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."

Comments

Don't get socket 754

[DarkHelmet]

Now really isn't the time to get an Athlon.

The 939 pin athlons are just around the corner, which is the migration path of most of the athlon sets.

754 series sets will still only have a single channel 128 bit pathway. It's not worth it.

Wait until the 939 pin, and get dual channel memory transfer in a non-FX Athlon64. Even if you're only getting half the cache (1 meg vs 512kb) on the 939 pin versions, chances are you will be able to overclock it more because it's a smaller die space.

46 pages... I wanted a motherboard review, not a dissertation :)

Re:Don't get socket 754

[lakeland]

And lemme guess, just around the corner from 939 pin athlons is ...

C'mon, we all know that the week we buy the latest gizmo it will be obsolete.

Re:Don't get socket 754

[eyempack]

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

Re:Don't get socket 754

[OverlordQ]

Humm I suppose I can't break off a pin to make my 940 Athon a 939 now can I? :)

Re:Don't get socket 754

[vollmerk]

Everything always gets outdated... I'm still holding out on getting a car. I figure I'll wait for one of those quantum teleporters...

Re:Don't get socket 754

[steveha]

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

Re:Don't get socket 754

[Sivar]

Socket 745 Athlons have a single 64-bit memory bus, not a 128-bit memory bus. (probably just a typo)

In any case, it is important to remember: Athlons are not Pentium IVs. Athlons do not have the performance hit that P4s have with lower bandwidth. Currently, very few applications care whether you have single or dual channel memory--the performance difference is in the low single digits. After Athlon64s significantly ramp up in clock speed, we wil begin to see a greater advantage of having more bandwidth, but not before.

Also, I wanted to note that currect 512K Athlon64s DO NOT have a smaller die space. They are more or less 1MB chips with half the cache disabled. Future revisions will actually cut out the cache, but for the time being AMD needed to market a cheaper Athlon64, and didn't have the time or money to modify manufacturing equipment to manufacture a third completely different die. That said, die space doesn't directly have anything to do with how overclockable a chip is.

Re:Don't get socket 754

[ctr2sprt]

The difference is that, because my computer uses all the same standards as bleeding-edge 32-bit equipment, I can upgrade all the parts and make it un-obsolete. With Athlon64s, however, it's much less clear that you'll be able to do that. That's all we're saying. Even moreso than when buying a regular computer, be aware that your Athlon64-based one may become difficult, expensive, or simply impossible to upgrade. And it may happen very soon after you buy it.

If you're willing to live with the increased risk, fine, go for it. If I felt any need to upgrade my computer, I'd probably fall into the group that's willing to risk true obsolescence. But a lot of people want as much security as possible, and those people should probably stay in the Land of 32-bit Words.

Re:Don't get socket 754

[PReDiToR]

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.

Re:Don't get socket 754

[Dan Ost]

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.

Re:Don't get socket 754

[MarcQuadra]

Sorry, but after the initial shakedown, AMD is pretty stable in terms of their sockets and backwards compatability. I've had very recent Athlon Bartons running in boards several years old, KT-133 based boards. Hell, my main workstation is a KT-266a from 2000 with an Athlon-XP 2500+ in it. The FSB for the CPU is rated at 333 and I run it at 266, but it still WORKS. It's not like Intel, where every CPU upgrade has you shopping for a new mobo, power supply, and heatsink. I think Socket-939 will be around for a LONG time, like socket-7 and socket-a were.

Re:Don't get socket 754

[Hoser McMoose]

What in the hell are you talking about?! The 64-bitness of these chips doesn't change upgradability in any way, shape or form!

It's not like you can take any old Pentium 4 motherboard and drop the latest and greatest processor into it. The first P4 boards were socket 423, then came the socket 478 boards that only supported 400MT/s bus speeds, than the 533MT/s bus speed boards. None of these are capable of supporting the current 800MT/s bus speed P4s, even if they share the same socket, and they certainly aren't going to support the LGA775 P4's that Intel will be introducing in the next 3-6 months.

