AMD Athlon 64 FX-60: A Dual-Core farewell to Socket-939
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 9, 2006 11:59 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Gaming Performance using Battlefield 2, Call of Duty 2 and Quake 4
Gaming performance is pretty respectable for the Pentium EE 955, with the chip being quite competitive with AMD's Athlon 64 X2 4800+.
The most interesting thing we found is that even with a high end GPU like the Radeon X1800 XT, a number of games are still quite GPU limited even at 1024x768, which is why you don't see F.E.A.R. and Splinter Cell: CT here. Even some of the games that we did required us to turn down some of the detail settings to start to stress the CPUs.
The pendulum often swings between games being CPU and GPU limited, and it seems that with the latest generation of games, we are definitely more GPU limited.
We should also mention that we had to re-run our AMD numbers in this test since the last review as we were seeing sub-par AMD performance. A clean install and re-run of the numbers yielded the results that you see today; the Intel numbers didn't change.
We did run with SMP support disabled, as we found in our last article that the game gave us higher frame rates without it enabled.
Gaming performance is pretty respectable for the Pentium EE 955, with the chip being quite competitive with AMD's Athlon 64 X2 4800+.
The most interesting thing we found is that even with a high end GPU like the Radeon X1800 XT, a number of games are still quite GPU limited even at 1024x768, which is why you don't see F.E.A.R. and Splinter Cell: CT here. Even some of the games that we did required us to turn down some of the detail settings to start to stress the CPUs.
The pendulum often swings between games being CPU and GPU limited, and it seems that with the latest generation of games, we are definitely more GPU limited.
We should also mention that we had to re-run our AMD numbers in this test since the last review as we were seeing sub-par AMD performance. A clean install and re-run of the numbers yielded the results that you see today; the Intel numbers didn't change.
We did run with SMP support disabled, as we found in our last article that the game gave us higher frame rates without it enabled.
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Yianaki - Tuesday, January 10, 2006 - link
It's tested and clean. Two prime 95's one on each core. 3dmark looped. plus one of the prime 95's that tests the mem. Winamp with a vis. All at same time. Doesn't crash for 9 hours plus, then I stopped it and called it a day.bob661 - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
Sounds pretty good. But I'm not totally sold on Prime95 as the be all, end all of stability. Have you thought about switching power supplies, if you haven't already? I find that a weak or bad power supply is usually the root of weird instability issues. Also, how the system run without any video drivers installed?nserra - Tuesday, January 10, 2006 - link
Nvidia drivers are no longer good big discovery.Since GeforceFX, nvidia drivers suck, one good driver release in a FULL YEAR.
I have The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay It says I need to have OpenGL 1.3 or better! < This is just one game but i have lots of games with problems, don’t work, render problems, lockups, refresh rate problems, .... Very annoying!
The Ati that every one says have bad drivers works fine,
some newer games even say it requires Catalyst 5.10 or better on the read me file and i have 5.7 with no problem!
There must be a reason why ati drivers are certified and NVIDIA don’t.
Phantronius - Tuesday, January 10, 2006 - link
Your maybe you just suck and building computer systems.andrep74 - Tuesday, January 10, 2006 - link
Maybe you just suck at English.Yianaki - Tuesday, January 10, 2006 - link
Yes that is the main point to make about this issue. My sucky english. Thanks for your expert input.andrep74 - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
Not you. The guy who can't type English worth a damn. And his cunning insight into building a system such as yours without having experienced problems.And, for what it's worth, most people who hear you gripe probably think you're a spoiled yuppie with too much cash to burn, having dual this and dual that, and don't give a rat's a** if you're having problems. Personally I laud the "enthusiast" because they're the ones that drive the cutting edge; it's just that I'd never have dual core and SLI myself, and since I can't do anything about it, it makes no sense to harrass nVidia.
Since you have so much extra cash, why don't you try Crossfire and see if you get the same rush with none of the aftertaste.
Phantronius - Tuesday, January 10, 2006 - link
I smell a ATi fanboy.andrep74 - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
Yeah, the guy who invested in two nVidia cards, and a dual-core processor: he's a definite ATI fanboy.God, I hope with logic like that you're not in a technical field. And with grammar like that I hope you're not in a linguistic field.
Yianaki - Tuesday, January 10, 2006 - link
Actually (was) an NVIDIA fan as I said I have never bought and ATI card in my life. Bought the highest performing S3 before the days of the RIVA 128 but that's another story. But I've not heard about any ATI dual core problems. Therfore my rant.