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  • coolme - Monday, January 10, 2005 - link

    #85 yeah, but when comparing to Tom's Hardware review, it's totally off track... (Tom's is more believeble because there is pics of how he measured it and based on the fact that there is no way a A64 could handle 200+ watts)

    http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20041115/pentium4...
    how Tom tested it: http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20041115/pentium4...
  • eight - Monday, December 27, 2004 - link

    Has anyone information about A64 performance with Premiere Pro 1.5? I assume thet A64 does beat P4, but assumption is mother of... :)
  • euanw - Tuesday, November 9, 2004 - link

    #44
    Wesley,
    I am very impressed by your articles. Can you inform me of the procedure you used to overclock the FX55? With the Neo2 board I am not clear on CPU vid and CPU voltage, what do they mean? When I change the multiplier to 13.5 my new PC reaches winXP and then reboots.

    My setup is MSI K8N-Neo2-54G, FX-55, 2 x 512MB - OCZ EL DDR PC-3200 Platinum Rev2, Nvidia Quadro FX3000, 2x Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 120 GB, Matrox RTX-100 real time video editor, Antec TrueBlue 480W ATX-12V, BenQ DVD Dual DW1610, WinXP-SP2.
  • euanw - Tuesday, November 9, 2004 - link

    #44
    Wesley,
  • Gioron - Sunday, October 24, 2004 - link

    While I'm unsure of the exact method used in this review, I'm sure that there is no built-in power measurement devices on the motherboards and processors listed (unless its new and no one told me...) so its NOT just just a matter of installing software that can read a sensor thats already there (as in all the CPU temp monitors). This means it requires some hardware to measure the voltage and current flow to various components (or you can cheat a little and assume the voltage is constant and just measure current).

    Unfortunately, this is not as easy as it sounds, since isolating various components can be a problem. Its fairly easy to measure things like hard drive power useage since there is only one power connector going to it and its easy to access, so you measure the current on the 5v line and the current on the 12v line, and you're pretty much done. Things like CPUs, motherboards and graphics cards are a bit more difficult. On the newer graphics cards you can measure the power consumption from the additional molex connector, but in all likelyhood, the card will also draw a certain amount of power from the AGP slot power lines, and no one in their right mind is going to unsolder the AGP slot and raise it half an inch in an attempt to put a current sensor in line with the power leads. Thus, you need to rely on indirect means and educated guesses. You can measure the current going into the motherboard, but how much of that is going to the chipset, the CPU, the RAM and the graphics card? You can swap in a different CPU and see how it changes, but that won't give you absolute readings. You can try to remove the CPU and see what power the MB uses without one, but odds are it'll use more power when its actually interfacing with a CPU instead of beeping error codes at you.

    Bottom line: There is no easy way to measure power consumption, and even dedicated hardware review sites have problems with it. Personally, I trust Anand far enough that I'm sure he didn't completely screw it up, and the numbers he has are probably close enough to the real thing. I'd forget about measuring power for myself.
  • xsilver - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    Kinda late on the comments but..If anand or anybody can answer -- what is used to measure the "power consumption" software? or hardware? links? I would like to test this myself
    thanks
  • Bakwetu - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    Whoah, it's been a while since I checked out cpu reviews and I must say Amd has some impressive cpu:s nowadays. Even though I am budget oriented when it comes to buying hardare, I'd choose the 3400+ model before the 3200+, it's not all that much more expensive and seems to perform much better
  • t - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    79
    uhuh.... and in a server type situation, how many raid arrays are ran off the chipset controllers? not many i would wager..

    hell... u prolly have an independent fibre optic raid array :)

    hardware, baby, hardware.

    t.
  • knitecrow - Friday, October 22, 2004 - link

    I always knew women were trouble when it comes to technology ;)
  • screech - Thursday, October 21, 2004 - link

    nice ones #79, 78. :)
  • mlittl3 - Thursday, October 21, 2004 - link

    Oh and one more thing and then I will shut up. With regards to trusting your research, how about I trust Anandtech's, Tomshardware's, Xbitlabs', Acehardware's, [H]ardocp's, etc. research over yours. None of these sites have made an official statement that you are mad to choose AMD over Intel. I will trust their research before I trust yours (unless you run a hardware review site that proves that AMD processors are less stable and slower than Intel processors).
  • mlittl3 - Thursday, October 21, 2004 - link

    t, Valeria was refering to the AMD 8000 series chipsets lacking the features you listed. If you want an AMD chipset, you will have to have third-party addon chips to support SATA, firewire, etc.

    Valerie, you said you liked it when people answered your comments so here goes.

    "More competitors to the battlefield or some kind of regulation is needed."

    I agree with you here. We need companies like AMD because they help continue progress and make equal if not better processors than Intel, forcing Intel in turn to make equal or better processors than AMD and so on.

    "...that AMD madness will end one time..."

    This contradicts your statement about competition. You want regulation and competition but you want AMD gone. Why do you hate other companies besides Intel?

