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

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: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.

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

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.

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.