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First Looks at Athlon 64 4000+ & FX-55

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the chips-and-bits dept.

CrzyP writes "AnandTech.com has benchmarked the new "Athlon 64 4000+ and the FX-55" in various areas including business application performance, audio/video, gaming, and much more in this first look at AMD's newest 64bit chips. Just after AMD's announcement, AnandTech posted this article to help consumers choose between Intel and AMD."

22 of 235 comments (clear)

  1. I wonder by robslimo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    With Intel having recently backed off on the effort to push clock rates ever higher, is there a plateau in sight for AMD? Will we not see anything between 5 to 10 GHz with today's techniques?

    Maybe it'll take optical computing to spur the next clock push.

    1. Re:I wonder by iggymanz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      clock speed isn't the only way to do more work in less time, and get better balance with the current bottlenecks getting to memory & i/o -- time for some new architectures, instead of the same old stuff with smaller transistors and higher clock speeds

    2. Re:I wonder by Martin+Blank · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Indeed. AMD's designs didn't scale as well speed-wise, so they had to get more creative to get better performance out of their chips. Improving their branch prediction, boosting FPU speeds, enlarging the cache, and improving the data bus were all methods that Intel would go back to from time to time, but usually with some reluctance.

      --
      You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
    3. Re:I wonder by swordboy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      With Intel having recently backed off on the effort to push clock rates ever higher, is there a plateau in sight for AMD?

      There's some information to be realized:

      AMD uses IBM's Silicon on Insulator (SOI) technology. This reduces power consumption by a very large degree. It is rumored that Intel tried to license the technology but, IBM and their fondness for cross-licensing, wanted too much (probably an x86 license). So Intel has been pushing out chips with standard silicon fabrication techniques at the expense of tremendous power consumption.

      My guess is that Intel is coming up with a "massively parallel" architecture that can be applied to mainframes all the way down to handhelds simply by reducing the number of cores on a chip. The cores, will probably be very small and flexible. A mainframe might have a few thousand while a handheld might have a few dozen. They've certainly been hinting at a change in architecture for some time.

      And then there was the "Windows Elements" that was supposed to come out with the P5. I'm not sure why that didn't get more press. I'm guessing that it is a version of Windows that will run in local storage on these processors (i.e. - the processor will have enough on-chip storage to hold "Windows Elements").

      --

      Life is the leading cause of death in America.
    4. Re:I wonder by ViolentGreen · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I think this is a lot of the reason AMD is starting to pull ahead of intel. Intel was able to just increase the clock speed to make their chips "faster" than AMDs. AMD had to look for other methods to increase performance and perhaps they learned a bit along the way.

      --
      Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
  2. Re:my pc by databyss · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Who is going to develop software that can't be run yet?

    You need the power first.

    --
    Hmmm witty sig or funny sig? Maybe elitest techy sig!
  3. Like my boss said... by Power+Everywhere · · Score: 2, Insightful

    No one ever got fired for buying Intel. That's a shame since AMD seem to have better products and more innovative ideas.

    --

    BLING BLING. Meet the architecture that's changing everything.

    1. Re:Like my boss said... by Dot.Com.CEO · · Score: 2, Insightful
      That's IBM.

      Your boss is an idiot.

      --
      Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
    2. Re:Like my boss said... by RealAlaskan · · Score: 2, Insightful
      No one ever got fired for buying Intel.

      Yep.

      That's why ``... AMD seem to have better products and more innovative ideas.'' Since they're number two, they try harder. Once people have been saying ``No one ever got fired for buying AMD.'' for a while, expect them to stumble a few times.

      --
      See what I've been reading.
  4. forget the new CPU's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Where's the damn motherboards that I've been wanting, namely ones supporting PCI-E with the AMD64? Stuff like the Abit AX8 with the Via K8T890 (ships when?), to say nothing of Nvidia's complete silence on the matter. I know there's an existing one for dual Opterons, but I don't feel like spending that extra $2000 for it just now...