    "Name me one company which prefers AMD and doesnt produce intel, name me one industrial computer who support AMDs, one automotive rack test system provider, hospital equipment, avionic systems, and so on"

    According to your request for more competition, why would you want a company that only supports AMD. If all companies support all processors, we have the ability to make choices based on the strong points of each technology for a given application that we desire.

    "its about quality and support what you will never get from AMD/taiwan"

    I don't understand why you typed Taiwan (refering to Via I guess), but anyway, Intel has delayed/cancelled products over 10 times in the last year. They cancelled Tejas and 4GHz Prescott. They delayed Dothan, Whitefield (dual-cores I believe) and Itanium progress has been delayed like crazy. AMD has had a lot less setbacks. I don't know what the definition of quality is in Europe, but here in America, such cancellations and delays are unacceptable.

    "Get Intel, and dont fall to temporaly madness"

    No one will respect your "research" with statements like these. Again you contradict your desire for competition. No one is mad to choose AMD, Via, Transmeta, Apple, IBM, Sun, etc. Everyone has a specific application and no one processor does well at everything. Do you know anything about the following processors?

    Via C3
    Transmeta Crusoe
    IBM Power series (4,5)
    Sun Ultrasparc (III, III+, IV, IV+)
    Apple G4 (Motorola) G5 (IBM)

    Do you think people who choose these are "mad" or do you only hate AMD?

    "Respected companies doesnt change so fast"

    My respect for your research is getting worse. Intel has changed their mind about issues left and right in short periods of time (sorry but I have to say it, they are "flip-flopping"). At one point, they insulted and ridiculed model numbers for processors. They also said that only megahertz(hurtz) matters. They also said that it is not the time for 64-bit. They have changed their position on all these points. Intel changing their minds so much is not a good quality a company should have that is supposedly "leading" the industry.

    "everybody makes mistakes, but with intel you have allways choice"

    If Intel and AMD both make mistakes, why are you so much in bed with Intel. If you want all the "mad" people to get over AMD and only go with Intel, how is this choice? How do you have choice without competition. If Intel only existed, then we would have no choice. You contradict yourself again.

    "now i am happy that AMD is here, same as i am happy that there is cheap cars to buy, competing is good for all."

    You are all over the place. First you say that people should get over their temporary madness now you are glad AMD is here. What are you trying to say? If competing is good for all, then we should have many processor companies driving technological progress. One day, AMD might be bigger than Intel. Do you think Intel will be the largest company for processors over the next 100 years? No one can predict that. Are you going to tell people they are "mad" when they choose Intel if AMD one day gets larger than Intel. With regards to your cheap comments, Intel and AMD both make expensive and cheap processors. Their price points are almost identical. Do some freaking research why don't you?

    "Stop that anti intel BS which is based on fool synthetic benchmarks and theoretical "if than" visions"

    You obviously have not done any research. Intel wins the majority of the synthetic benchmarks. That is why many companies pick them because there are so many apps out there, synthetic benchmarks represent an overall processor goodness. However, hardware enthusiats know that synthetic benchmarks don't mean crap, and they hunt down a review site that did tests with the application they are interested in. People who play games buy AMD, people who do video/audio encoding and rendering pick Intel, people who do scientific apps pick AMD, etc. (I know this is always changing people so don't flame me). Try doing your research again.

    "I did lot of research, trust me."

    How about I do not trust you based on your above statements which contradict themselves constantly. I believe you are an Intel Fangirl just like an AMD fangirl/boy with very little info.

    "We need better chipsets, better support from OS and for developers to be close to intel."

    Again, you are contradicting your statements about competition. How are other companies supposed to compete if they only work with Intel? This is the problem we have with the horrible Windows operating system. Developers only work with Microsoft and we are plagued with problems because of that monopoly.

    Sorry, Valerie, but your statements are flawed and they contradict themselves. You are an Intel Fangirl and nothing else. Both AMD and Intel Fangirls/boys never present a valid argument. Technology is technology. It benefits mankind regardless of whether or not AMD or Intel is in front of the name. People will pick a product that suits their needs. Both AMD and Intel provide for different needs from different people.
  • blckgrffn - Thursday, October 21, 2004 - link

    Val!

    Enough!

    It is really obvious that you have no clue what you are talking about! You made your "points" and now it is time to stop. The comments you made here will be remembered and if you try to make any discussion in the future, not matter how valid, you will be dismissed as the intel fan"girl" that you seem to be. Whatever, I am glad that someone will stick with intel through their development slump...

  • PrinceGaz - Thursday, October 21, 2004 - link

    #72 Val: "[AMD] Is cheaper, but not much. Whats the difference some stupid 100euro for CPU which lasts for one year? I dont think that they are worse because they are cheaper, but they are cheaper because they are worse."