If you want to buy a new processor you almost always need to buy a new motherboard and new memory to go along with it, particularly if you're talking about upgrading more than a year after the initial purchase. The Athlon64 doesn't change this one bit. Current Socket 754 boards will be supported for about another year with upcoming chips, socket 940 boards will be supported for at least that long with Opteron chips (which are the same price as the Athlon64 FX), and the first batch of Socket 939 boards probably won't support new chips produced more than a year into the future anyway.

Re:Don't get socket 754

[Mr. Piddle]

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.

Re:Don't get socket 754

[shamino0]

These days, hardware has way outpaced the software's ability to use it... I mean, when's WinXP for 64-bit Athlons coming out? This summer/fall or something? Why would you even consider buying hardware before the software is even available? Either wait, and the hardware prices of what you want today will drop, or get something cheaper (and in this case 32-bit, and save your money!)

Gee, this sounds familiar.

How many years were 286 systems shipping before anybody shipped a mainstream OS to take advantage of it? When OS/2, Xenix and other 286-savvy operating systems shipped, how many of us chose to stick with MS-DOS and use the chip as a fast 8088?

How many years were 386 systems shipping before anybody shipped a mainstream OS to take advantage of that? How many years were 386's and 486's available before the market finally decided to move from DOS to Win95 and WinNT?

So I don't think it's at all strange if the market ends up using 64-bit processors as little more than fast 386's (the way most use Pentium-class systems right now) for several more years before finally deciding to use a 64-bit OS. And this is the way it should be - the average user has more than enough processing power to do everything he needs - e-mail, web surfing, MS Office, etc. Why should they switch to something new and relatively unproven just because it will take better advantage of their new hardware?

Us /.'ers who like to live on the bleeding edge may decided to move now (probably using some flavor of UNIX), but the rest of the world will take much longer to make that switch. This is the way it's always been, and I see no sign of anything being different this time around.

Well.....

[agent dero]

I was actually looking into Athlon 64's today; and i'm not seeing the price benefit compared to a PowerMac G5.

Right now, there's no GREAT 64 bit OS out there (linux, forget XP 64bit) I think we should treat Athlon64 like MacOS 10.0 (sorry, i'm a mac guy) for early adopters only

Give it another 6 months, then it'll be a great server/workstation solution

Re:Well.....

[10Ghz]

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.

Re:Well.....

[steveha]

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

Re:Well.....

[Moraelin]

I'll give you a price benefit all right. I've built an Athlon 64 system, with a Radeon 9800 XT and 512 MB DDR400 RAM. I did keep most of my old computer components, like hard drives, DVD drive, etc.

It was less than _half_ the price of an 1600 MHz G5 Mac with a Radeon 9800 Pro (i.e. previous generation), 512 DDR 333 RAM (yep, slower), a smaller hard drive, etc.

Even after changing the Mac's DVD writer to a DVD/CDR drive, it still stayed more than twice as expensive, and offering far less horse power. Go figure.

And if I'm to factor in the cost of buying all my software again, if I were to "switch"... well, you get the idea.

So there you go. Maybe you can't see it, but half the cost for _more_ power, sure looks like enough of a price advantage to me.

Sometimes I wish I were stupid...

[jeeves99]

... then I'd have an excuse not to spend an hour reading this 46 page beast.

Am I the only one who is a little perplexed at the complexity of the AMD cpu roadmap? The constant barrage of codenames and pin settings is really becoming trying. A more solidified upgrade path with a set numbers of goals would be much appreciated.

Re:Sometimes I wish I were stupid...

[WIAKywbfatw]

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.

Speed for speed's sake

[ObviousGuy]

Back a few years ago, these speed increases really meant something. It meant the difference between waiting for the OS to finish some task and being able to use the computer without much noticeable latency. These days, the difference just isn't as staggering.

I will admit, though, that if you use KDE/Linux there are some things that could definitely use a speed-up like switching between apps and loading the GUI shell. However, beyond that, modern operating systems work just fine with today's processors.

The argument to this is always "what if you're doing serious number crunching or graphical rendering?", but the answer to that is that there are dedicated DSPs out there that can perform those computations much more efficiently than the CPU. Relying on the CPU to give good Quake framerates is like relying on your auto-body shop to soup up your ricer. Yes, there are some increases in performance, but the real horsepower behind these things lies in the video card and engine, not in the CPU and rice spoiler.

