Athlon64 3400+: Part 2

by Wesley Fink on January 12, 2004 2:59 PM EST


The 3400+ compares very well to the much higher-priced Athlon64 FX51 in Multimedia Content Creation and Office (General Usage) Benchmarks. With the 2004 version of Winstones and the Athlon64 family processors, we no longer see the Intel domination of Content Creation tests, while AMD leads Office Winstone. Across the board, the Athlon64 processors, 3000+ to FX51, outperform the 3.2GHz Pentium 4 in both benchmarks. The P4EE falls between the 3200+ and 3000+ in Multimedia Winstone 2004, with all 3 processors very close in performance, but the 3400+ and FX51 are still the best performers. All the Athlon64 chips outperform the top Pentium chips in Office Winstone 2004. Keep in mind that the 3.2GHz Pentium 4 EE is more than twice the price of the 3400+, while the 3.2GHz P4 is in the same price range as the 3400+.

Those who were hoping that the new 3400+ would perform like a FX51 will be pleased to see that it is exactly what we find in these two "real application" benchmarks. The FX51 is on top by a small margin in these benchmarks, but the Dual-Channel architecture does not appear to matter very much in the performance of the internet, creating multimedia content, editing pictures, creating presentations, word-processing, spreadsheets, and the other common things we do with our computers.

Since Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004 also includes media encoding tests as part of the benchmark, we were surprised to see that the Athlon64 processors perform so well when Intel Pentium 4 chips are usually the faster chips in pure Media Encoding.

Performance Test: Configuration Gaming and Media Encoding Performance
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  • 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.

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