Athlon FX beats Intel's P4@3.2GHz

Nic · Sep 2, 2003

Looks like AMD's new *budget* processor is a real rocket ...

According to theinquirer.net ...
WE WERE very close to Athlon 64 and Athlon FX last week but didn't get time to play with the systems. Still the world is too small a place to hide the numbers until the 23rd of this month.

AMD has sent many Athlon FXs and 64s to people around UK and continental Europe and if you are an OEM or a system integrator, you know how these babies look and perform.

The Athlon FX on Windows XP 32 bit beats Intel's latest release 3.2 GHz but that's still the Northwood core, of course. In the Sandra memory test, Athlon FX delivers 5600 MB/s while an Intel Pentium 4 3.2 on Canterwood 875 with DDR 400 of course only delivers 5000MB/s.

In Quake 3 , which was always considered Intel's playground and patch, the Athlon FX is slightly under nine per cent faster on AMD's processor rather than Intel's "brain of a PC".

In Unreal 1024x768, it's close to 18 per cent advantage in AMD's favour. 3Dmark03 at 1024x768 shows that the FX is two per cent slower than on Intel. Pcmark03 is faster on Intel by five per cent since this is an Intel heavily optimized application while the memory score is 18 per cent faster on Athlon FX due to its integrated memory controller.

Still, it's not all roses, roses as Intel still holds the crown in all SSE 2 optimized application and the ones that use HyperThreading. I am mainly talking about rendering applications, where Intel still holds the crown but the gap that used to be huge between Intel's 3.2 and Athlon XP 3200+ is now significantly smaller.

In 3Dstudio Max, a Pentium 4 3.2 GHz with HT is about 10 per cent faster if you render just one frame but in a complete scene that you want to render took exactly the same in both systems. It took them both an hour with a small time difference that's not even worthy of mention and is like a twinkle in the eye (nimesha).

That's what you will see in reviews when they go live on 23rd in exactly three week's time µ

Steg · Sep 2, 2003

Wow! Nice!
<quote>In 3Dstudio Max, a Pentium 4 3.2 GHz with HT is about 10 per cent faster if you render just one frame but in a complete scene that you want to render took exactly the same in both systems.</quote>
How does this work? If the Intel is quicker drawing one frame surely its quicker overall when drawing 100 or 1000?

Steg

Nic · Sep 2, 2003

Originally posted by Steg
Wow! Nice!

How does this work? If the Intel is quicker drawing one frame surely its quicker overall when drawing 100 or 1000?
Steg

Not sure entirely, but it might have something to do with the overhead of setting up the CPU to process the frames. On small jobs this overhead will be noticed, but on larger tasks the faster cpu makes up ground. A bit like a production line, where it takes a lot of effort to get the first product off the line, but those that follow take much less time.

---agissi--- · Sep 2, 2003

Umm, its not really that good. Great that the up comming Athlon beats the p4, but dont forget Intel are gonna have their latest creation in the ring soon too. If they new Athlon can only out do the P4 by 9% in Q3, imagine how Intel's next contender will be. Once again AMD will be slightly behind, however still in my favor (hopefully)

conradguerrero · Sep 2, 2003

I am mainly talking about rendering applications, where Intel still holds the crown but the gap that used to be huge between Intel's 3.2 and Athlon XP 3200+ is now significantly smaller.

thats what the report says steg...

this is similar somewhat in how certain (older) video cards performed better at lower resolutions.

Nic · Sep 2, 2003

Originally posted by ---agissi---
Umm, its not really that good. Great that the up comming Athlon beats the p4, but dont forget Intel are gonna have their latest creation in the ring soon too. If they new Athlon can only out do the P4 by 9% in Q3, imagine how Intel's next contender will be. Once again AMD will be slightly behind, however still in my favor (hopefully)

Remember that Athlon FX is AMD's budget replacement for Duron, and not the Athlon64, or Opteron, which will be top dogs and 64 bit capable.

somekid007 · Sep 2, 2003

why did i have to buy an i865 systen>?!?!?! why???

Didou · Sep 2, 2003

I think there's a bit of confusion on the naming of futur Athlon CPUs.

The Athlon64 FX is the desktop version of the Opteron : 1mb of L2 cache & Dual-Channel memory controller.

The Athlon FX is the Duron replacement & is basiclly a Barton with half the Cache ( I'm not sure about FSB speeds since none have been announced ).

I'm pretty sure the inquirer article is talking about the Athlon 64 FX which is in no way a budget chip.

Nic · Sep 3, 2003

Originally posted by Didou
I'm pretty sure the inquirer article is talking about the Athlon 64 FX which is in no way a budget chip.

Confusion rules, but the article does mention both Athlon64 and Athlon FX, but quotes 32-bit performance figures for Athlon FX. The 64 bit version is called Athlon 64 FX, though we won't know for certain until these chips actually arrive.

Greeno · Sep 3, 2003

agreed.

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Athlon FX beats Intel's P4@3.2GHz

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