    Its news to me that AMD processors only last one year. My Athlon XP 1700+ purchased in Dec 2001 and used almost continually for the three or so years since then is still working fine. I must have been very lucky. I've been doubly lucky as my other machine, with an AMD K6-III/400 purchased early in 1999 is also still running without any problems.

    Do you have a link to a reliable source which supports your statement that AMD processors only last one year? Or is this just some more BS you invented?
  • t - Thursday, October 21, 2004 - link

    74:
    why exactly do "we need...better support from OS and fro developers to be close to intel"?

    given that there are a number of x86-64 linux distrobutions available now... and linux is a fast growing segment of the server market, it would seem that the 'better support' is in place. Remember that it is intel who is also releasing x86-64 based xeons... as a direct response to AMD's strategy.

    http://www.realworldtech.com/page.cfm?ArticleID=RW...

    also, sun are porting solaris (like it or lump it, its still a major player in the server market) to x86-64

    and back to chipsets... one of the majore chipset suppliers for xeon systems is serverworks, who are also supporting opteron

    http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1604929,00.as...

    so...it would seem that both OS support AND chipset support is in place, or rapidly falling so.

    intel is a miniscule percentage of the server market for non 32bit x86 systems.... see the realwordtech article linked above.... most 'serious' server developers don't work with intel, because intel systems don't make up a high percentage of the market...instead u have sun/hp/ibm being the majority.

    heh, 'special boards'... im sure tyan would happily sell u an amd OR intel based board for a hefty price above any mainstream product. its not like intels server boards are dirt cheap either...

    what do you mean 'affordable mainboard with enough features'... the only 'feature' lacking from amd system chipsets is ddr2. They have sata, pci-e, raid, etc, etc.

    i dont wanna be all condescending...but if you did 'a lot of research' and want ppl to 'look away from [their] overclocked gaming machines', perhaps you should practise what you preach a little... or do some more extensive research.

    the world is not x86, and in the non x86 market, it is definately not intel.

    out of curiousity... what are your thoughts on the non intel power5 processors? :)

    t.
  • val - Thursday, October 21, 2004 - link

    71:

    >As to verification... seeing as sun/ibm/hp
    > offer k8 based servers, they HAVE to be
    > verified, you know tier1 oem..that kinda
    > thing.
    where AMD chipset is used and completely different design than you can ever buy for normal PC. so the efect is same. You are right in that k8 is changing things (for better for AMD) but it is still far from perfect. We need better chipsets, better support from OS and for developers to be close to intel.


    >also...amd do make their own chipsets, always >have....just that sis/via/nvidia chipsets are >more targetted at the mainstream.
    yes they are much worse and with AMD chipset you cannot buy affordable mainboard with enough features. Not counting those special mainboards.
    So it is nothing else than what i said: no good chipset available.

    Valerie
  • Gnoad - Thursday, October 21, 2004 - link

    god, someone just end it already. Its obvious arguing our points is gonna accomplish anything here, so lets just let it be now.
  • val - Thursday, October 21, 2004 - link

    68: i dont have only celerons. And i am not him, but her.

    67: at least somebody answers my questions, unfortunately only some and catching only wrong data out of them.

    1.Who cares that 1.7 AMD outperforms it? 1.7 AMD is rated 2000+ and if you tell me that you need 2000+ to play movies, get mails and write office stuff, than heh. i have celeron 2 Ghz and even video encoding is fast on it (23% under athlon 64 3200+) who cares? Far cry i have 60 FPS, Doom3 30 and race driver 2 67 fps. Please do not make me tired.

    2. Mostly outsourced as i heard, i am not sure right now here.

    3. They don't! They should rather take few bucks they are giving to marketing company which is one year raising PR numbers with same CPU frequency and give them to microsoft to include support in VC++ and speed up the XP64bit. There is no good support for hardware developers at all. No discussion here, look to industrial business.

    4. Is cheaper, but not much. Whats the difference some stupid 100euro for CPU which lasts for one year? I dont think that they are worse because they are cheaper, but they are cheaper because they are worse. I am 19+ and dont call me kid.

    5. PR filtered.

    I did lot of research, trust me. seems like you dont. Please look away from your overclocking gaming machines.

    >go buy a Dell, you silly ignorant little fool.
    i hope you feel big and smart, not like those idiots making ten times more moneys then you.
  • t - Thursday, October 21, 2004 - link

    Val: What i am trying to tell you, that AMD is only manufacturing what somebody else designs, they dont care and dont support products and developers, dont care for chipsets quality, certificates, nothing. This leads to that overall quality of AMD platform is far from what you can get with similar price based on Intel.

    umm....who designs them then? oh thats right...the k7/k8 were largely designed by the alpha engineers that AMD hired after hp killed off the alpha. Intel also have a large body of ex-alpha guys, mainly working on the itanium iirc.
    oh...AMD also have a fab tech agreement with IBM.

    unless u mean that AMD only makes intel compatible chips? In that case, yes, yes they did, until the K8 when AMD extended the x86 ISA. Making compatible, ie. x86 processors is also what transmeta/via do. And anyway, intel and AMD have a cross patent agreement, meaning that they CAN copy each other if they so wish.

