Final Words
Speculation has churned for months over whether AMD could reach the release speeds necessary for Athlon64 to compete effectively with Pentium 4 and the upcoming Prescott processor. The other concern was whether 32-bit performance would be good enough to make the Athlon64 the winner that AMD needs right now. If Athlon64 is released as a 2.0GHz chip, as rumors have reported, then it looks like Athlon64 will be a Processor that is competitive with the best Pentium 4 in all areas, with compelling performance in several areas.The impact of Dual-Channel memory is a little harder to estimate in our tests. Athlon64 has been widely reported to be single-channel, where Opteron is Dual-Channel. Again, we expect our results reported here to be in the ballpark. Particularly since reports from the web now indicate there will also be an AthlonFX introduced on the 23rd that is targeted at the Enthusiast, runs even faster, and is based on the Opteron with Dual-Channel memory.
Gaming is one area where our tests show Opteron at 2.0GHZ an amazing performer. When you find game benchmarks 10% to 20% higher, you are genuinely impressed. However, in some of the very latest DX9 benchmarks, Athlon64/Opteron was 40% to 50% faster. This will get the attention of the gaming community, which seems to have a genuine affection for anything AMD already. It is the kind of trend-setting performance that Athlon64 needed to get the attention of an influential market segment.
Workstation Graphics was expected to be a good performer for Athlon64/Opteron, and across the board, the 2.0Ghz Opteron did very well against the best from Intel. One particularly noteworthy area was the performance of the A64 level Opteron compared to an 875 Dual Xeon 3.06 system. We really expected the Xeon dually to trounce our single Opteron, but instead, found a virtual dead-heat. Multiple Opteron systems have been setting records in many areas, and we are certainly looking forward to looking at multiple 200 series Opterons after seeing what our single 144 can do.
The Content Creation and General Usage performance, while competitive, did not stand out like the other performance areas for the 2.0GHz Opteron. We were not really surprised in the Content Creation area, which has always been a challenge for AMD. But, we were a little surprised in the General Usage/Business area, which has always been an AMD strong suit. Since the top performers in this area are nForce2/Athlon combos, we expect that final release products will fare much better in this area. Remember that our Reference board is now a couple of months old, and much has been done in tweaking the nForce3 chipset already. We would be surprised if the Athlon64/nForce3 combo does not perform better in almost every area at launch.
As excited as we are with the performance we found in our Opteron tweaked to Athlon64, keep in mind that this is all 32-bit performance. To quote AMD:
“AMD64 processors like the AMD Opteron and upcoming AMD Athlon 64 processors are compatible with today’s hardware and software and smooth the transition to the next crucial step in the evolution of the personal computer, workstation, server, and supercomputing cluster.”While delayed, Microsoft’s 64-bit Operating System will carry Athlon64/Opteron to even higher Performance levels. There are also other 64-bit alternatives like Linux, which are not delayed, and who now have a platform opportunity to really grow as the 64-bit alternative. Time will tell if these other players will have any real impact on the 64-bit market. To make launch even more intriguing, we are also seeing many reports that another Athlon64, geared to the Enthusiast community, clocked higher, and an ever better performer, may also emerge on September 23rd.
These all look like good omens for AMD, and after a very long wait, it’s about time!!
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Anonymous User - Friday, September 5, 2003 - link
Oh little Dvinnen I petty you for your ignoranceAMD Opteron Socket 940 at 2.0GHz (9x222) 444FSB
The opteron has the equivalent to a MEM-controller between MEM and CPU. And it is quote running at "AMD Opteron Socket 940 at 2.0GHz (9x222) 444FSB". So be that the mem will run at 444 Mhz or 222 "Dobbel-pumped" Mhz
So even the anandtech 'beeps' don't know the architecture of the CPU... Although FSB is a wrong id of it.
Mvh Mjello
The fool is not the one who is deceived. But the one who wants to be deceived...
By the way. The hypertransport-link is for peripherals.. Not memory
Not that I really care enough to answer you little dwuuip but I am in a rare mood
Anonymous User - Friday, September 5, 2003 - link
one more (hopefully constructive) suggestion - how about commentary on the benchmarks next to the appropriate graphs so we can see the #'s while we read the comments.Anonymous User - Friday, September 5, 2003 - link
quick suggestion for you guys - how come the graphs are labeled with motherboard names? shouldn't they be labeled with CPU names since this is a CPU comparison. Just skimming the article and looking at the graphs I had no idea what was being compared. If need be, put the chipset in parenthesis next to the CPU name & speed.excellent article though! athlon64 looks very imrpessive
Icewind - Friday, September 5, 2003 - link
Wow, so far AMD looks like there on the right track, but its going to be interesting to see how Intel fires back at that with Prescott and Tejas, not to mention the change to PCI Express and what not. Next year is gonna be insane thats for sure. For now, im enjoying my 2.8.@3.2 ASUS P4C800-E, 1 Gig corsair rig and its screams. Im in looking into a 9800pro or 9800XT for my video card and im set for a good long year.sprockkets - Friday, September 5, 2003 - link
Yeah, fire hazard, that's why a 3.2P4 uses 82w of power just to sit there, and the 3200+ XP uses 62.Dell won't touch AMD due to Intel forcing them to.
Intel has billions to spend on R&D, and look where it's gotten them, the loser Itanium.
And with P4 clock speeds like a 140mhz would make the world of difference on the 54% it is behind.
Why use 4x512MB? Don't we all need 2Gb of ram to function best?
You're right, due to the P4 freq binge AMD did introduce its + ratings. Isn't amazing that a processor running slower memory and 1060 mhz less can still be faster?
Funny, 20 out of 20 of my AMD systems don't have quirks in them, must be a stupid Windows user.
dvinnen - Friday, September 5, 2003 - link
<<<and with 22 Mhz OC to the memory.>>>Wow. Did you even read the artical or know anything about The K8 line? There is no FSB to oc so you can't oc the memory that way. It gets it's external clock (aka:fsb) from the hypertransport line. So they oced the hypertransport to get the speed from there 1.8 opteron to 2.0, the shiping shipped of A64. OCing the fsb on K8 dosen't do anyithing but increase the clock becuase the HT line is about as saturated as a AGPx8 line.
Anonymous User - Friday, September 5, 2003 - link
#20A lot of pepole play games on Linux, Q3 on Linux is actually a bit faster on my system then in w2k.
But that's not the point. The point is to see how much there is to gain from having a 64bit OS vs. 32bit. I bet id will compile, and release, a 64bit Q3 client for linux sometimes soon. Hope there will be one for UT2003 too.
Anonymous User - Friday, September 5, 2003 - link
A sad day I must say.Not because AMD beat Intel's best (3.2 Ghz)but because AMD only beat intels second best (3.0 Ghz)and with 22 Mhz OC to the memory.
Anandtech is no more than a marketing machine. It's not worthy of our attention.
It is a biased benchmark which twists reality in order to make AMD 64 look better.
Now I must say that I would like this to be a total succes for AMD however I don't like being lied to. And that's what anandtech and AMD is doing in this review. It looks as if AMD is in to deep and might just go under because of their financial problems.
Anonymous User - Friday, September 5, 2003 - link
Why not use 4x512MB memory for the P4 setup, since Anandtech's own setups have shown its best, and also, why a 3200+ Barton and 3.0GHz P4, that's not an equal comparison.Also, the layout seemed awful, there was a page just before the end with about 1/3 a page of text.
And it did seem like there was a lot os ass kissin gin the article as well.
Anonymous User - Friday, September 5, 2003 - link
24/26/27...So many lies out of your mouth.