General Performance and Media Encoding
Winstones follow an expected pattern with Business Winstone 2004 performing about the same as a similar speed single core CPU. Multimedia Content Creation, however, has some components which benefit from the improved multitasking of the dual-core CPU and it performs better on the dual-core processor. Both Winstones scale very well with CPU speed, so we see a sizable boost in performance at the overclocked 2.7GHz setting.
PCMark2004 is astonishingly sensitive to the multitasking advantages of the dual core 4200+. At stock speed the 4200+ outperforms the higher speed 4000+ by over 35%. PCMark2004 has performed best on the Intel platform in the past, but that advantage appears gone with the launch of the dual-core Athlon 64. We were unable, however, to get PCMark2004 to work at overclocked speeds on the X2 processor. Tests would run, but PCMark04 refused to generate a PCMark2004 score even at modest overclocks. Since Futuremark is preparing to launch PCMark2005 shortly, we suspect this anomaly will be corrected in the new version.
Our AutoGK 1.6 Media Encoding benchmark dramatically shows the impact of Dual-Core on Encoding speed. Comparing the 4200+ to the higher speed single-core 4000+ we find encoding jumps to 68.6 FPS from 48.5 on the single-core. This is a 41% performance improvement. Overclocking the 4200+ to 2.7GHz raises the encoding speed to 82.8 FPS.
Media Encoding was one area where Intel continued to enjoy a small advantage, but it certainly appears the dual-core Athlon 64 will be an excellent choice for media encoding.
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Viditor - Thursday, June 23, 2005 - link
"$500 would get you started on an Intel i955 motherboard and cpu, so why would you invest in the end-of-the-road on AMD socket 939 and old DDR1? It's crazy"Because we're more interested in computers than space heaters? :-)
porkster - Thursday, June 23, 2005 - link
$500 would get you started on an Intel i955 motherboard and cpu, so why would you invest in the end-of-the-road on AMD socket 939 and old DDR1? It's crazy..
dumbnewbie - Thursday, June 23, 2005 - link
Can anyone speculate as to when a <12" laptop would be made with a dualcore (if at all)?LoneWolf15 - Thursday, June 23, 2005 - link
Would have been nice to see the X2 4400+ in this mix too. It would answer several questins:a)Do the 1MB caches make it harder to overclock, or does it still go as high as the 512k models?
b)Will the extra cache make for a worthwhile performance increase over the 512k model for the extra $50 or so, and if it does, which apps could benefit the most?
I think most of us won't be able to afford the $800-$1,000 chips, but if you're going to spend for the 4200+, you might consider spending the extra for the 4400+ if it yielded more benefits. It'd be worth knowing.
cryptonomicon - Thursday, June 23, 2005 - link
hmm, this isnt that interesting, except it shows that the chip can OC... but its logical to assume it could hit the 2.5-2.8ghz ceiling like most a64s on the market right now. it would have been impressive if it did 3g.now the more interesting thing was the TCCD overclock. to me this indicates that AMD has worked on creating a much more robust memory controller. that was the main weakness of the a64 chip, and with it improved, some amazing ram OCs will be possible.
yacoub - Thursday, June 23, 2005 - link
So is a 4200+ running at 2.64GHz a 5000+? :)Does that make a 4400+ at similar speeds a 5200+?
yacoub - Thursday, June 23, 2005 - link
*about to turn to Page 2*Sweet! I hope they stick Rome: Total War in their gaming test comparisons! I'd love to see if having a dual-core chip runs the game smoother during large battles, as that would directly influence my coming PC upgrade.
*skips ahead quickly to Gaming Performance page and looks at game titles on charts*
Oh well, maybe one day... =\
ceefka - Thursday, June 23, 2005 - link
Like Dubb said, it would be interesting to see how these X2's stack up against 2 CPU (Opteron and Xeon) workstations.I like the idea of a 4400+ in my new DAW. An X2 with the right chipset should be able to handle massive loads of multitrack audio, not just 5.1.
Wesley, can you do a Thonex in the next dual-core Intel vs AMD comparison? A 2-3 year old PC would be brought to its knees, it's quite a heavy thing. The point is to get that whole load to play at the least possible latency and compare CPU-loads. Please include a nF3 board also when you do get to this.
Diasper - Thursday, June 23, 2005 - link
Aboput my point earlier - of course at this stage it may be somewhat problematic to check against all those questions as alot of things eg gaming will be testing only 1CPU etc - but suffice to say some sort of projections should be able to be made when we might have a game drawing on both CPUS simultaneously.A challenge :)
Any game demos for dual cores out there to test against?
MAME - Thursday, June 23, 2005 - link
you should have included a stock 4800+ to the benchmarks for a good comparison