AMD's Athlon 64 X2 4800+ & 4200+ Dual Core Performance Preview
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 9, 2005 12:02 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Final Words
Now armed with final silicon, our stance on AMD's Athlon 64 X2 doesn't change at all - AMD clearly has the faster overall dual core desktop solution, but at a price that will be out of reach for most users. Eventually, AMD's pricing will fall to a level that is far more reasonable, but unfortunately, that time won't be until 2006 at the earliest. We've already looked at the slow dual core vs. fast single core debate, but be prepared to be put in that very position later this year as both AMD and Intel bring their dual core CPUs to market at very different price points.What we did find interesting was that while AMD generally maintains a large performance advantage in single threaded applications, our multitasking scenarios were a mixed bag of results between AMD and Intel. The multitasking gaming tests were obviously very strongly in favor of AMD, but the general usage tests were more mixed between AMD and Intel. In many cases, Intel's Pentium D actually pulled ahead in terms of performance.
Also, in our multitasking tests, there were a couple of cases where we saw no major performance difference between the Athlon 64 X2 4800+ and 4200+. It was mostly in the single application (both single and multi-threaded) that we saw the most noticeable performance difference between the two CPUs.
The other thing we continue to see is that dual core with Hyper Threading in these multitasking environments is very much the double-edged sword. There are some situations where having both Hyper Threading and dual core gives Intel a huge performance boost, but there are others where the exact opposite is true. As it currently stands, we're not sure how much of a future Hyper Threading will have in future Intel architectures - but it's definitely not a sure win.
With the last of our product-specific dual core previews out the door, now we all play the waiting game. But with both AMD and Intel pushing dual core heavily, we can only hope that the wait won't be too long - especially from the standpoint of improving software support for dual core systems. Today, we're able to show some very tangible performance gains for dual core CPUs in multitasking usage environments, but in the future, single application performance should get a very tangible performance boost as well.
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xsilver - Monday, May 9, 2005 - link
#33 ..agreed..If anything I think AT is more biased towards AMD, not intel
and #32, there is a well known fact that in scientific testing, if you already have a bias towards one outcome (read: amd fanboi) then your results will subconciously show what you set out to say.... that's why in real scientific tests, also known as a "double blind" test, the testers dont know what they are testing and the subejects dont know what they are using ....in this case the subjects are the cpu's so they cant talk :P
wien - Monday, May 9, 2005 - link
#32 Wow... just. wow.crisagatie - Monday, May 9, 2005 - link
This is another Inteltech bullshit. After X2 beating Intel hands down in all tests and benchmarks, these guys put up a bag of their own tests (multitasking scenarios) toped by Intel in every single one. Then they say the results are "a mixed bag", with Intel and AMD performing equally...You, Anandtech guys, read the reviews all over the Internet! And try believing: Intel sucks! X2 is by far the best performer (even X2 4200+), being at the same time a cheaper option to Intel D 840 and EE.
Viditor - Monday, May 9, 2005 - link
As to availability, I note from the Dell site that the EE 840 isn't available till June 15th either...For applications, I noted in Tech Report's review that they did some very good graphs illustrating results on a thread-basis, and they included the dual Xeon 3.4GHz. It appears that for rendering workstations, the 4800+ blows the doors off of the dual Xeon, at a fraction of the price...
This just caused me to contact a friend who put a big hold on 12 new workstations he was ordering!
Samus - Monday, May 9, 2005 - link
Anand, did you happen to do any overclocking with the X2? If so, were the results simular to typical single-core 90nm?I'm sure there is some headroom and 2.6GHz can be achieved with the X2, which would make it untouchable if it scales accordingly.
Zebo - Monday, May 9, 2005 - link
#20 dude uncool. there is kids here besides I could'nt fiqure out your point anyway? Did you hate it or love it?phaxmohdem - Monday, May 9, 2005 - link
#27 your dead wrong.....I"m a f*cking idiot :)
RadeonGuy - Monday, May 9, 2005 - link
#20 your a idiotDeftNinja - Monday, May 9, 2005 - link
^ Probably because you are a cunt.AnandThenMan - Monday, May 9, 2005 - link
Scratch my comments about no power consumption tests. How did I miss them? *scratches head* ?????