Slashdot Mirror
Anand Reviews Athlon 64 FX-53
trickofperspective writes "Anandtech has a review of AMD's latest processor, the Athlon 64 FX-53. Long story short -- the FX-53 is a "very solid processor," but you'd be better off waiting a couple months for Socket 939."
Tom's review is here.
I am yet to see a very liquid (or even a gasous) processor. Wouldn't it be cool? Hey, if it would be cool, it would solve the thermal problem inherent to solid processors. Why not make them?
I had a conversation with a neophyte that was looking to "build their own computer" yesterday...He was obsessed with the idea that megahertz=performance...I tried to tell him that an FX-51, 52, or 53 would be a much better performer, all around, than any Pentium 4, "Extreme Gaming Edition" (as he put it) or not...but in the end, he was swayed by things like "Hyperthreading" and "Netburst"...AMD is having a hard time fighting against Megahurtz Madness and Buzzword Bufoonery.
You can always get a better piece of technology by waiting just a little longer--the only real reason to wait then is if the standard is going to change. If you buy this current chip, it'll be the best you can get right now. When they change to socket 939, however, you'll be stuck with what you've got--no upgrade for you!
It's always best to buy right when the standard changes, so that you have the ability to upgrade later if you want to. If you buy right before the change, you guarantee having to purchase a whole bunch of new stuff for the next upgrade.
Whooo! I can get one of these for 73 cents! :-P
Yeah yeah, I know what they mean, but that's some horrible wording.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
What they probably mean is the chip has the capability to set segments of memory with a do not execute bit, for parts of memory such as the stack. That reduces the amount of things that a hacker can do if he finds a buffer overflow to exploit.
It just means that it has buffer overflow protection integrated into the silicon. This is just good engineering practice rather than an Orwellian plot. The article just dumbed it down.
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
If you knew how the protection is done you woudlnt be so critical of it. The core of AMD's Enhanced Virus Protection is the a NX bit which specifies whether a page of memory is executable or not. This way, even if buffer overruns occur in that area of memory, it wouldnt be executed. I am not really sure how this is a bad thing.
My mom never taught me to sign.
So if I wait long enough, better, faster stuff will come out?
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
i think michaels computers had this processor in his systems for months now, this is old news ...
Intel is changing their naming scheme soon. You can find the article at:
http://news.com.com/2100-1006-5174895.html
Intel was forced into this due to the many variations of a chip with the same clock speed. It's also a good way for them to explain why their Pentium-m is faster than the Pentium 4-m.
Now who is going to have the first kernel which sets it all up properly to be secure? Linux? OpenBSD? FreeBSD? Or will it be that backward little company in Redmond who have major quality and security problems with everything they do?
I can't find anybody anywhere that is saying you won't be able to stick a 939 pin Athlon in an 940 pin socket. Plus, Opteron chips will still use the 940 pin platform. You'll be able to upgrade still if you buy now. The only downside is that you'll have to use Registered ECC memory.
I definitely don't need one right now, but in a year, when it is a mainstream product, I will find some excuse to persuade myself to buy one. By that time the OS (Linux of course) will have been very well debugged.
I wonder when the move to 128-bit will come?
As covered by arstechnica, there are also reviews at [H]ardOCP, Hexus, HotHardware.com, Sudhian, and The Tech Report. AMD's official announcement is here.
Skill is successfully walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls. Intelligence is not trying. -- Anonymous
Well since every other major architecture except IA-32 has NOEXEC or similar I would imagine that every Free OS has such code already, it might need to be ported and cleaned up but most of the work should already be done. Also XP SP2 should have it later this year.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
That's just lame.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
I don't get it. Why bother saying "you'd be best off waiting" for the next chip ? The Athlon FX-53 is a flagship chip. It's the currently fastest chip they do. If you want the highest performance, you would obviously buy it now. If you wait a couple of months then you don't want the highest performance. This is what this chip is for, here and now - the fastest available performance. Yes there will be a faster one in a few months but that just continues ad infinitum. If you lived by the rule of waiting for something faster to come out, you'd die of old age before you actually purchased the damn thing.
Been wanting to go back to a true Dual system, (my last was a Dual P3-800, My Dual P2-400 is my Linux box) Keeping an eye out on prices for a new modern Dual system compared to a fast AMD FX.
