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Athlon64 Motherboards And Chips Compared
An anonymous reader writes "Just noticed that OverclockersClub has a new article (free, no reg, blah blah blah) that describes the AMD64 processors. The article talks about the differences in each processor and compares them as well as puts everything in a nice easy to read chart. Pretty nice article if you aren't familiar with all the new tech."
Makes a good match for
Johnny-boy's submission. He writes "HardwareZone has a 46 page article out that compares many of the Athlon64 motherboards out on the market now. If you are planning to get that Socket-754 motherboard, maybe this article is worth a look."
C'mon, we all know that the week we buy the latest gizmo it will be obsolete.
Unfortunately it never seems the "right time" to buy any chip. You buy a specific chip then they change the die size and you have a coffee heating device as a chip, or they update the core, or they bump up the speeds. It all comes down to if it's mission critical at this point and if you need a machine right now. And as far as bang for your buck, depending on the applications you are running AMD still keeps the lead...well sometimes
Well, Athlon64 does give you kick-ass performance. And it does so even if you run it in 32bit-mode. How is that different from G5? MacOS X is a 32bit OS as well. If you want to straight comparison of G5 on MacOS X (64bit CPU on 32bit OS), comparison to A64 on 32bit Linux of Windows would be suitable. Of course, you can run 100% 64bit system in Linux for example.
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Perhaps the only reason not to move to the AMD 64 platform is the entry price, currently. The early adopters will take care of knocking that down for the rest of us.
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I used to worry about sockets and the future.
Then I noticed that I never swap CPUs out anyway. Motherboards are cheap enough, I swap an entire motherboard with its CPU. In fact, usually I swap out entire computers.
Since we use all our computers, I usually build a complete new computer, get it working, swap it for the older one, and keep the older one handy for a while as a hot spare in case something goes wrong with the new one. Then later I find a good home for the older computer.
(Now that I'm buying Lian Li aluminum cases, I'll probably start swapping motherboards into cheaper steel cases, and putting new motherboards into the Lian Li case.)
But anyway, I might get a socket 754 motherboard and chip. It will outperform any computer I currently own, and it should have adequate horsepower to play Half-Life 2 and Doom 3.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
And I was actually looking into buying some oranges today, but I'm not seeing the price benefit compared to applesauce.
Or, to put it less obliquely, that's a strange comparison. A PowerMac G5 is for someone who wants a Mac. An Athlon64 motherboard is for... well, not someone who wants a mac.
Hope this helps.
P.S. The Athlon64 actually offers great price/performance in plain old 32-bit mode. It gets even better in 64-bit mode, but there's no reason to wait for ready availability of 64-bit software. Just as there's no reason to hold off on buying a G5 for a fully 64-bit MacOS.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
AMD's roadmap is simple: faster processors as soon as possible.
All you have to do is worry about how much computational power you want and how much money you want to spend on a CPU and motherboard.
Let's face it, if you hope to see an appreciable speed bump when you upgrade, buying a first-generation chip and plugging it into a first-generation motherboard with the expectation that you'll get that big speed bump when you plug in a second- or third-generation chip a couple of year's down the line is the wrong way to go about it. Yes, the new CPU will have a faster clock speed but the rest of the motherboard will be two years out of date.
Take my AMD Athlon motherboard as an example. When I bought it a couple of years back, together with an 1200MHz CPU (then the second fastest chip in the range), it had all the latest bells and whistles. But today, its support for USB 1.1, DDR2700 RAM and even PATA RAID make in far inferior to the vast number of motherboards out there that support USB 2.0, DDR3200 and 3500 RAM and SATA RAID, not to mention IEEE 1394 (FireWire), Gigabit Ethernet, better POST reporting, etc.(I won't even start to debate the performance benefits of newer nForce2 Ultra chipsets over their older counterparts.)
To match the features of the latest AMD Athlon/Athlon XP motherboards with my older motherboard I would have to add in at least two, maybe three or four, PCI cards. This would work, but it would be an inelegant (taking up valuable PCI slots), costly (PCI cards aren't free) and inefficient (PCI cards require drivers, configuration, etc) solution. Far better and cheaper to upgrade the motherboard along with the CPU in one go, allowing me to put the older motherboard and CPU combination into another machine/my spares box/the charity bin.
Seriously, when buying a motherboard and CPU, look past the upgrade path. It's a serious red herring, even for PC enthusiasts such as ourselves.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
There are still many tasks for which there isn't enough computing power for. Factoring large prime numbers, encoding/editing video, rendering 3D graphics, applying audio filters, etc...
Every time a newer/faster/better CPU comes out, someone says it is not needed for the majority of computing users. While that may be true currently, who would want to tolerate using a 386SX/16 today just because current 32-bit X86 proccessors are really just souped up 386s?
If you're happy with your old processor, keep using it. No one is going to take it away from you. Chances are, you'll start to see the benefit from more powerful processors and applications that take advantage of what they can do and you'll upgrade just as you probably have in the past. You're not still using an abacus are you?
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Actually, current DSPs aren't *that* fast. With x86 CPUs that have a *theoretical* performance in the order of 10 gflops, the DSPs have lost ground. Not only that, but they're much more complicated to program. Believe me, I'm doing all kinds of audio processing and if you give me a CPU that's 10x faster, I'll make use of it in a minute. There's still so many things you can't do right now with audio (even more true with video) because it would be too slow.
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Athlon 64 runs rings around a G5? Really? Have you got both to demonstrate this, or is this from reading reviews on the web?
I write DSP code, and i've got some very impressive results from a G5 when running code which previously gave less than exciting results on a G4. The G5 really is a class act.
I've not tested the code on an Athlon 64, but only on an Athlon XP 2500. DSP code tends to be FPU or memory bound, sometimes both in different parts of the algorithm so it is pretty good at giving a machine a proper workout.
My XP 2500 is running roughly at 2Ghz, and compared to a G5 at 2Ghz the Athlon takes around 50 to 100% longer to run the same tests. That's comparing a G5/gcc 3.3 build against a x86/VC7 build. Neither is the best compiler for the platform, but both are pretty useful, and possibly typical for currently released software.
I'd be very interested in running this build on an Athlon 64 - that'll still be a 32 bit test, but it would be interesting for me to see the benefits of the on chip memory interface. Rebuilding for 64 bits might take a while since the code is large (and ugly). Anyone with a spare 5 minutes willing to run a binary for me?
Have you never built a computer for someone, and put some of your known-good components into the machine, whilst upgrading at the same time?
I find this to be the single most efficient way to keep on top of technological evolution.
Someone wants a PC from me, they get a KT400 and AthlonXP, I get an Athlon64 and mobo to replace it. RAM, video and HDDs stay here until I need faster parts, or in the case of HDDs, they get dumped for being too small.
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Upgradability was a problem back when software demanded more than hardware
could provide, but now days, any computer you buy will have a processor
sufficiently powerful to be useful for the majority of needs. Also, computers
are so cheap that it rarely makes sense to put money into an older machine
when a newer, more powerful machine is available for about the same price
that it would take to upgrade the older machine.
Of course, special needs require special hardware considerations, but that
will never change.
*sigh* back to work...
This is why a new home-built computer should use a middle-of-the-road CPU and have exactly half of its RAM slots filled. Then, that computer is not only cost-effective at the time of purchase, but it has a single guaranteed RAM and CPU upgrade down the line.
Remember that CPU pricing is non-linear, where the current top-of-the-line generally has a very stiff price premium. One thing I did a while ago was to chart the price/MHz of a particular line of CPUs, then I bought the CPU right at the top of the linear range before the curve upward began.
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