    As to verification... seeing as sun/ibm/hp offer k8 based servers, they HAVE to be verified, you know tier1 oem..that kinda thing.

    also...amd do make their own chipsets, always have....just that sis/via/nvidia chipsets are more targetted at the mainstream.

    sorry for the huge post.
  • Gnoad - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link

    Thats a good pic. I wonder if Intel actually tried testing to see how prescott performed at 4ghz before they released it. I know I would have, but it seems they just kinda let it loose then realized, "Oh crap, we screwed up."
  • mlittl3 - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link

    Hey Val, why don't you go to this link and look at a picture of your hero, Intel CEO Craig Barrett on one knee begging forgiveness for their shitty processors.

    http://news.com.com/Photo+Barretts+mea+culpa/2100-...

    Both Intel and AMD have difficulties. But your analogy of AMD being like the cheap car companies doesn't make sense. The expensive car companies like Ferrari, Porsche, etc. sell the best cars but are very small companies because not many can afford them. AMD is like these companies now because they sell the processors for a lot of money because they are really good. Just not everyone can afford them.

    But AMD is good for cheap processors too. Please find one review site that shows any Celeron doing better than a Sempron 3100+. Just one site. I want only to see you post that link in your next posting. Nothing else please because every thing you say is wrong and I'm sure Intel fanboys are telling you to stop making them look bad.
  • Gnoad - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link

    Eh, let him have his celerons, Intel will need the fan base soon to stay in business come 2005...
  • Rhl - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link

    First off, Val, you're ignorant. You shouldn't speak on subjects where you are grieviously misinformed, it makes your intelligence quotient seem very low.

    1. You think Celerons are fast? I'm sorry, what hole have you been living in? A 1.7 ghz Celeron is SLOW, and far outpaced by an Athlon 1.7 ghz. Almost by 2x as much.

    2. AMD doesn't design their own processors? May I ask who does then? INTEL? LOL. Sorry, but no, AMD does design all of their own CPU's.

    3. They don't care or support consumers/developers etc? OF COURSE THEY DO, AMD's track record of supporting "the little guys" (independent shops, consumers etc) is FAR better than Intel, who doesn't care much at all for the "little guys". What you have stated is just plain WRONG.

    4. AMD is alot cheaper than Intel, and is ALOT better as well. They beat Intel in real world benchmarks 9 times out of 10. You think because they're cheaper they're worse? How old are you? You need to do some research, kid.

    5. You're right, nobody expects AMD to be as good as Intel... BECAUSE THEY'RE BETTER. AMD is flatout kicking Intel's ass, and has been since the original Athlon was released.

    I think, val, that your brain is too "cold down", as you say, and it's not working as well as it should. Go research AMD vs Intel, and check out the realworld benchmarks. If that doesn't change your mind, go buy a Dell, you silly ignorant little fool.

  • screech - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link

    #64: celeron=too fast? seems like you haven't owned a celeron......anyway, why pay more for a crappy celeron when AMD can offer more performance for less money? (I am talking about the older celerons, ie 1.7, celeronD isn't that bad although sempron 3100 still wipes the floor with it).

    AMD only copies intel? where did intel's EMT64 (or whatever its called) come from? realistically both copy each other, although it looks like intel should have done more copying of a shorter pipeline a la AMD, given that the prescott seems to have been a failure. (no 4 ghz).

    AMD is cheap, doesn't care for quality? Ladies and gentlemen, seems like Kanavit from THG has decided to start trolling around here...I heard him say that exact same thing a while back over there. anyway, this is such BS that it is hilarious. What kind of flawed logic says that better performance=cheap processors? haha. :D

    anti intel BS based on fool snthetic benchmarks? LMAO. I agree that many synthetics are dumb, because often they do not reflect real performance in applications (intel high clocks often win the synthetics but then AMD's processors often win real world benchies), but AMD owns intel in jthe majority of benchmarks. I suppose you consider AMD winning (except for a tie or 2) EVERY gaming benchmark, an "if than" or synthetic? UT2004 is theoretical? it doesnt exist?

    on another note, good job discrediting the only benchmarks that intel usually wins--synthetics.

    I hope you wake up and smell the coffee.
  • Gnoad - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link

    haha, its kinda funny watching someone defend their opinion to the bitter end even though its blatantly wrong and totally misinformed. No offense val, but seriously, you got a lot of reading to do to catch up with the current realities in the CPU world.
  • val - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link

    #63: i am not ignorant fool and try to control your self a bit.
    1,7 celeron is pretty old, 3 years or more, but i am sure that for many tasks even this is fast too much. I am sure that if you feel that the mentioned celeron was slow, it was because you was playing on it (what it was not supposed to be for) or rest of system was bad designed (HDD, memory,...)

