AMD's Socket 939, Athlon 64 FX-54 amd 64 3800+

BudKnight writes "It looks like AMD is launching four new desktop processors, a new core, and a new socket infrastructure today. HotHardware has tested AMD's two new flagship processors, the Athlon 64 FX-53 and the Athlon 64 3800+. The new FX-53 no longer needs registered memory to function and the 3800+ has only 512K of cache, but it gets an upgraded 128-bit memory controller. The usual suspects also have reviews posted as well - TechReport, Hard|OCP, Beyond3D - more are sure to follow."

Comments

No 64bit scores

[brejc8]

One silly thing about review sites comparing AMD64 to anything else is that they are still running them in 32bit mode. I found running in 64 bit mode gives you about 20% improvement in general code.
When running guile working on very long integer operations we got a _6_ times improvement. Our simulations dropped from taking an 66 minutes to just over 11 minutes.

Re:No 64bit scores

[MrRuslan]

Due to lack of commericial 64 bit code they run 32 bit code cause thats what evryone runs in the real world and it still kicks ass. AMD is not joking around anymore and comming out with good stuff like this.This is the first time I seen something "backwards compatible" thise good.

Re:No 64bit scores

[Piranhaa]

That is true, however the average consumer WILL NOT be running 64-bit until Windows does get its 64-bit edition running perfectly and shipping with it. Although I do think they should have at least benchmarked it with some type of *nix for 64-bit...

Re:No 64bit scores

[WegianWarrior]

Since just about anything else avilable today (at least to general consumers) are running at 32 bit (disregarding the fact that it's still possible to get hold of 16 bit and 8 bit chips off course) it make damn good sence to compare the new AMD64 to other chips while running it in 32 bit mode. Otherwise, you would be comparing apples and oranges... since no other CPU runs in 64 bit mode.

Could be interesting to benchmark a AMD64 in 32 bit mode against a AMD64 in 64 bit mode thought... that would say a lot about how much there is to gain in going to 64 bit mode in the first place...

Re:No 64bit scores

[brejc8]

Incase people are intrested here are the scores of scibench2 for a load of machines in our office.

Athlon64 3200 64: 523.70
Athlon XP2700: 467.15
Athlon64 3200 32: 449.07
Athlon XP2600: 448.42
Pentium4 3.0GHz: 387.57
Athlon 1400: 305.26
AMD Athlon 950: 209.51
Sparc 500MHz: 52.21
Sparc 440MHz: 51.89

Re:No 64bit scores

[swillden]

Otherwise, you would be comparing apples and oranges... since no other CPU runs in 64 bit mode.

By that logic, when a processor comes out with a new multimedia extension, or an increased L1 cache size, or a deeper pipeline, or a more efficient instruction scheduler, we should do comparisons with the new feature turned off, because no other CPU has it.

The real reason these chips were tested in 32 bit mode is because the testers ran WinXP on them for the tests. This is reasonable in that it's what most potential purchasers of the processors would be running, not because it's a more valid comparison against other 32-bit chips. If the most common software were available in 64-bit versions, it would be unreasonable not to use that and let the AMD64 chips show their full capability. (Assuming the software would run faster in 64-bit mode, which isn't necessarily true).

Users of more flexible software would find it interesting to see how their favorite tools run in 64 bit mode, of course, but that's a smaller audience, so those tests will come later.

Too long.

[Piranhaa]

It's a really good idea AMD is finally making the transition to dual-channel non buffered memory. They really should have done this a LOT sooner, before consumers started getting adjusted to the other socket, so they wouldn't have to replace their board when upgrading to the newer chip.

Re:Too long.

[swordboy]

so they wouldn't have to replace their board when upgrading to the newer chip.

Who still does this?

I've never upgraded without swapping both the processor and mobo. This isn't a troll but rather just curiosity - I'd like to know if there is any significant percentage of non-gamers that upgrade *only* the processor. I'dathunk that the "processor bottleneck" was just a myth.

