Athlon64 Preview: nForce3 at 2.0GHz @ anandtech

[jbond04]

Originally posted by: Sudheer Anne
of course NSF4 has to come in and bash on the pricing of the A64, so typical of him and his biases. Look we all know initial prices will be high, but things will level out and AMD will begin pricing these babies lower.

You do know that NSF4 was an Athlon fan before the P4 took the performance crown, don't you? I believe his "biases" lie within the best performer on the market. Intel doesn't look like they will give up the performance crown easily...Prescott won't be a pushover.

 

[Lyfer]

Make it fast, and make it cheap and the people will rejoice.

 

[DaveSimmons]

It will also be interesting to see how much single-channel will hurt the reasonably priced version of the A64, if it drops performance by 10% then the 2.0 A64 is down to matching the 3.0 P4 used in the review.

 

[Snoop]

Unreal2 and UT2003, what a joke. Those are some of the most inefficiently coded games on the market. Their system resource to eye candy ratio is so low its embarassing.

ok John Carmack

I assume you can point out to us some more advanced and efficient gaming engines currently on the market?

 

[mechBgon]

Keep in mind that being freed from R-ECC memory could add back some of the performance, too. The question in my mind is, will Athlon 64 FX require R-ECC or will it be happy with unbuffered non-parity?

 

[First]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons

Gaming is one area where our tests show Opteron at 2.0GHZ an amazing performer. When you find game benchmarks 10% to 20% higher, you are genuinely impressed. However, in some of the very latest DX9 benchmarks, Athlon64/Opteron was 40% to 50% faster.

Impressive, especially compared to Barton, but note that what the article implies is the "best P4" is a 3.0 GHz not a 3.2.

the older Quake 3 is about 10% faster on the 2.0GHz Opteron than it is on the fastest P4 that we have tested.

which you'd assume is a 3.2, but is just a 3.0 according to the test setup page.

So, the A64 at 2.0 seems to be competitive with a 3.2 P4, but not dominant in anything except Gunmetal. It's also seriously weaker in media encoding, at least until developers figures out how to optimize for it.

If the 2.0 really is sold and priced as a "3200+" it will be a good value. If they try to pass off a 1.8 as "3200+" and price it anywhere near P4 3.2 prices it will be the Barton "3200+" story all over again.

Competition is a Good Thing so I'm hoping AMD is going to take the A64 introduction as a chance to bring their ratings and pricing back to reality. Then maybe I can start recommending AMD again for speeds above 2500+.

The 2.0GHz CPU Wesley tested is not the fastest CPU AMD will be releasing this month, so it's comparison to the 3.0GHz P4 is more than valid. Though I understand your need for 3.2GHz benchmarks.

 

[Sid59]

ahh man. im really happy it's that expensive. I just put in my order for a barton rig... but those specs and benchies are making me drool. Ahhh the added speed of a 64bit XP... mmmm

 

[Bovinicus]

It seems to me that it is too early to tell what the final release product will be like. There are a few things that could potentially lead to the Athlon64 performing significantly better in the end: Further chipset tweaking, unbuffered non-ECC memory, and memory with lower latency timings. However, the reduction from dual-channel to single-channel could also hurt performance a little bit. We will just have to wait and see. That's how it always works...

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: dexvx

Originally posted by: mikecel79

Originally posted by: mechBgon
I read an interview with Tim Sweeney of Epic, and it sounds like there's no question at all but that there will be 64-bit-optomized games coming from his direction. His prediction was that a 64-bit version on 64-bit Windows would probably bring about another ~15% performance improvement as far as the engine side goes, although he commented that framerate will probably not jump that much due to bottlenecking by the video card side of the equation.

I'm not doubting that there will be performance improvements but you will need more than just a 64-bit version of Windows. Like I said you'll need 64-bit compiled applications to see a performance improvement.

Unreal2 and UT2003, what a joke. Those are some of the most inefficiently coded games on the market. Their system resource to eye candy ratio is so low its embarassing.

Frankly, I cant make heads or tails out of the new naming schemes.

What? Switch out of Software mode.

 

[draggoon01]

why don't all the graphs have cpu labeled?

 

[bjc112]

Originally posted by: Snoop

Unreal2 and UT2003, what a joke. Those are some of the most inefficiently coded games on the market. Their system resource to eye candy ratio is so low its embarassing.

ok John Carmack

I assume you can point out to us some more advanced and efficient gaming engines currently on the market?

While i disagree with his statements about UT2k3 and Unreal II, UT2k3 is simply unreal (no pun intended ) @ 1280x768 2x AA/AF.... I would have to say the Quake 3 engine is by far the most efficent and longest lasting engine... Look at the call of Duty demo, still has some hope.

 

[RanDum72]

:Q They kicked EVERYONE's butt on games...and at 2ghz. A 2.2-2.6ghz speed would be scary....