    #61: now i am happy that AMD is here, same as i am happy that there is cheap cars to buy, competing is good for all. i call for even more competitors to drop prices to real level (as in mainboards they are), same for GCs.
    What i am trying to tell you, that AMD is only manufacturing what somebody else designs, they dont care and dont support products and developers, dont care for chipsets quality, certificates, nothing. This leads to that overall quality of AMD platform is far from what you can get with similar price based on Intel.
    So cold down, AMD is cheap, is supposed to be cheap, nobody expects to be as good as intel with all their background. Stop that anti intel BS which is based on fool synthetic benchmarks and theoretical "if than" visions.
  • michaelpatrick33 - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link

    The power consumption graph is wrong because it shows the AMD 3000+ and 3200+ as having dual channel but the power usage shows the same as the 130nm chips. AMD only makes the 3000+ and 3200+ for 939 on 90nm I thought so unless the 90nm 3000+ and 3200+ runs with more power than the faster 3500+ 90nm the graph needs to be changed. Just a stickler sorry.
  • AtaStrumf - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link

    Vai you need to pull you head out of your ass and smell the air. WTF are you talking about??? Sure AMD has had their share of troubles (who hasn't, Intel certainly has), but saying what your're saying just makes me think you're an ignorant fool.

    It's exacly that kind of thinking that makes people buy Celerons (I mean it's Intel right, so it can't be bad), and they I have to deal with 1,7 GHz piece of crap like I did yesterday for example. God that is SLOOOOOOOOOW!
  • mlittl3 - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link

    #49, #50, #52, #54, #55, #60 (Val)

    Do you think AMD should go out of business and that Intel should be the only company out there? I am guessing you are from another country so you probably also hate (never seen) an Apple. Do you think no one should choose apple? Do you wish that apple should go out of business? What about Via and Transmeta processors (C3 and Crusoe)? Do you hate those companies too and wish them out of business? Do you think their processors suck?

    You talk about choice in your #54 post (I'm assuming you don't know what choice means) yet you want everyone to choose Intel because you don't know how to build a pc properly. If you base your decision not to buy AMD because you've had troubles in the past and you are assumming that everyone will have troubles, then how did AMD make ~$1.25 billion in revenue last quarter? Did they make that money selling lemonade?

    Just because a company doesn't have a large presence in whatever country you are from doesn't make them inferior products. I don't know if you have heard the statement that competition drives progress. If AMD, VIA, Transmeta, Apple, IBM, etc. etc. did not exist because Val can't get an AMD system running and demands everyone use Intel, then what motivation does Intel have to bring good products to market? The 1 GHz race is what got Intel to improve its processors and maybe even release the Pentium 4. The addition of 64-bits to AMD and Intel processors got software and hardware companies to start optimizing their products for the new tech. Hell, now with Dual-core being pushed by both companies, multi-threaded apps (and hopefully this will include games) will be developed by software companies as well.

    If we had just Intel which I'm assuming you pray was the case everyday, then we would have non-64bit, ~2 Ghz, non-dualcore, non-HT, pentium 3's right now.

    You must live under a rock and think AMD is still the company it was back in the early 1990's. Both Intel and AMD are necessary in the market and both of their processors and other products are used by a large number of people. More people use Intel right now and AMD has the right to try and get more people to use them and they are.

    What exactly are you trying to tell us?
  • val - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link

    58: thank you for information, i use Kingston or infineon on rated values which are properly detected over SPD. Maybe not on mainboards for AMD, i dont know. PSU i use Intel or Enermax with appropriate power. In my HTPC i have some noname, but it runs with no problem.
  • southernpac - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link

    It has been reported elsewhere that the FX55 runs 15 degrees hotter than the 4000+, and that Cool & Quiet are available on both. True? Also, does the new AMD stock fan (with the copper fins and heat pipe) come with the 4000+?
  • ThePlagiarmaster - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link

    Val,

    Sounds like you don't know how to build a PC properly. With a good PSU and QUALITY memory (corsair, kingston, crucial etc) you won't experience any problems with AMD systems (with any motherboard). If you still experience problems turn off that damned SPD. Config the memory yourself and problems go away. I don't even use SPD's when setting up customers PC's these days. If there is a way to turn it off and config the memory myself it's the first thing I do.

    All SPD's are not created equal (nor are PSU's). Tons of them out there will make your machine run like crap. A simple fix is to kill it and config the memory yourself in the bios.

    Learn to read forums and how to troubleshoot your PC.

    Plag
  • nastyemu25 - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link

    what the hell did val just say?
  • Philbill - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link

    Sounds to me as though the Intel fanboys are worried :)
  • val - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link

    53: yes and Acer on all their notebooks and servers :-). And Britney never touched Sprite. Please try to discover what PR means. Google will help ya.
  • val - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link

    51: to your 820 and other sarcastic notes, everybody makes mistakes, but with intel you have allways choice. If you dont like to buy intel chipset with limited warranty with purpose to be used on cheapest office PCs, you can buy workstation or server based chipset . But what you can choose for AMD? Is there any high durable VIA chipset? Or nvidia, SIS? Dont make me smile.

