUAKE3-BASED GAMES AS A CPU BENCHMARK. It doesn't recognize athlons as SSE-enabled, and is worthless for cross-platform comparisons.

    rms
  • clv101 - Tuesday, January 13, 2004 - link

    What I'd really like to see in reviews like this are some slower systems - I'm fed up with seeing graphs showing 6 cpu with only a few % performance difference.

    I'd like the see the A64 3400+ and P4 3.2 benchmarked against a XP 2500+, a 2.4GHz P4 and my old 1.33GHz TBird. That would be useful to see.

    Seeing that the A64 3400+ is a little bit faster than a A64 3200+ is no good to anyone!
  • Wesley Fink - Tuesday, January 13, 2004 - link

    PrinceGaz -

    You are correct, but I had to return the initial 655TX and just received the shipping version of the P4S800D-E the day we left for CES. So I did not have the board available for the full roundup.

    I did run the P4EE through the 655TX to check benchmarks and it is faster by a small amount in almost every benchmark. However, it does not change any of the positioning or conclusions.

    #10 - I could not find the list either, since it looks like AMD has stopped the PS list for the Athlon64 and replaced it with "Athlon64 Power Supply recommendations" which are just general guidelines. The best source of info on compatible PS then, will likely be Power Supply reviews by AnandTech and others.
  • PrinceGaz - Tuesday, January 13, 2004 - link

    Its nice to have a clear comparison of how the A64 and A64FX compare with the top P4's including the P4EE.

    One question though, shouldn't an article which "tests the top CPU's from Intel and AMD on the top-performing motherboards that we have tested for each platform" use an SiS 655TX rather than Intel 875P mobo for the Intel chips when your own review last month found the 655TX to be faster than the 875P in every single test?
  • EglsFly - Tuesday, January 13, 2004 - link

    "AMD suggested that end-users check their list of approved power supplies for the 3400+ on the AMD web site."

    Can someone post the link to this power supply list? I did not find it on AMD's web site.
  • Wesley Fink - Monday, January 12, 2004 - link

    Yeti Studios has been on the web at http://www.yetistudios.co.uk/ The link appears to be down right now. Zoo Digital released the original Gun Metal game with Yeti and their link to Gun Metal is working at http://www.zoodigitalpublishing.com/article.asp?id...
  • brett1 - Monday, January 12, 2004 - link

    Hey I'm glad to see that gunmetal (2?) is one of those games that actually relies on the VIDEO card VPU/GPU instead of the processor. Let's hope anandtech keeps it for future video card only tests.

    Speaking of gunmetal 2....why is there no website dedicated to the game itself? Yetistudios.com does not exist and there are little to no references to the actual game when doing a google search.
  • Jeff7181 - Monday, January 12, 2004 - link

    #5 Please don't tell me you're saying the 9800 Pro 128 MB was a bottleneck and caused the P4 to be outperformed
  • Shinei - Monday, January 12, 2004 - link

    Because the difference between the 9800 Pro and XT is marginal, and if they made the GPU less powerful the benchmarks would be GPU-bound instead of CPU-bound.
  • KillaKilla - Monday, January 12, 2004 - link

    Why do they have a 9800Pro 128? Wouldn't it make sense to make the CPU as much of a bottleneck as posible?
  • CRAMITPAL - Monday, January 12, 2004 - link

    Nice to see a quality review of all the latest and greatest chippies without bogus memory settings and benchmarks to skew the results. As most folks probably knew the 3400+ is the most practical choice for top of the line performance on a budget. FX51 which will be replaced shortly by FX53 will raise the bar for those looking for the absolute fastest X86 system available, period. The A64 3000+ is the sweet spot for most folks and the A64 3200+ ain't bad either for only $60. more.

    Intel's gonna have their work cut out for them Spinning how Prescott is worth purchasing when it's slower than EE and A64 by a long shot.
  • KristopherKubicki - Monday, January 12, 2004 - link

    i play quake... on my cell phone!

    http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1945&p...

  • KristopherKubicki - Monday, January 12, 2004 - link

    i still play quake... :(
  • Icewind - Monday, January 12, 2004 - link

    Wow, the differences are very minumual between all these CPU's, especially the FX vs the 3400+. Makes me wonder how the newer 128bit Channel version of the A64 will do this summer when I upgrade from this 2.8@3.3ghz P4c. The extra cost overhead for the EE as well as the FX can't be justified by any means from this comparison. I guess if you got the money though.....

    Well done Anandtech. Though i'd love to see a BF1942 benchmark in the future, The quake 3 bench has simply gotta go. Its no longer a rellavent and viable benchmark anymore.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now