AMD Athlon 64 4000+ & FX-55: A Thorough Investigation
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 19, 2004 1:04 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Microsoft Office XP SP-2
Here we see in that the purest of office application tests, performance doesn't vary all too much. The spread of performance here is around 6%, which is nothing terribly significant. While AMD continues to top the charts, Intel is basically on par with them here.
For doing the most basic work in Office, you'll find no real performance difference between a top of the line Intel and AMD machine. Head towards the mid range and you'll still find no real difference in performance, only in price.
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.
Here it's no secret that AMD is clearly on top in performance. What's
truly impressive is that the fastest Athlon 64 is able to complete the Mozilla
test in close to half the time of the Pentium 4 550. The performance advantage
the Athlon 64s hold over the Pentium 4s is impressive to say the least.
We continue to see that a dual channel setup gives the Athlon 64 around
a 5% performance boost. What is quite interesting is the 11% performance
improvement
thanks to a 1MB L2 cache that the 4000+ holds over the 3800+. What
this confirms is that the low memory access latencies provided for
by the
on-die memory
controller
of the Athlon 64 is largely responsible for the performance advantage
here. Looking at the 3.4EE we see that its large L3 cache is able to
make up
for the clock speed deficit, giving it the lead over the Pentium 4
560, further
confirming our statements on what matters when it comes to browser
performance.
Low latency memory accesses matter most here and AMD takes the crown. It is worth noting that you are generally going to be limited by the speed of your Internet connection when it comes to browser performance, however it is always nice to have the snappiest browser experience possible.
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 for. There are no extremely complex filters here, just pure batch image processing.
At 2.4GHz, AMD begins to take the lead from Intel, outperforming even the 3.4EE. The higher up the model number goes, the greater the gap continues to be. There isn't much of a performance difference between the three 2.4GHz chips from AMD, with the biggest difference actually being between the Athlon 64 3800+ and 3400+, or dual vs. single channel memory configurations for those feeling overwhelmed by model numbers. More cache doesn't seem to do much here, as these sorts of operations are largely bandwidth limited and exhibit very little temporal locality with respect to their datasets. We see a 6% gain in performance thanks to the dual channel memory controller of AMD's Socket-939 parts, which is about in line with what we've seen across the board.
The Pentium 4 530 does quite abysmally here, falling behind even the older Athlon XP 3200+. The rest of the Prescott line does appear to do much more reasonably, although at much higher prices than better performing AMD chips.
Ahead Software Nero Express 6.0.0.3
While it was a major issue in the past, these days buffer underrun errors while burning a CD or DVD are few and far between 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.
Winzip
Archiving performance ends up being fairly CPU bound as well as I/O limited. Here we continue to see AMD at the top of the charts, closely followed by the high end Intel chips. There's still a 5% performance difference between the single and dual channel 2.4GHz Athlon 64s, which we've been seeing over and over again. We don't see much of a performance boost with the 1MB cache of the 4000+, but the FX-55 does manage to slightly differentiate itself with its higher operating clock.
The Athlon XP does surprisingly well in this test, holding its own against the lower end Athlon 64s.
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. While the hard drive hid a lot of the shortcomings of the Athlon XP in WorldBench's WinZip test, they are all revealed in WinRAR's built in benchmark that is largely disk I/O independent.
Here the Athlon 64s show a huge advantage over the Pentium 4 processors, with the slowest Athlon 64 outperforming the fastest Pentium 4 Extreme Edition. The real world performance implications are somewhere in between what we've shown with WorldBench 5's WinZip test and the built-in WinRAR benchmark, needless to say the victor continues to be AMD's Athlon 64.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
89 Comments
View All Comments
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.