You can pick up a Dual AMD-2800 for about 500 bux for a barebones cpu's+mb+case (also uses PC2100 ram). Opterons for dual systems are ridiculously priced, 248's are about 900 bux each, and motherboard for 300, so about 2500 dollars for a basic barebones system. Dual Xeon 3.2's with 1meg cache are about the same price, but xeon motherboards are less "workstation" friendly, and more expensive. ( PCI-64 slots, etc)
Also with PCI-X gfx cards about to be released, a bunch of new motherboards will come out. And It looks like Socket 940 is going to be phased out later this year for Socket 939, so a FX buy might be a locked in purchase, with no upgrades. Which the Opteron uses 940, so I'm a little confused about the Opteron's upgrade path.
Hoping if I want 6 months, the prices for Opterons will be down enough to build a basic dual system, with PCIExpress, and at least 2+ ghz CPU's. Something that will be fast as an FX in gaming, but also have the dual cpu smoothness feel with power of running virtual machines and crunch numbers well.
The Xeon line is cheaper, maybe some new motherboards might come out and bump it up to the system im thinking about.
Tech Report's review tests the FX-53 against a total of sixteen other chips. Good reading if you've got a benchmark fetish, too.
Price. The price difference between some of these chips they're benchmarking puts them in different leagues. The FX-53 is NOT cheap compared to the 3200, but the P4EE makes them both look like chump change. This review looked like the output of a report generator (written by Macromedia I imagine), not a review.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
I know, I know, these silly review sites love to have these "longer bar is better" graphics, but let's look at this rationally.
Take the SysMark 2004 benchmark. The commodity priced Northwood 3GHz P4 clocks in at 176. This new Athlon gets a 199. Ooooh, longer bar! But what does it really mean? I means that the Athlon is ELEVEN PERCENT FASTER than the processor that's one notch above the absolute bottom end you can get in a Dell PC (3GHz, the bottom end is 2.8GHz). And the price is over THREE TIMES HIGHER. Is this worth it? Does it make sense?
The answer is no, *unless* you are simply looking at the 64-bit capabilities. If that's the case, then great. Otherwise I don't see why anyone would care about these benchmarks.
The Quantum Computers I've seen use a gas in a pressurized chamber with lasers to "read" and "write" the quantum states of the gas molecules. (Yes pedants, I realize this is far oversimplified, but I'm making a simple observation here) There is your gas processor, I suppose.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
Michael's Computers has had these for 2 years.
Hope this isn't a RTFAC (C=Carefully), but I don't see in this article if they specify the tests were done with a 64 bit version of the OS and 64 bit binaries for the apps, or just a 32 bit versions.
/think/ it would make a big difference benchmark-wise.. correct me if I am wrong.
Maybe I'm missing it, but in the "OS" category, they only say "Windows XP Profession SP1", no reference that I can see if it's a 64 bit version of the OS or not. Ditto for the apps.
My understanding is (with the current state of affairs, 03/18/2004) if you run to the store and buy an AMD 64 machine, you'll get a 32 bit version of Windows and apps.
But you only get the benefits of eg. >2^32 ram access IF you run a 64 bit OS and 64 bit apps.
Being able to access >2^32 of ram in an app is really useful for 3D rendering of very large projects (a business I happen to associated with), so if the tests are done with 32 bit OS/Apps, the benchmarks would seem to be not so useful for that purpose.
Considering this is a 64 bit processor being evaluated, it would seem lacking not to mention this.
Most folks in 3D evaling AMD 64's are sticking 64 bit os's on there right away (Suse, Gentoo, Fedora/Yarrow, etc), and doing tests with that.
Am I missing the part where they talk about 32 vs. 64 bit OS in these tests? I would
ps. With all those blinking flashing (*!&@# banner adds, it's often hard to RTFAC. I wonder, do schools now give reading comprehension tests in rooms with flashing lights and spinning graphics to simulate 'real world' scenarios? >;)
That's why i love flashblock for Mozilla / Fire*
http://flashblock.mozdev.org/
It lets you select exactly which flash banner / whatever on a site is displayed.
This is a must-have IMO
Thanks to this minor oversight in the design of IA-32, we have gone a long time without the benefit of hardware execute protection. There are software kludges that try to work around this (like working around the 386 bug with page write protection), but a hardware solution will be more robust and speedy.
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web