 

[Corporate Thug]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons

So, the A64 at 2.0 seems to be competitive with a 3.2 P4, but not dominant in anything except Gunmetal. It's also seriously weaker in media encoding, at least until developers figures out how to optimize for it.

10% lead in quake III
12.5% lead in ut2k3 flyby
24% lead in ut2k3 botmatch

those numbers seems pretty dominate to me

 

[ROcHE]

A64 at 3gz please.

 

[KDOG]

So what exactly is the Athlon FX going to be? Will it be Socket A or is that done?

 

[Dulanic]

Originally posted by: shady06

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons

So, the A64 at 2.0 seems to be competitive with a 3.2 P4, but not dominant in anything except Gunmetal. It's also seriously weaker in media encoding, at least until developers figures out how to optimize for it.

10% lead in quake III
12.5% lead in ut2k3 flyby
24% lead in ut2k3 botmatch

those numbers seems pretty dominate to me

Which honestly isnt a bad thing.... media encoding is usually one of THE first things to get optimized for new things like 64-bit Im sure it wont take long.

 

[ViRGE]

FX is Socket 940(the current Opteron socket), and the 3200+ is 754.

 

[KDOG]

So I'll be stuck with OC ing a 2500+ to get the fastest I can get on my current mobo.... BAH!!!

 

[Bonesdad]

I think fanboys on both sides can rejoice...hopefully this will keep the P4 prices down!!

 

[Pariah]

Overclocking a CPU to attain a clock speed that already exists (Opteron 246) in an attempt to predict the performance of a CPU that is not officially released and whose specs aren't even known yet? I thought Anandtech was supposed to be above such tabloid material.

AMD Zone tested a real 2GHz Opteron 246 on an NF3 board against a Pentium 4 3.2GHz and the gaming performance wasn't so suspiciously out of whack when compared to the other benchmarks. Out of 4 tests the P4 won 2 of them and lost a 3rd by .1fps.

Benchmarks: Codecreatures, Comanche 4, UT2003, Quake Arena

If you look at the AMDZone article you'll also see that OC'ing does have an affect on performance as the performance difference between the OC'd 2.2GHz Opteron and a stock 2.0GHz is sometimes greater than the difference between the stock 2.0GHz and stock 1.8GHz. Greater than linear performance increase would be quite an accomplishment for AMD.

 

[Regs]

I also think fanboys in either club can rejoice. We finally get to see the new generation of CPU's and the drastic improvements they will bring for new aged games and video tools. Seems like AMD is giving a good 2nd choice compared to the Intel's Prescott. If you can remember the large improvement the williecore had when they went to a 512k cache architecture, I can only imagine a 1 MB cache architecture.

Wait until they make a 64-bit OS and watch those encoding benchmarks sky rocket. (I think the article mentioned 20% increase, still not topping P4's, yet giving good competition)

430 dollars for a cpu is a little to steep for me. Even if I had the cash.... it just feels like I should be saving it for something else. That is just for the CPU; add that too what's going to be a 200 dollar nforce 3 set up, you're looking at a good 650 dollars. Not to say new aged technology was ever cheap, but at this point in time, is it really worth the money?

 

[dmw16]

Even AMD zone showed a victory for the Athlon64s. Although Anand showed a larger margin. Personally I have come to trust anandtech reviews and I would trust that he isnt trying to pull anything. I really cant wait to see AMD back on top as performance champs when the 64s hit. Even with 1000mhz advantage the P4 loses....excellent <fingers together ala Mr Burns.>

 

[Pocatello]

With prices like that for the Athlon 64, I'm going to keep my 2400+ Athlon system for little longer.

 

[thatsright]

While whetting the appetite of all AnandTech readers, this article is premature and a bit irresponsible. I wish the Athlon64 to overtake the P4/P5 in every respect, but to publish a A64 preview based on a entirely different chipset and CPU that won't even be available to consumers in 4-6 weeks; is really jumping the gun.

I read the preview and was impressed by the jump in performance of the OPTERON. The keyword here is, OPTERON not the Atholon 64. But to assume the same level of performance of an unreleased CPU & Chipset is leading readers astray. To be sure, the Athlon 64 CPU will be a landmark event in computing but I believe of even greater significance is to have a 64-Bit Operating System; n&eacute;e Windows XP 64. (The classic case of putting the chicken before the egg.)

BTW, you know how you get that enraged feeling when hearing about scalpers who rip folks off outside ballparks selling $40 tickets for $700 or so to a playoff game or something. Wait another 18 days and go on eBay and I'm sure you'll see prices hitting around a grand for the FX A64 versions as those gougers try to scalp their little nuggets of gold.

 

[Regs]

That's right, thatsright. Most of us aren't going to be jumping the gun either to buy a 700 dollar (cpu + mobo + ram =$$$) CPU set up until we find out what it can really press out. I find it unlikely however that AMD will put out a processor slower then what currently the Opteron can benchmark.