I'm all for improvements in chip technology, but software lags so far behind the capabilities of modern CPUs that it's preposterous to climb on the upgrade cycle, regardless of the circumstances.

Re:Speed for speed's sake

[Sivar]

I have to disagree.
First of all, games are not necessarily limited only by the video card. Certainly if you run the latest games in the highest resolution with 8x AA, your video card will be the bottleneck, but often times only these extreme situations make that true.

Morrowind, for example, doesn't really care much about your video card. If you have a Geforce 3, it is happy. It does, however, care about your CPU. If your CPU is not god incarnate, your frame rate will be limited, particularly in some of the more dynamic scenes. The fastest CPU at the time of release, the P4 2.53GHz, could not muster much of a frame rate regardless of video card.

Any 2D game will be CPU limited as well. Baldur's Gate 2 still chugs on some of the extremely large fights even on my AthlonXP 2500+.

In Starcraft, I assure you that my carrier attack will slow your frame rate regardless of your CPU. ;-)

Other than in video games, I am currently transcoding a Babylon 5 video from MPEG-2 to DivX (using Xvid) on my laptop. It is an Athlon64 3200+--the fastest laptop processor money can buy (well, strictly for video transcoding, the highest end Pentium IVs are actually slightly faster) and it takes about 6 hours for a 2hr movie, 3 hours for an episode. If I had a 20GHz Athlon64 it would still take forever.

To come to a point, yes, modern operating systems do tend to run fine on modern fast processors (with the possible exception of WindowsXP and anything running KDE or Gnome2 ::ducks::), but there exists quite a bit more software than old games and operating systems.

A few other examples:

- There isn't a computer on the planet fast enough to install Gentoo Linux quickly.

- FreeBSD's make world will be noticeable non-instantaneous for many GHz to come.

- Waiting for Visual C++ in Windows to compile... Well, anything at all, is not instantaneous even on an 8-way Xeon.

- Waiting for Regedit in Windows to search for a certain key or value will NEVER be fast on ANY computer. I don't know what search algorithm Microsoft chose for that thing, but it's damn slow for searching through just 10 or so megabytes of data.

- Anything ever written with SWING in Java. It was slow in 1996 and it's slow now. To avoid flames, I love Java as a language, but SWING is slower than a dead slug stuck in frozen molasses.

The opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the poster.

Re:Speed for speed's sake

[bluewee]

Just you wait till MS releases longhorn and your processor of today screatches to a halt...

Re:Speed for speed's sake

[jmv]

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.

Re:Speed for speed's sake

[Moraelin]

"Anything ever written with SWING in Java. It was slow in 1996 and it's slow now. To avoid flames, I love Java as a language, but SWING is slower than a dead slug stuck in frozen molasses."

That's funny.

I wrote a very complex Swing GUI in 1999, complete with highly customized look and feel, font anti-aliasing, and overkill use of graphics. Guess what? It ran perfectly ok on a 400 MHz K6-II with a TNT graphics card. Go figure.

Yes, Swing is _not_ newbie friendly. If you're clueless, Swing gives you enough rope to hang yourself, _and_ the guns to shoot yourself in both feet.

However, any half-competent Swing programmer should be able to get perfectly adequate performance out of it. Anyone who can't get it to work fast enough on an Athlon 3200+, no offense, but is one of those clueless burger-flippers who shouldn't have got hired as a programmer to start with.

Another article

[ValourX]

I wrote an AMD64 article a while ago... something a little simpler, for those not so technically-minded:

AMD 64 Explained

Someone said above that there are no good AMD64 OSes... bullshit... SuSE 9.0 AMD64 is more than usable, and FreeBSD 5.2 AMD64 is almost perfect; in fact I'm typing this from Mozilla Firebird on FreeBSD 5.2-RELEASE AMD64 right now.

-Jem

Re:Another article

[ValourX]

Almost the entire FreeBSD ports tree works just fine on AMD64, although some programs have to be compiled with -fPIC.

OpenOffice doesn't work yet because Java doesn't compile yet, but this will be fixed very soon as Sun is working on porting Solaris and Java to AMD64 right now. KDE, GNOME, and all associated programs work just fine in FreeBSD/AMD64. Grip, XMMS, Mozilla, Evolution, Bluefish... they all work perfectly.

