Lasereth

Tom's Hardware just released their CPU benchmarks for the new Athlon 64 FX-53 and the Pentium 4 3.4 GHz Extreme Edition. The P4 did its wonders in multimedia functions, but the FX-53 simply took off in the gaming and entertainment benchmarks. The FX-53 literally pulled ahead of the P4 in every single test (minus the speed-intensive multimedia apps).

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040318/index.html

Tom's Hardware also reports that the FX-53 comes factory overclockable without heating up much! The FX-51 had big-time heat issues when overclocked, but THG were able to push the FX-53 from 2.4 GHz to 2.6 GHz with little heat increase.

The chip also debuts for $730, sharply below the P4's $1000 price tag. 30% better for gaming and 30% cheaper. A good time for AMD gamers!

-Lasereth

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MadHatder

I've always loved AMD. When I get my new PC, I'm probably going to buy an AMD 64 bit for it.

devnull

That's great. AMD has been my favorite for years now and it makes me smile to see them really putting the stress on Intel to deliver. Nothing like healthy business competition increase performance and drive down costs for the consumers.

Redjake

Yeah I'm glad to see some healthy competition. I'm a big AMD fan because they offer superb hardware for a cheaper price than their only competitor. And usually equally or better performance. Nice to see the FX-53 owning.

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sailor

Great. Except it still costs upwards of $700

Im planning on buying an Athlon 64 for my next machine, but I want to wait for the socket 939 boards and chips.

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propaganda

It's always nice to see the cheaper products with good quality beating out the ones that cost more. Just one more instance that shows paying more doesn't mean anything at all.

Can anyone give me some real details on why AMD is better at gaming when they have lower clock speed? I know its probably been asked before but trying to search it on TFP would be hell and searching through google only finds specific CPUs.

I get the whole idea of why Intel CPUs are good for speed related programs but not why AMD is so good with gaming and so damn cheap...

kutulu

Nice, however my next chip will still be the 3200XP+. $700 plus a new mobo is just too much money.

The biggest thing to keep in mind is that these tests are being performed with the FX-53 chip using a version of windows that is based on 32-bit computing. I can't wait to see how the results change once the 64-bit version of windows comes out...

Lasereth

A good generalized answer is "better architecture." Not many people know this, but increasing the CPU speed of a processor can make limitations on the design of the CPU. AMD chose to make brilliantly designed internal chips, while Intel chose to win the CPU speed war. Obviously, average consumers will buy the "faster" processor, thus leading Intel to sell a hell of a lot more than AMD.

To further explain, there is an aspect of processors called "L Cache," which is memory built into the processor. More L cache is always good. There are multiple levels of L cache with levels 1 and 2 counting the most in gaming.

Athlon XP's have 64kb+64kb L1 cache. Pentium 4's have 12k+8k L1 cache. Athlon XP's have 256kb of L2 cache, and the higher-end Barton-core Athlon XP's have 512kb L2 cache. Pentium 4's have 512kb L2 cache as well.

As you can see, the Athlon XP has more L1 cache and the same amount of L2 cache in most cases.

The Athlon 64 is even more impressive. Starting at the Athlon 64 3200+ and above, the Athlon 64 series has 1 MB of L2 cache. This explains their extreme performance in games despite having a lower clock speed. None of Intel's chips have any more than 512kb L2 cache, and all still have 12kb+8kb L1.

In a nutshell, more cache = good, and Athlon XP's simply have more onboard L cache while comparing the same P4 with CPU speed. That, combined with incredibly intuitive internal design is what makes AMD's CPU's compare and even beat out Intel's.

Don't get me wrong, Intel makes some damn nice processors; I've simply explained why AMD's work so well at lower clock speeds. If you want to do rendering or multimedia intensive programs, the higher clock speed of Intel's chips is always favorable. For gaming, I'll always have to go with AMD. It just seems that their chips are designed for gaming, and gaming period.

-Lasereth

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"A Darwinian attacks his theory, seeking to find flaws. An ID believer defends his theory, seeking to conceal flaws." -Roger Ebert

R3d

droolage.. is all i can say...

VF19

Also AMD chips do 9 instructions/clock cycle while Intel chips do 6 instructions/clock cycle. Ok, now to break out the calculator..