    (note: i have 820 in my HTPC and since installed it runs fine)
  • Sunbird - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link

    Ferrari uses AMD..... Word!
  • val - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link

    51: that AMD madness will end one time, and AMD chips (and specialy chipsets for AMD) have not one bug - there is one difference: intel is serious respected company, which doesnt depend on how few overclockers will like or dislike them. They must publish the bugs for this reason. AMD is not publishing any, even that stupid one with JPEG was hidden under carpet as much as was possible. And should we discuss chipsets for AMD now? Like VIA deleting harddrive with ATI card, and many others?

    Reason why many of them are not scared to install AMD servers is, that demand is not so high. If you have single purpose server with backup, you can run it even on ATA drives and ALI chipset to reach 99.3%.

    Name me one company which prefers AMD and doesnt produce intel, name me one industrial computer who support AMDs, one automotive rack test system provider, hospital equipment, avionic systems, and so on. Its not like that few overclockers will not see their page for a ten minutes, its about lifes and lot lot of moneys. And trust me, its not about marketing or idiocy, its about quality and support what you will never get from AMD/taiwan.

    Get Intel, and dont fall to temporaly madness.
    I know that Hyundai is popular now, but it is not BMW (even when you can get three hyundais for one BMW and even when one is able to drive on straight road same top speed). Respected companies doesnt change so fast.

    About benchmarks? I like to see once, where is compared how many interupts and system calls is CPU able to handle. Benchmark with network and soundcard, mouse, keyboard and other utilization. You will be surprised.
  • Zebo - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link

    #49 like to spread FUD much? Total BS. That's why Anands, you know the guy who reviews hardware professionally seeing thousands of products a year, been using AMD servers for four years now, right because thier unreliable?? IMO ihere is actually no more effective endorsement of the stability and reliability of AMD platforms than the fact that AnandTech uses them as the sole platform for the web serving of its main site.



    Need we bring up intels i820, grantsdale, alterwood disasters? Even the prescott has 31 bugs which will blue screen your comp under certain sofware instances. Thus far opteron/A64 has one. Hav'nt you heard about intel recalling processors? Hav'nt you heard about Northwood sudden death syndrome? Hav'nt you heard about HP Recall Thousands of pentium Notebooks for chipset problems?

    If there's any instability to be had it's with Intel simply because AMD "offloads" about 80% of a chipsets work to the CPU's interated mem controller now.


    Those "AMD bad chipset" museings were all FUD way back when too. No need to rehash them, I will if you want. But Just look what Intel man, TOM's hardware says way back then. http://www.tomshardware.com/mainboard/01q1/010122/...

    "The most important finding was the enjoyable fact that each of the tested boards ran 100% stable even at the fastest possible memory timing settings. VIA's upcoming DDR chipsets may not look too impressive right now, but the Apollo KT133A is a matured, fast and solid product that offers good performance."

    http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/00q4/001017/athlo...

    "AMD Processors are significantly less expensive than Intel processors although they are at least on par in terms of performance. - FACT"

    "AMD processors are incompatible. - LIE

    Not that the average guy who just heard that phrase would know what the heck 'incompatible' is, but it sounds really bad, doesn't it? Well, even the people who do know that 'incompatible' means that a product wouldn't work reliably with other components (which of course is bad) are wrong if they accuse AMD's Athlon or Duron processors of it. In our labs we are testing all kinds of Athlon platforms with all kinds of different components and I can definitely say that I cannot see any difference between the compatibility of AMD products and platforms compared to the same from Intel."

    "Chipsets for AMD processors are inferior to Intel chipsets. - LIE

    Yeah, sure, the earth is flat and politicians are honest ... I am still amused when I see people posting the above message in news groups or as their response to articles. How many more times does Intel need to screw up their chipsets (i820, MTH, ...) until you guys get the message? . . . Incompatibilities are more a problem of the motherboard BIOS than of the chipset right now. Thus both chipset makers, Intel as well as VIA, are actually in the same situation."


    Stop the hate budda. Get AMD, everyones doing it.:)

  • val - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link

    also should the countries to do something with AMD/Intel NVIDIA/ATI cartels. CPU / GC costs so much more than whole mainboard. Thats crazy. More competitors to the battlefield or some kind of regulation is needed.
  • 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. Thx
  • coldpower27 - 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 :P
  • Da DvD - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    3GHz on air :S

    AMD'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.
  • RaistlinZ - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    I may have missed it, but does anyone know if the Athlon 64 4000+ will be multiplier unlocked like the FX-53 is? That's the only thing I see that would differentiate the two chips.
  • RaistlinZ - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

  • Illissius - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    Re: the necessity of Prescott. You are missing one very important consideration: Prescott has iAMD64 support. (Although it is currently disabled, no doubt because Intel has intentions of selling you the same processor twice). A simple die shrink of Northwood would not.
    I half suspect one of the reasons for Prescott's problems could be that AMD's 64-bit extensions don't mesh very well with a Netburst architecure, but they had to shoehorn it in anyways, and had to make a lot of unappealing design decisions in the process. (I've never designed a processor, though, so this is just baseless speculation.) I'd be interested in seeing 64-bit enabled chips on a Pentium M architecture...
  • CrystalBay - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    Moores law is dead...:(
  • Runamile - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    Awsome read. Great Job. And HOLY COW does Intel get their a$$ handed to them!

