AMD Athlon 64 4000+ & FX-55: A Thorough Investigation
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 19, 2004 1:04 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
The Battle for Value: Athlon 64 3200+ vs. Pentium 4 530
In a review of processors selling for close to $1,000, it's important to look at some of the more affordable CPUs to see how they stack up against each other as well. With the introduction of the first 90nm Athlon 64 parts, AMD has been able to bring the Socket-939 Athlon 64 CPUs down below $300, making for an interesting value comparison.
Using our RealTime Pricing Engine we found that for just over $200 you could either have an Athlon 64 3200+ or a Pentium 4 530 (3GHz). While this doesn't take into account motherboard cost, 925X boards and Socket-939 boards are in the same general price ranges. You can get a Socket-939 nForce3 board for $133, and you can get an ABIT 925X board for $150.
So the question becomes, based on our plethora of benchmarks, which CPU do you buy? In order to find out, we'll break down the benchmarks by category once again.
In our Business/General Use tests, the Athlon 64 3200+ won 6 benchmarks, tied in 1 and lost 3. In the 6 benchmarks that the Athlon 64 3200+ won, its average win percentage over the Pentium 4 530 was 17.6%. In the 3 that the Pentium 4 530 won, its average win percentage was also a hefty 9.6%. Overall it would seem that the Athlon 64 3200+ is the better buy for Business/General Use, although the Pentium 4 did manage to outperform it in some tests.
In our Multitasking Content Creation tests, the Athlon 64 3200+ won 2 benchmarks and the Pentium 4 530 won 3 benchmarks. In the two benchmarks the 3200+ won, it outperformed the 530 on average by 12.8%. In the three benchmarks the 530 won, it outperformed the 3200+ by 10.2%. Although the Athlon 64 won fewer benchmarks here it won by a larger overall percentage so we'll call this one a draw.
Next up is Video Creation/Editing and Photoshop performance, where the 3200+ won 2 out of the three tests by outperforming the 520 by 22.8% on average. The Pentium 4 won one test by a margin of 2.5%. The clear winner here is AMD.
Audio/Video encoding gave the Athlon 64 two wins at an average of 11.9%, while the Pentium 4 530 had 3 wins at an average of 11.3%. Given the virtually equal performance wins with a slight difference in the number of wins, we'll call this one a slight victory for Intel.
If you're a gamer, the choice is clear, the Athlon 64 3200+ won 10 out of 10 gaming benchmarks with an average performance advantage of 13.9% over the Pentium 4 530.
In our 3dsmax 3D rendering tests, the Athlon 64 won twice while the Pentium 4 one once. However the one test the Pentium 4 won in was actually a composite of 4 separate 3dsmax tests which we also included in our results. The Athlon 64 advantage in its two wins was 7.7%, while the Pentium 4 advantage in its wins was an average of 7%. With 4 actual victories over AMD's 2, our recommendation here would be leaning more strongly towards Intel but the win is definitely not clear cut.
Finally in our workstation tests, the Athlon 64 won 7 benchmarks, the Pentium 4 won one by 1% and failed one. The performance advantage here was an average of 8.4%, giving the advantage to AMD.
In the end, here's our scorecard for the Athlon 64 3200+ vs. Pentium 4 530:
Business/General Use - Athlon 64 3200+
Multitasking Content Creation - Tie
Video Creation/Editing and Photoshop - Athlon 64 3200+
Audio/Video Encoding - Pentium 4 530
Gaming - Athlon 64 3200+
3D Rendering with 3dsmax - Pentium 4 530
Workstation Performance - Athlon 64 3200+
Depending on your usage our recommendation may vary, but the best overall performer at the $200 price point appears to be the Athlon 64 3200+.
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val - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link
for me is AMD unacceptable until there are good chipsets. All i have ever seen or had in my computers was big garbage with permanent problems and mysterious difficulties.Even SIS chipsets looks much better for intel than SIS for AMD. Its not anymore about CPU, CPU are fast for many tasks and that few percent of price or performance makes no deal, but overall quality talks strongly for Intel.
Save your time AMD fanboys to reply me something like that your AMD platform runs perfect and you had problems with intel and so on, its cheap and cannot anyway motivate me for change.
And yes, i have 2 AMD and 2 Intel computers and many i had or seen before (at home, work, school, projects, customers).
Gnoad - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link
3GHZ! Wow, I already was an AMD fan, but that just totally blows me away. Crazy stuff.GoHAnSoN - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
nice article. Thxcoldpower27 - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
Very nice, I await the day AMD releases a 3GHZ Athlon 64. These processor are niced but priced in a range where volumes are rather low, they have nice bragging rights though :PDa DvD - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
3GHz on air :SAMD's really out of trouble for the coming year(s)
I can imagine K8@90nm scaling well beyond 3GHz...
(lol, or even top Prescott clockspeeds? That would be insane..)
Wesley Fink - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
#30 and #43 -Once AMD informed us that strained silicon was used in the FX55 I couldn't resist a bit of a run with overclocking the FX55. The nForce4 Reference boad is not really intended or designed for overclocking, since it doesn't have any CPU or memory voltage adjustments. However it does support a wide range of multipliers so I could try a few settinngs.
I had no probelm at all running at 14.5X or 2.9GHz at default voltage. At that speed I ran quite a few benchmarks and a Quake 3 of 604.2 FPS. The FX55 actually booted at 3.0GHz but it never made it through a stable XP boot. I suspect with just a bit of CPU voltage 3.0GHz would be possible with the FX55 on air. All cooling was just the new AMD stock fan which now includes copper fins and heat pipes.
verybusy - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
There is some FX55 and 4000+ overclocking info at http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.cfm?page=2&...Assuming that my request from above is granted regarding other overclocking of 3500+, 3200+ and 3000+, I'd like to see just how overclocking turns out with the retail heatsink and fan. I hope that's not too much of a request.
Thanks...
verybusy - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
I liked the review of the Athlon 64 4000+ and FX-55 and it was nice to see it compared to the other Athlon 64 3200+ and 3000+ processors running at stock speeds.Unfortulately, with this review following so closely behind the 3500+ and 3000+ review (.09 Athlon 64: Value, Speed and Overclocking), it would have been very useful to see the 3500+, 3200+ and 3000+ overclocked to 2.6GHz as well. Afterall, the .09 3500+/3000+ @290x9 is faster than the FX53 (2.4GHz-1MB) err I mean Athlon 64 4000+). The overclocked 3500+, 3200+ and 3000+ could be pretty much as quick as the FX55 couldn't it?
That's what I want to see anyway.
ViRGE - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
#39, Anand mentions that it's multiplier locked.Zebo - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
Guys the 3400 newcastle is a way underated chip. It should have been, by all rights, called a 3600. I guess they did'nt want the 3500 to look bad agains a "old" 754 newcastle though.As for the review, total AMD performance domination at low relative speeds temps and power consumption.:) Youd have to be a fool to buy intels netburst crap right now.