AMD's Athlon XP 2500 Barton core at 1.83 GHz (1830000000 clock cycles) at 9 instructions. So the Barton does 16470000000 insructions/ clock cycle.

Now a look at a 2.5 GHz (lets just imagine it exists) Intel processor. (2500000000 clock cycles) does 15000000000.

So as you can see the Barton outperforms the Intel processor by about 1470000000 instructions.

Now to look at some prices on Newegg:
Barton 2500 Retail: $80
Intel 2.4 GHz 800FSB HT Retail: $164

Ill leave you to decide which to buy.

propaganda

Thanks Lasereth and VF19 that helped quite a lot. Even though I had to read VF19's post a couple of times (my eyes are crap and too many zeros don't help) it still gave me everything I needed and then some.

Tempboy

Plus it's always good to root for the underdog

Fenton-J-Cool

You know steamrollers aren't exactly the fastest creatures on earth. Maybe that wasn't the best analogy


Steamrolling over it maybe, but putting past it with an external combustion engine...

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Lasereth

Well, if a steamroller goes past a P4, then how slow is the damn P4! Ok, fine, it was a bad analogy in terms of speed. I was talking about power, however! You can't say a steamroller doesn't have a lot of power!

-Lasereth

__________________
"A Darwinian attacks his theory, seeking to find flaws. An ID believer defends his theory, seeking to conceal flaws." -Roger Ebert

westothemax

I knnow you said a general explanation and I don't mean to threadjack but...

I was under the impression that too large of a cache will increase miss rates and penalties, and there is a point where the benefit from a larger cache is outweighed by the penalites from increased misses - so by adding more capacity to your cache you will eventually peak out your performance until the complexity of finding stuff in the cache starts sending your perfomance down the tubes.

There's something else that makes AMD's architecture use clock cycles more efficiently, but I'm not sure what that is.
Intel uses simultaneous multithreading, which their marketing dept calls "hyper-threading".

I am no expert on computer architecture by any means and if I am wrong please correct me.

Lasereth

Yeah, you have a point! I've always heard that L3 cache is the level that can decrease performance if too much is added. Take a look at the P4 Prescotts! They're not doing too well, and some believe it's because of the added L3 cache. I could be wrong, but I have heard of what you're talking about.

-Lasereth

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"A Darwinian attacks his theory, seeking to find flaws. An ID believer defends his theory, seeking to conceal flaws." -Roger Ebert

aarchaon

All thse hardcore technologies are just coming out, and I bought my computer about 3 weeks ago. Will my 2500+ still be viable in a few years or are the 64-bits processors just that much better?

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aarchaon

All these hardcore technologies are just coming out, and I bought my computer about 3 weeks ago. Will my 2500+ still be viable in a few years or are the 64-bits processors just that much better?

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Green. Yellow. Blue.

ChrisJericho

The battle of the cpu's that are too expensive for any normal person to buy.

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propaganda

They might be too expensive now but eventually a lot of people will have these CPUs because the price has to go down. Its inevitable the question is how long will it take because I really wouldn't mind that AMD at $200.

Redjake

it'll keep on truckin' you may have to OC (if you aren't already) in the next couple of years to keep up, but it will hold its on for a while. no worries

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kutulu

Well, they are that much better, but if you just bought your 2500+, hopefully the mobo you have should be good for up to a 3200+. It's still way below the 64-bit processors, but game won't be requireing those processors until the prices fall by much more than half.

They are over $700 right now. It's purely a luxury item right now and will be until the processors fall to at least $300 or so. Even then they still would be more expensive than the 3200+ and most Intel processors.

Lasereth

AMD's Athlon 64 3000+ is about $210 and is better than any of the Athlon XP's. That, and the Athlon 64 3200+ ($270) are a damn good deal while offering 64-bit compatibility. Hell, the Athlon 64 3400+ is only $400 now.

The mega-expensive ones are the Athlon 64 FX series. I hope they go down in price before too long...I'd love to have one this summer!

-Lasereth

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"A Darwinian attacks his theory, seeking to find flaws. An ID believer defends his theory, seeking to conceal flaws." -Roger Ebert

teseniarkc

Amd does it again. A better chip at a cheaper price.