    I would of liked to see some price/performance curves too. That would of summed it up quite nicely.
  • hertz9753 - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    Athlon 64 3700+ 2.4GHz 1MB 64-bit
    Athlon 64 3400+ 2.4GHz 512KB 64-bit
    Athlon 64 3400+ 2.2GHz 1MB 64-bit
  • araczynski - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    nice, but luckily i still see no reason to upgrade my 2.4@3.3, at least not for a few measly benchmark FPS.
  • hertz9753 - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

  • AlphaFox - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    Id like to see some kind of comparison with an OC XP Mobile. I have one runing at 2.46ghz and not really sure how it stacks up here...
  • PrinceGaz - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    An excellent article, well done.

    About the only thing missing was a bit of overclocking of the FX-55 to see if the introduction of strained silicon considerably increased the headroom. Obviously it has allowed them to ship parts rated at 2.6GHz which they weren't previously able to do, but how much better is the FX-55 compared to a CG-stepping FX-53? Does the use of strained silicon mean the FX-55 is a new stepping?
  • HardwareD00d - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    Fantastic article, obviously very well thought out.

    I would have liked to see a comparison between the 4000+ and the "real" FX-53 to really back up your rebadging theory (yeah I know speed+cache+memory width are equal between the two, but just to make sure AMD isn't pulling some magic out of there butt somewhere else).
  • Marsumane - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    Yes, thanks for the XP comparison. I find it interesting how its not performing as well as it used to in games. (doom 3, farcry, cs:s)

    Also, your ut2k4 benches seem off. How is doom 3 pulling 50% more frames at the same res? Maybe your ut is at 16x12? I pull similar frames on ut w/ my 9800p oced.
  • ksherman - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    I like the ending... It sounds mysterious!
  • alexruiz - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    I will suggest again to include some Ulead Video Studio 8.0 benchmarks for video encoding. Ulead is by far the fastest consumer grade video editor / renderer, it is the most complete and one of the most popular. In fact, it is almost 50% faster than Pinnacle 9, and almost 100% faster than videowave.

    Roxio has really been working with Intel as all previous version of video wave ran better on AMD hardware. As reference, results video wave 6 or 7 would be interesting. Newer doesn't always mean better, as you can see from Adobe Premiere. Version 7.0 is quite slower than 6.5 doing the exact same thing in the same platform.

    For DivX encoding, a run with virtualdub/virtualdubmod or DVD2AVI would be nice, as they are very fast and extensively used.


    Just some comments


    Alex
  • Araemo - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    Thank you thank you thank you for including an Athlon XP.

    This allows me to better judge where my current Barton 2.4 Ghz sits. ;P So I know when an upgrade to the next cheap overclocker will give a good enough performance boost to be worth the money.
  • stephenbrooks - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    Here's an idea to play with: how about some 2D scatter plots of Performance/£ and Performance/Watt? Obviously not on everything - that would clutter it - but perhaps on one or two key things it'd be nice to see.
  • Zar0n - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    EDIT #22 There is no 3400+ for SK 939 only 3500+
  • Zar0n - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    Nice article BUT:
    You should make C&C power consumption and temperature
    Also some OC tests.

    The Battle for Value is not correct:
    1º WHAT about price of DDR1 VS DDR2?!
    2º MB for INTEL are more expensive, ~40€ is a great difference in a MB price.
    3º 0.09 AMD are just introduced so they are going to come down, not much but they are.

    In order to be fair you should compare with AMD 3400+
    AMD as a clear winner here.
  • mczak - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    power consumption at idle - is this with or without cool 'n' quiet (I suspect without)?
  • Uff - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    I have to agree with #18 - it's not worth paying more than twice the price of a 3400+ just to get 3800+ on 939 platform.

    Many say 'OH! But s939 is more upgradable!', but if you think about it, by the time you upgrade next there are very likely going to be new motherboards available aswell and you end up upgrading that anyway. Not to mention motherboards cost virtually nothing compared to cpus.
  • Live - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    Splendid reading! This site is doing a great job right now. I really would love more of these very informative articles that help you so at seeing the big picture.

    A really helpful article.
  • Disorganise - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    I’m a bit disappointed by you inconsistency…

    The comparison with Intel over who wins….slightly inconsistent but no biggie.