-Jem

Would someone mind telling me the difference...

[double-oh three]

Would someone mind telling me the difference between the 939 pin and the 940 pin? What difference can that one pin make?

Re:Would someone mind telling me the difference...

[10Ghz]

939 = Single-CPU only. 512KB of L2-cache, 128bit mem-controller

940 = 1-8 CPU's. 1MB of L2-cache, 128bit mem-controller.

Re:Would someone mind telling me the difference...

[The One KEA]

The 939pin processors, which will be sold in single and dual-channel variants, will not require registered memory like the Opteron does. This means that they will be able to operate much faster and be much more overclockable.

Re:Would someone mind telling me the difference...

[Sivar]

Socket 939 will allow motherboard manufacturers to easily make 4-layer designs.
In English: Cheaper motherboards for the dual channel Athlon64s.

Athlons are efficient with their use of memory bandwidth, so current Athlon64s don't really care about the second memory channel much at the moment. It has a minimal effect on performance. However, since processor technology moves more quickly than memory technology, future 3+GHz processors will start to see a significant benefit from the added bandwidth. Of course, by then, DDR2 will be readily available so we'll just have to see how it all turns out.

Re:Would someone mind telling me the difference...

[Imperator]

Wow, the 941-pin socket must be really something!

Cheers, :)

Re:Would someone mind telling me the difference...

[Tarqwak]

Correction:
939 won't be 512 kB L2 cache only, the 939 pin Athlon 64 FX series will have 1 MB L2 and cheaper Athlon 64 will have 512 kB L2 (both will have dual channel memory controller), also 939 pin Athlon 64 will get 1 GHz HyperTransport bus, soon enough die shrink to 90 nm (currently 130 nm) and will not require registered/ECC DDR memory. It's been covered in The Reg/The Inq for many times.

940 pin Athlon 64 FX-51 was just rebranded Opteron, Socket 940 will remain Opterons domain, single channel DDR Socket 754 will be probably targeted for mobile and other low power devices.

Intel 90 nm Prescott core wont run on every Socket 478 mobo (because of the sky high current requirements) and next year you'll have to get a Socket T (775 pin LGA) mobo for newer Prescott or its successor Tejas core.

AMD went from: ... -> Socket 7 -> Slot A -> Socket A -> Socket 940 -> Socket 754 -> Socket 939

940 & 939 have a bright future.

Intel went from: ... -> Socket 7 -> Slot 1 -> Socket 370 -> Socket 370 (FC-PGA) -> Socket 423 -> Socket 478 -> Socket 478 (Banias) -> Socket 478 (Prescott) -> Socket T

Socket 478 (Banias) & Socket T have some sort of future.

IIRC

Athlon64 Motherboards And Chips Compared

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see the Motherboards are about 8 inches square but the chips are much smaller ...

Re:Comparison to a G5?

[jhunsake]

OS X is 32-bit. Nice try.

!opteron == no dual proc

[rsborg]

As much as I love AMD, I would recommend against the Athlon64 chipsets, unless you *must* have a 64 bit chip. What is interesting, however, are the Opteron chips, where you can easily buy a nice dual proc mobo that has some nice features. Of course, this will cost you ...and the price hasn't dropped in the past couple of months, too much :-(

Of course, 754 is being deprecated and all that, but I thought I'd put a word in for what I'd buy... if it weren't so damn expensive. *sigh* Will we ever have dual athlon64 goodness?

Re:!opteron == no dual proc

[runderwo]

As much as I love AMD, I would recommend against the Athlon64 chipsets, unless you *must* have a 64 bit chip.

Why? They are much faster at running even 32-bit code than Athlons. They dissipate less power. They have safety features built in to prevent overheating, and power throttling built in to prevent less wasted energy when idle.

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.

Are the apps there?

[leftie_hater]

Are there any apps that are 64 bits? Is there any reason at all to go 64bit?

Re:Are the apps there?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course.
Starfox 64
Mario Cart 64
Random Nintendo Franchise 64
Oh wait... for the computer then no.

Re:Are the apps there?

