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AMD's Athlon 64 X2 4800+ & 4200+ Dual Core Performance Preview

 by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 9, 2005 12:02 AM EST
109 Comments | Add A Comment
109 Comments

Business/General Use Performance

Business Winstone 2004

Business Winstone 2004 tests the following applications in various usage scenarios:
. Microsoft Access 2002
. Microsoft Excel 2002
. Microsoft FrontPage 2002
. Microsoft Outlook 2002
. Microsoft PowerPoint 2002
. Microsoft Project 2002
. Microsoft Word 2002
. Norton AntiVirus Professional Edition 2003
. WinZip 8.1

Business Application Performance

When it comes to business appliccations, AMD has always dominated in performance and although their single core CPUs still remain at the top of the charts here, the Athlon 64 X2 is right on their heels.

Office Productivity SYSMark 2004

SYSMark's Office Productivity suite consists of three tests, the first of which is the Communication test. The Communication test consists of the following:
"The user receives an email in Outlook 2002 that contains a collection of documents in a zip file. The user reviews his email and updates his calendar while VirusScan 7.0 scans the system. The corporate web site is viewed in Internet Explorer 6.0. Finally, Internet Explorer is used to look at samples of the web pages and documents created during the scenario."

SYSMark 2004

As we saw in Business Winstone 2004, there are definitely cases where there is no advantage to dual core.

The next test is Document Creation performance:
"The user edits the document using Word 2002. He transcribes an audio file into a document using Dragon NaturallySpeaking 6. Once the document has all the necessary pieces in place, the user changes it into a portable format for easy and secure distribution using Acrobat 5.0.5. The user creates a marketing presentation in PowerPoint 2002 and adds elements to a slide show template."

SYSMark 2004

In our first look at Athlon 64 X2 performance, we saw some of the highest SYSMark 2004 numbers that we'd ever seen. Now with an actual Athlon 64 X2 4800+, we're breaking records once more - the two X2s are on top with no competition here.

The final test in our Office Productivity suite is Data Analysis, which BAPCo describes as:
"The user opens a database using Access 2002 and runs some queries. A collection of documents are archived using WinZip 8.1. The queries' results are imported into a spreadsheet using Excel 2002 and are used to generate graphical charts."

SYSMark 2004

This is one test where the dual core AMD CPUs lose out to the dual core Intel chips. Note that the Pentium D 840 is priced close to the Athlon 64 X2 4200+, while the Extreme Edition 840 is a better match for the 4800+.

Microsoft Office XP SP-2

Here, we see in that the purest of office application tests, performance doesn't vary all too much.

Microsoft Office XP with SP-2

Mozilla 1.4

Quite possibly the most frequently used application on any desktop is the one we pay the least amount of attention to when it comes to performance. While a bit older than the core that is now used in Firefox, performance in Mozilla is worth looking at as many users are switching from IE to a much more capable browser on the PC - Firefox.

Mozilla 1.4

All single-threaded tests will obviously favor higher clocked, single-core CPUs and thus, we see very little from the Athlon 64 X2 line here.

ACD Systems ACDSee PowerPack 5.0

ACDSee is a popular image editing tool that is great for basic image editing options such as batch resizing, rotating, cropping and other such features that are too elementary to justify purchasing something as powerful as Photoshop. There are no extremely complex filters here, just pure batch image processing.

ACD Systems ACDSee PowerPack 5.0

Once again, single threaded applications won't show any benefit from a dual core platform.

Ahead Software Nero Express 6.0.0.3

While it was a major issue in the past, buffer underrun errors while burning a CD or DVD are few and far between these days, thanks to high performance CPUs as well as vastly improved optical drives. When you take the optical drive out of the equation, how do these CPU's stack up with burning performance?

As you'd guess, they're all pretty much the same, with the slight variations between chips falling within expectations. Any of these chips will do just fine.

Ahead Software Nero Express 6.0.0.3


Winzip

Archiving performance ends up being fairly CPU bound as well as I/O limited.

WinZip Computing WinZip 8.1


WinRAR 3.40

Pulling the hard disk out of the equation, we can get a much better idea of which processors are truly best suited for file compression.

WinRAR 3.40 Archiving Performance

Here, there's no difference between a dual core and a single core CPU of the exact same specifications, which is to be expected.

Power Consumption: Athlon 64 vs. Athlon 64 X2 Multimedia Content Creation Performance
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  • FlakPanzer - Monday, June 20, 2005 - link

    This looks very promising, my next rig is definately going to have one of these fine AMD X2 processors.

  • cryptonomicon - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link

    anand, thanks for the preliminary overclocking results. me and my DFI compadres are very eager to see how this chip overclocks and hope you add an overclocking page section as soon as you receive a production X2.

  • gamara - Thursday, May 12, 2005 - link

    Would be interesting to also see if DC had any affect on SLI performance. Not sure if the driver work of splitting the duties for 2 video cards would be streamlined with a second core on the processor.

  • coldpower27 - Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - link

    #88 are you talking about the PD 3.0GHZ 356US or the PD 2.8GHZ 241US? The 3.2GHZ 530US is the worst price/performance DC in Intel's arsenal it cost more then twice as much as a single core and then some.

    Just like how the 4600+ and 4800+ are now costing more then twice the single core versions.

    I don't understand why people are going to assume the motherboard is expensive. Why must you have the flagship 955X motherboard?

    The lanuch pricing of the 955X is 50US, which is the same as the price of the 925X when it was launched.

    There is also the 945P chipset to consider which also supports Dual Core and is a less expensive alternative price at 38US which is only 1 dollar more then what the i915P chipset cost at launch.

    Since the chipsets base pricing match what the 925X and 915P were at launch we should logically assume that pricing of these chipsets will be similar to what i915 and i925 were at launch.

  • phaxmohdem - Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - link

    Oh yeah baby 100th post... how often do you get that honor? even if you have to cehat to get it *cough* post 99

  • phaxmohdem - Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - link

    lalala ala al ala ala ala

  • philthedrill - Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - link

    #97, are you being serious? Read my post on #81.

    Performance drops with HT when there are memory bandwidth intensive apps due to the shared data TLB. The shared FSB also hurts Intel, and it only gets worse as you scale up with more processors.

  • AtaStrumf - Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - link

    Since the advent of HT on P4, AMD has been at a great disadvantage in multitasking scenarios and I thought dualcore would end that. Well, I guess P4 is just better at that. Really ironic, when AMD has touted K8 as being designed from ground up for DC and Intel just slapping two cores together - LOL.

    Nontheless AMD is still doing great with X2 chips, and I too can't wait to get one, since I think we all multitask non-stop, even if we don't realize it (AV, Antispyware, SETI, FAH, Word, IE, Firefox, Opera, Acrobat, ACDsee, Photoshop, Outlook, BT, eMule, ... and the we open a game on top of that). Just yesterday my A64 3200+ S754 / 1 GB RAM gave me real trouble with gazlion windows open, while writing my graduation paper. Had to restart the bastard, grrr.

  • Son of a N00b - Tuesday, May 10, 2005 - link

    TY for including OC results...

    maybe a whole 'nother article on this?

  • Quanticles - Tuesday, May 10, 2005 - link

    i think if ppl want AMD's prices to come down, then we should all pitch in and build a new fab for them
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