I actually underclocked my Athlon 1800+ because it ran much cooler/lower power without any noticeable decrease in average usage habbits. Now, moving from a 5400rpm hard drive to a 7200rpm unit was a huge upgrade. I can't wait for cheap, desktop-oriented 10k and 15krpm units.

Re:Too long.

[sumdumass]

The AMD64 platform design was released several years late and amd had to honor obligation with manufacturers that had already invested time and effort in the r&d based on the specs it issued before the delays. Once most of these "proto-type" boards (or whatever you will call them) were reasonably sold out, they could go ahead with thier advancments they discovered along the line.

It sounds like the consumer got the raw end, but in reality it allowed the motherboard and chipset manufacturers to have a sence of confidence and time to develope working designs for the newer socket. It is a win-win type situation except for those that bought with the intention of upgrading. But then again most people in that situation (like me) would have been reading about the new socket when researching whether or not to get one and made a decision to live with it. Others would be just getting it for a system that would last a while bfore buying another.

Ceramic vs Organic packaging

[danormsby]

Anyone got a definition on what the "Organic" packaging on the new Socket 939 processors is and how it compares with the previous ceramic packaging?

I guess it isn't wicker based.

Sockets again

[tronicum]

I wonder how often they will introduce new sockets for just a bunch of CPUs.

939 will not support dual CPUs, after all that "Slot A", Socket 7xx/9xx nonsens you cant just buy a board and hope to upgrade the CPU. They change the memory systems, introduce new bus systems (graphic : PCI->AGP->PCI-X/PCI-Express).

Anyway I like my Athlon64 and at least the TDP (Thermal Design Power) of the new CPUs does not rise....

Bah!

[hendot]

Sounds like a ripoff to me. You pay $x for a new cpu and they don't even give you the full 940 pins :p

Tinfoil anyone?

[Gothmolly]

IANACD (I am not a CPU Designer), but I'd imagine that they're redesigning these things for a reason, NOT just to screw users and force an upgrade cycle. Intel did the same thing with their CPUs, and IBM/everyone did the same when they went from 30 pin to 72 pin SIMMS, then to DIMMS, then to DDR DIMMS. Was this all a vast Taiwanese component manufacturer conspiracy? I somehow doubt it. When it first came out, the PCI bus was limited to 3 slots due to physical 'ring' characteristics on the signal lines. Some propeller-heads at HP figured out a way to get 4 slots, and everyone ooh'd and aaah'd over it. Nowadays we have more slots due to bridge chips, are we going to complain that those pesky motherboard manufacturers keep updating their chipsets?
Are you also angry at the music industry cabal that forced everyone to upgrade from vinyl to 8-track to cassette to CD to DVD ?

Schernau's 2nd law: bolding part of your post actually detracts from your argument

Anandtech review

[Karamchand]

Review on Anandtech! (I like them for their print view:)

More review links

[JaF893]

Here are some more review links for those who are interested:
Tom's Hardware
Bit-Tech
Driver Heaven
AMD Zone
Hard Tecs 4U
PC Perspective
Ace's Hardware
Sudhian

Aceshardware Review

[hattig]

AcesHardware found that disabling the 2T memory timing in the BIOS improved S939 performence by over 10%. The only limitation with this is one DIMM per memory channel.

A lot of reviews you read today will not be using this, and the results will therefore be significantly lower than what is possible.

Compile performance!

[IceFox]

Something I personally look for and most of the time isn't included in any reviews I was presently surprised to find in anandtech's review a Quake compile test!

http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=2065&p =12

It doesn't specify what compiler or platform was used, but at the bare minimum it gives a little glimpse of what you might be able to achieve. Now all you have to do is apply that to a price/performance graph to determine what and how many you want to buy.

-Benjamin Meyer

Re:Compile performance!

[HarvardAce]

From a previous guide, a brief description of their build process.

As introduced with our Athlon 64 article, we are looking at compile times for the Quake III Arena source code. In running this test, we compiled the source for both Q3A and Q3TA in both debug and release modes using the Batch Build feature of Visual C++ 6.0. The build was run three consecutive times for each processor (in order to try to reduce file read time impact), and we used the third compile time.