[ValourX]

Most open-source projects are now in the process of, or have completed AMD64 compatibility. I'm typing this from Mozilla Firebird on AMD64 FreeBSD 5.2-RELEASE. I have a whole bunch of programs from the Ports system that work perfectly... the ones that aren't ported yet are the proprietary clones, like the Flash plugin, GAIM, and Java. Opera doesn't work in 64-bit mode yet either, neither does TextMaker.

-Jem

Re:Are the apps there?

[viralburn]

Are there any apps that are 64 bits? Is there any reason at all to go 64bit?

The Far Cry game engine is being optimized for athlon 64.

No 64bit Linux OS???

[_Pinky_]

If I do recall there is a gentoo live CD out right now.. In fact the gentoo page has a Athlon 64 faq out here:
http://dev.gentoo.org/~brad_mssw/amd64-tech-note s. html
Now, like all new technologies, there maybe certains apps that don't work, compilations errors, and other problems... But how will they be fixed unless people try it, and send back bug reports?

Tired old flamebait argument

[Powercntrl]

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?

Re:BOW DOWN TO YOUR CORPORATE MASTERS

[Anonymous Coward]

> How these corporate leaders sleep at night without the urge to commit suicide is beyond me.

See 6 zeros after my bank balance would be a pretty effective suicide deterrent for me. ;-)

1 MKB of L2 cache!

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the side by side comparasion chart there's 1 megakilobyte of L2 cache on the 64-FX! With a gig of memory on die, no wonder it's so expensive.

CPU speed still matters

[poszi]

Back a few years ago, these speed increases really meant something.

There are still a lot of situations where faster CPU is great. I do scientific calculations for my work and, surprise, the faster the CPU, the quicker you get the results. Actually, cheap commodity PCs made a revolution in my field, where you no longer need an access to a terribly expensive supercomputer to do reasonable simulations.

I've got also a digital camera and image manipulation is very CPU intensive. Unsharp mask on a 6Mpixel file takes several seconds and if you need to aply it to hundreds of images, you can do the math. CPU is also important in ogg encoding, program compilation and just anything that takes 100% CPU if you check top.

Re:Comparison to a G5?

[Moraelin]

So the G5 has a 32 bit OS, which is obviously far better than the Athlon 64 having a 32 bit OS ;)

Not to mention that an Athlon 64, even in 32 bit mode, runs circles around a G5. But wait, at some point in the undefined future, there'll be some miracle IBM compiler and 64 bit OS for the G5, which makes it all faster. Just y'all wait and see. Unlike the Athlon 64, which, uh, is also waiting for a 64 bit compiler and OS to make it all faster.

Sometimes the logic of Mac fans is a bit too strange for me to follow.

Here's another idea: if a Mac is all you need, good for you. By all means, stick to your Mac. I'm genuinely glad that you found your dream computer.

But for some of us a Mac just doesn't fit the needs. E.g.,:

- Games. Yes, I know that you can buy a whole 20 games for the Mac, some of them almost 10 years old (e.g., Fallout), and some of them Solitaire clones that you can download for free in the Windows world. But some of us, you know, need more games than that.

- Price. Yes, the dual G5 is a nice computer, but the price I've paid to build my Athlon 64 3200+ computer, including a shiny new ATI Radeon 9800 _XT_, was a _third_ of that. Or half the price of a single processor 1600 MHz G5 with 9800 _Pro_. On account of keeping my old case, hard drives, RAM, PSU, etc.

And if I'm to add the price of buying all my old software again for a "switch", the price comparison is getting even more disastrous for the Mac.

So basically all I'm saying is: the right tool for the right job. For some of us the Mac is just _not_ the right tool. Our choice is simply "Pentium 4 or Athlon 64".

Athlon64 Coming Along Slowly

[gbulmash]

I wish I'd done more research on hardware compatibility, particularly motherboards, because installing 64-bit Linux has been a bitch. I'm only now getting to the point where I can have a fully-working installation without having to add in redundant devices to compensate for onboard chipsets that AMD64 Linux distros couldn't work with.

Nvidia Nforce drivers only got released in the last month so my onboard LAN on my ASUS SK8N works. Mandrake 9.2 RC1 recognizes my Promise onboard SATA RAID controller, but SuSE doesn't, and even then the driver in Mandrake is an 0.83 release.