    1. Re:forget the new CPU's by AliasTheRoot · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If you had read the article you would have noticed it prominently linked to a partner article on the Nvidia nForce 4 chipset, in fact they went as far as using an nForce 4 benchmark system:

      Socket-939 Athlon 64 CPUs
      2 x 512MB OCZ PC3200 EL Dual Channel DIMMs 2-2-2-10
      NVIDIA nForce4 Reference Motherboard
      ATI Radeon X800 XT PCI Express

  5. amd bias? by uniqueCondition · · Score: 4, Insightful

    if you're going to stand your ground with wintel and attack reviews from tomshardware & co. then i have to ask what you take issue with.

    did you disagree with the test system?
    the benchmarks used?

    i've read tomshardware for years and have found them objective and informative. While their results disagree with your emotion you shouldn't make baseless remarks

    --
    "The more you know, the less sure you are." - Voltaire
    1. Re:amd bias? by Anita+Coney · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If such an egregious and obvious error can get published, how could I ever trust the site to discover less obvious errors? Essentially, it'd be like reading the Weekly World News for real news: Pointless.

      --
      If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
  6. Re:Impartial? hah. by ergo98 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "AnandTech and Tom's Hardware are so AMD-biased"

    Given the current political climate there seems to be a lot of ignorance over the difference between "bias" and "fact". Indeed often people confuse a lack of bias with a counter bias.

    For instance, if indeed AMD is the superior consumer chip, perhaps offering measurably better performance/value, then it is entirely reasonable that a site would say such, and it isn't a "bias" to pronounce the AMD the superior choice of the current candidates. Similarly if George W. Bush dines on kittens for dinner, and someone reports it, that doesn't mean that they are biased against Bush.

  7. Apples to apples? by Quixote · · Score: 3, Insightful
    I'm reading the review right now (I know, I should burn my /. membership card), and the first thing that jumped out at me were the difference in memory specs between the AMD setup and the P4 setup:

    AMD: 2 x 512MB OCZ PC3200 EL Dual Channel DIMMs 2-2-2-10
    Intel P4: 2 x 512MB Crucial DDR-II 533 Dual Channel DIMMs 3-3-3-12

    Why not keep the rest of the components exactly the same, so we can have a _real_ comparison?

    I'm no Intel fanboy (or an AMD fanboy, for that matter), but when you're doing such benchmarking, some attention to details would help.

    1. Re:Apples to apples? by Quixote · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Oops, my bad: I didn't notice the "DDR-II" in the specs.

    2. Re:Apples to apples? by MindStalker · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I think the point was to find the fastest memory available for the system, this isn't just comparing processors its also comparing the possibly max speeds you can expect when using said processors.

  8. Re:Impartial? hah. by leathered · · Score: 4, Insightful

    AnandTech and Tom's Hardware are so AMD-biased, I don't even bother reading them any more, especialy when it's related to the latest AMD or Intel chips.

    Oh please, without any evidence or even anecdotes to back this up you're just making yourself sound like yet another disgruntled fanboy when reviews aren't going your way.

    Almost all hardware sites agree that at the present, not only are AMD's chips providing the best performance, they also provide the most bang for the buck. That now even goes for media encoding, an area previously dominated by Intel. Who knows, no doubt the see-saw will swing back in Intel's favour in the future, but now it's clear that AMD will hold the lead throughout 2005.

    --
    For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
  9. Consumers? by TimmyDee · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "Just after AMD's announcement, AnandTech posted this article to help consumers choose between Intel and AMD." So if by consumers, you mean people that read /. and hardware sites and not the general public, then yes?

    --
    Per Square Mile, a blog about density
  10. Re:Impartial? hah. by MindStalker · · Score: 2, Insightful

    But, if you ignore the fact that Kerry heats human fetuses, then you are biased! :)

  11. snicker by DeathByDuke · · Score: 4, Insightful

    all these accusations of Tom's Hardware being AMD biased makes me laugh. Just be happy for once we dont have to moan about Intel biased websites anymore ;)

  12. Re:Nforce4 also coming in a couple weeks.. by freelunch · · Score: 3, Insightful

    VIA has more problems than I can count.

    Here we are not talking about the MB manufacturer but rather the chipset at the heart of the MB.

    For example, the MSI K8N Neo MB exists in a version with the NVIDIA nForce3 chipset and in a version with the Via K8TPro chipset. Just as ASUS uses both chipsets. Etc.

    The gotcha in all of this is buying for Linux. All of these new boards and chipsets coming out is Just Great. Reviews that focus on Linux are a huge step forward. But if your primary focus is Linux, being in the early group of folks to give a new product the go can be a Real Bear..

    Right now, we're about to see a whole new generation of faster MBs come out. At the moment, I still haven't figured out which MB/Athlon 64 combo is ideal and I've been wanting to place the order for a few days. As much as I want to wait for XXX to release YYY, I have to keep telling myself that my Linux requirement means it is the support date and not the release date that matters most.