    What really is bad though, is the penultimate page – is socket 939 worth it?

    I agree it is but…..
    You’ve taking an identical chip and found it about 5% quicker than on socket 754. OK, no problem. But AMD have wacked a whopping 12% increase in rating, to 3800+ from 3400+. It doesn’t gel, the numbers don’t work.

    The 3800+ is also more expensive than the 3400+ to the tune of about 250% here in Australia and about 220% over there in the U.S. a 5% increase in performance does not warrant a doubling in price.

    Dave
  • at80eighty - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    way to go Anand...excellently comprehensive article...

    /waiting for those HDD articles you promised : p
  • SLIM - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    Going along with what #6 said:
    Athlon 64 4000+ - 2.4GHz - 1MB - 128-bit
    Athlon 64 3800+ - 2.4GHz - 512KB - 128-bit
    Athlon 64 3400+ - 2.4GHz - 1MB - 64-bit <---should be a socket 754 3700+ right?
    Athlon 64 3400+ - 2.4GHz - 512KB - 64-bit
    Athlon 64 FX-53 - 2.4GHz - 1MB - 128-bit

    SLIM
  • ViRGE - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    #12, even GPUs aren't going anywhere fast. There's still a shortage of something or other needed to make the Ultra/PE parts, and there isn't a planned refresh for 2004. ATI/Nvidia have another speed grade of RAM to jump to(1.6ghz GDDR3), and can die-shrink down to 90nm once TSMC gets there, but they're so close to CPUs right now, they're destined to hit the same wall too.

    Anand, someone has been a busy beaver.;-) That was a long, but well thought out and informative article; you've basically written the definitive CPU article for now until the multicores come out.
  • Tides - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    Ah I read the conclusion wrong.
  • Tides - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    why is this site putting down an amd performance gain and making excuses for intel at the same time.
  • Doormat - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    Its a shame the processor wars are coming to an end. I see dual core as neat, but a dud performance wise. It'll be another year or two before the GPU wars start to die out... hmmm..

    -CPU performance levels off
    -HD capacity levels off

    The only interesting stuff going on is GPU stuff.
  • dvinnen - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    Best artical from Anandtech I've read in a long time. Good job Anand.
  • skiboysteve - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    wait nevermind, you put your comments ABOVE the graphs. threw me off cause this isnt what you usualy do...
  • skiboysteve - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    On the Business winstone 2004...
    "The Pentium 4 550 and Athlon 64 3800+ tie in the middle, while the 3400+ offers statistically similar performance."

    No they didnt.
  • microAmp - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    Very nice article, loved the L2 cache and memory comparisons at the end.
  • thermalpaste - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    Way back in 2000, I felt that Intel was doing something stupid by introducing the Willamette.
    The thunderbird was faster than the p-III coppermine at the same clock speeds, but considering that the p-III just had 2 parallel FPUs compared to the 3 on the athlon. An additional FPU would have helped of course. though the P-III core was not able to sustain higher clock speeds , intel could have redesigned a marginally deeper pipeline on the same core rather than designing the pentium-4 with a mammoth 20 stage pipeline.
    Now the prescotts come with a 30-odd stage pipeline, but the integer unit runs at twice the speed which doesn't make the 7th generation of processors from intel very 'scalable'. Besides the processor heats upto 70 odd degrees with consummate ease (Im staying in India where the avg. room temperature is something like 29 degrees Celsius) and is not overclocker friendly.
    I am waiting for the newer chips from Intel, based on the Pentium-M a.k.a the P6 architecture.
    AMD is way ahead of Intel as of now.
  • skiboysteve - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    Athlon 64 4000+ - 2.4GHz - 1MB - 128-bit
    Athlon 64 3800+ - 2.4GHz - 512KB - 128-bit
    Athlon 64 3400+ - 2.4GHz - 1MB - 64-bit
    Athlon 64 3400+ - 2.4GHz - 512KB - 64-bit
    Athlon 64 FX-53 - 2.4GHz - 1MB - 128-bit

    these numbers look off.

    Your saying there are two s754 3400+, and one has more cache?
  • eva2000 - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    why leave out the 3700+ s754 1MB from suhc a nice comparison :)
  • miketheidiot - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    excellent article. I agree with #2 that I would have liked to see an overclocking comparison, or at least a quick demonstation of the 4000 and fx-55. Still a great article though.
  • GhandiInstinct - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    We can always marvel at them but the prices, realistcaly speaking is a waste of our time. I'm as interested in the FX-55 as much as the IBM super-computer blue.
  • Zac42 - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    I especially liked the comparrison of the equally priced value procs at the end of the article. Nice way to sum up the graphs. Good overall comparison, as you guys have just about any possible app one could use on a PC. Now we just need an OC comparrison, and we will be set!
  • DrMrLordX - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link

    Nice article so far, still reading it, but I would like to know where the 925XE chipset-based P4 board was in this review? Are those available to you guys yet? Just wondering.

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