I haven't played with the Fedora Core release candidate test version for Athlon 64 yet.

IMO, If you want to run 64-bit Native Linux on AMD64 without a lot of headaches and weeping, wait another 6 months until the distros and drivers have solidified more. In 6 months, you'll probably be able to get a CPU a generation or two higher than you can today, but for the same money, and you'll be able to install AMD64 native Linux much more easily... It's win-win.

- Greg

Re:Athlon64 Coming Along Slowly

[The One KEA]

The Ethernet/LAN driver issue is no longer a major problem - if you can find a distro which bundles a 2.4.23/2.6.0 or later kernel, it will include the new forcedeth driver, which is a clean-room reverse-engineered driver for NVIDIA Ethernet devices. It works very well, and I've seen lots of positive feedback.

Right now, though, you're probably right about the immaturity of 64bit Linux distros - IMO Gentoo is the one distro that is most likely to mature soonest on the AMD64 platform.

Re:Comparison to a G5?

[Cesare Ferrari]

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?

Re:Comparison to a G5?

[BenjyD]

Except that the Athlon XP-2500 isn't an Athlon64. It's a budget chip - it's around 65GBP here in the UK (probably $65 in the US, grumble grumble). I don't think you'd get very much of a G5 for that.
Just because they run at the same frequency doesn't mean you can compare their performance.

Feeling lucky?

[A nonymous Coward]

Which one?

Why the big fuss over 64?

[386spart]

Commodore already did it in the 80s!

Actually, there are a number of them already...

[sangfroid]

For example:

• SuSE 9.0 Pro for amd64.
• SuSE Enterprise Server 8 for amd64.
• Mandrake 9.2rc1 for amd64.
• Fedora Core1 test1 for amd64.
• Gentoo's amd64 info
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS & WS are available for amd64.

I've been using Gentoo's amd64 stuff for a little while on my new Shuttle Box. Things are generally good although there are still a lot of packages that are masked. KDE is also problematic which may be a turn-off for some people.

A colleague just got a new dual-opteron Workstation from Pogo and is running SuSE 9.0 pro for amd64 and is rather happy -- just about everything plays nicely.

Multimedia has significant problems on both systems. No flash player for 64-bit, mplayer and related multimedia requiring 32-bit codecs. Nvidia amd 64 drivers require some patching if they work at all, at least as of last wednesday.

Otherwise quite happy with all of these. Mandrake claims to have multimedia stuff working properly (see above link for info) but wants to eat my partition table so I haven't checked it out yet.

--
"Now you'll see why they call me the Velour Fog" --Zapp Brannigan, 25-star General & Cpt.

Off-topic, about Swing

[Moraelin]

Indeed. The full name is Moraelin F Asshole. F stands for "Flaming" ;)

But now seriously, it's not even about _my_ GUI. I know of other teams which have programmed Swing GUIs too. E.g., there's one big Swing-based enterprise front-end being built two floors up from my office.

I can't recall any of them having _Swing_ related performance problems. Performance problems with the database or the EJB back end, yes. "Swing is too slow" problems, no.

A Swing GUI may take milliseconds for the whole form to be painted, instead of micro-seconds for a native Windows GUI. But that's still orders of magnitude below what the user even starts to notice. And even further below what the user will call "slow".

Don't get me wrong. I'm _not_ a fan of Swing. It does have issues. As I've said, it is _not_ newbie friendly.

E.g., for a language (Java) whose claim to glory included automatic-dealocation via a garbage collector... Swing sure brings back precisely memory leaks and the need to de-allocate stuff manually. (Yes, those listeners.)

It also does require some expertise and some work to get that performance out there. E.g., if you add items one by one to a combo box, and they're lots of items, be prepared to spend _minutes_ before that loop completes. On the other hand, adding them all together, finishes in milliseconds. Better yet, write your own Model class for that combo box(sein' as Swing _is_ MVC based.) That'll work even faster.

So, to wrap it up, yes, Swing needs you to _work_ and _read_ to get a good program done. But then that's what programming is all about. And if you do your homework, yes, you don't need an Athlon 3200+ (nor a G5) to get adequate performance with Swing.

I'd expect anyone who's paid to code to a framework -- regardless of whether it's Swing, EJB, Struts, MFC, .Net or whatever -- to actually spend some time _learning_ what they're supposed to do. Learn the patterns (a.k.a. best practices) _and_ the anti-patterns (a.k.a. worst practices) _and_ spend some time thinking how and why and which apply to your actuall problem (a.k.a. design.) _Then_ jump into coding.

Programming is _not_ about randomly banging on a keyboard, and hoping that it'll eventually work.

It's not _that_ unreasonable a wish, is it?

If you're going to get a new MB to run Linux

[miracle69]

specifically, if you want Serial ATA, stay away from boards with the Silicon Image 3x12 SATA controller. IT IS NOT LINUX COMPATIBLE under modern distros. Silicon Image advertises it as LINUX COMPATIBLE, as they have binary only drivers for Redhat 8.

I was dissapointed that by Gigabyte K8A Pro motherboard had this chip on it and it DOES NOT WORK under Linux.

But otherwise, the platform is nice.

Tom's Hardware articles

[glinden]

Tom's Hardware has been running a great series of articles reviewing motherboards for the Athlon64. ExtremeTech also has a good review of Athlon64 motherboards. And AnandTech recently wrote up a useful AMD 2004 CPU roadmap.

I've been looking at this a lot lately since I was just about to build a new box. Ultimately, I decided not to go with a Athlon64 (too expensive for the limited benefit), but I did find reading all these articles useful in making that decision.

Re:AMD64 vs. Opteron

[avenj]

AMD64 refers to the architecture (formerly x86-64). The two chips are the Athlon64 (desktops and notebooks) and the Opteron (workstations and servers -- mostly SMP-land). The Opteron (besides doing SMP, at least if you have a 2xx, 4xx, or 8xx) has more memory bandwidth. The current Athlon64 FX-51 is pretty much an Opteron 1xx.

Re:AMD64 vs. Opteron

[Hoser McMoose]

AMD64 is an instruction set, or more specifially, it is a 64-bit extension to the IA-32 instruction set (which, in itself, was an extension of the 16-bit x86 instruction set, and so on). AMD64 often goes by the name x86-64, which is the original name for the instruction set early on in the development cycle.

The AMD Opteron is a processor that uses the AMD64 instruction set. It is designed for workstations and servers and can be used in a glueless SMP setup for up to 8 processors (>8 processors is possible but requires extra core logic chips to connect them together). It runs at clock speeds of 1.6GHz up to 2.2GHz (current top speed), has 1MB of L2 cache and 128-bit wide memory controller integrated onto the die, as well as 3 hypertransport links for interprocessor communication and I/O. It is marketed under model numbers such as 140, 246, 848, etc, with the first number indicating the maximum number of processors usuable in an SMP system (1xx chips for uniprocessor systems, 2xx for duals and 8xx for up to 8-way systems) and the second two numbers showing relative performance. Personally I am quite fond of this particular numbering scheme for the processors.

The AMD Athlon64 is another processor that supports the AMD64 instruction set. It is designed for desktops and mobile systems, so it will not work in multiprocessor configurations. Currently it runs at 2.0 or 2.2GHz with 2.4GHz chips on the horizon. They have either 1MB or 512KB of L2 cache, depending on the model, either a 64-bit or 128-bit memory controller (again, depending on the model), and are sold using two main model numbe schemes. The first is for the stock-Athlon64, which are sold as 3000+, 3200+, 3400+, etc. These numbers show a rough approximation of their performance as compared to an Intel P4 running at the 3.0GHz, 3.2GHz and 3.4GHz (AMD may not say this officially, but it's fairly obvious that this is the intention of the model numbers). I don't like this model number scheme too much, but on the other hand I don't find it any better or worse than the totally useless clock speed (MHz or GHz) rating that is traditionally used to sell chips. The second model scheme is for the Athlon64 FX line of chips, a chip targeted at the high-end "enthusiast" market (read: bratty kid gamers with too much of their parents money on their hands). These chips are sold as the Athlon64 FX 51 and the upcoming Athlon64 FX 53, with the numbers merely referencing the relative performance of the chips.

Hope that clears a thing or two up. For more information, RTFA!