1. Introduction
AMD Athlon 64 3800+ - Page 1
- Introduction
Last
year, Advanced Micro Devices introduced us to the first two Athlon 64-bit processors.
The Athlon 3000+ and FX-51 were built for 754 and 940-pin sockets respectively.
Now AMD once again changed its CPU design and came up with a new socket infrastructure,
the 939-pin socket, which seems to be the future of the Athlon 64 processors
with its main competitor being the S-940.
The 939 socket processors offer the same class performance as the 940-pin
but with less cost for the motherboard manufacturers since it only
requires
a 4-layer PCB, compared to the 7-9 layer requirement of the previous generation.
However, the most important difference might be the fact that the 939 no
longer requires registered RAM modules. Registered RAM uses some registers
or buffers
that intercept the data transfer and delay it for one clock cycle to make sure
that all data is error free and transferred successfully. Registered DIMMs
are basically designed for servers and systems where data integrity is a primary
issue. This is why the 940-pin FX processors are often characterized as being
designed for workstation computers.
 |
 |
| Socket 939 |
Socket 940 |
So with registered RAM being more expensive than unbuffered RAM, S-939 makes a cost-effective solution, convenient for gaming and personal computers.
Let's take a look at the following table showing all the AMD 64-bit Athlon
processors and some of their major differences.
Model Number |
Frequency |
L2 Cache |
Socket Type |
3800+ |
2.4GHz |
512KB |
939-pin |
3700+ |
2.4GHz |
1024KB |
754-pin |
3500+ |
2.2GHz |
512KB |
939-pin |
3400+ |
2.4GHz |
512KB |
754-pin |
3200+ |
2.2GHz |
512KB |
754-pin |
3000+ |
2.0GHz |
512KB |
754-pin |
FX-51 |
2.2GHz |
1024KB |
940-pin |
FX-53 |
2.4GHz |
1024KB |
940-pin |
FX-53 |
2.4GHz |
1024KB |
939-pin |
As you can see, the 939-pin socket seems to take over the S-754 and S-940
on both Athlon 64 and Athlon FX families.
|
Athlon 64 processor architecture |
In this review, we had the opportunity to test the 3800+, the latest
and very promising platform in the Athlon 64 family by AMD.
2. Features
AMD Athlon 64 3800+ - Page 2
Let's take a quick look at some of the features the 3800+ has to offer:
| CPU Core Frequency |
2.40GHz (12x200 with locked multiplier) |
| Simultaneous 32- & 64-bit computing |
Yes |
| L1 Cache (Instruction + Data) |
128KB (64KB + 64KB) |
| L2 Cache |
512KB |
| HyperTransport |
Yes, one 16x16 link @ 2000 MHz |
| HyperTransport I/O Bandwidth |
Up to 8 GB/s |
| Integrated DDR Memory Controller |
Yes |
| Memory Controller Width |
128-bit |
| Memory Supported |
PC3200, PC2700, PC2100 and PC1600 DDR unbuffered memory |
| Memory Bandwidth |
Up to 6.4 GB/s |
| Total Processor-to-system Bandwidth (HTT plus memory bandwidth) |
Up to 14.4 GB/s |
| Process Technology |
130 nanometer, Silicon-on-insulator technology |
| Packaging |
939-pin organic micro PGA |
| Thermal Design Power |
89W |
| Die Size |
144 mm2 |
| Number of Transistors |
Approximately 68.5 million |
 |
Our NewCastle processor, as recognized by CPU-Z.
|
 |
Some details about our motherboard and BIOS settings
|
 |
| Check out these wonderful timings! |
The Athlon 64 3800+ runs by default, at a speed of 2.4GHz, the same clock
speed as the FX-53. With an L2 cache size of 1024KB, the FX processor overshadows
the
3800+ performance-wise, with the latter having no extra features to make up
for it. Instead, it's built with a locked multiplier that would probably
disappoint most overclockers.
However, the 3800+ ships at a price of only $660, a lot less than the cost
of the FX-53 (around $850), making it the best buy between the two.
3. System Specifications
AMD Athlon 64 3800+ - Page 3
Here's a list of what we used to test the 3800+ processor:
System Specifications:
CPU: AMD 3800+(2.4GHz)CPU
Cooler: Zalman CNPS7000A-Cu
Motherboard: A8V Deluxe
Power supply: Levicom 500 Watt
Memory: 2x OCZ DDR-SDRAM PC3200 – 512 MB (dual channel)
VGA: Sapphire 9800pro
Hard Disk Drive: WD800JD 80GB 7200RPM
OS: Windows XP Pro SP2 & Windows XP x64 Edition SP1
Drivers: 4.8 Catalyst & 64-bit Catalyst beta
DirectX: v9.0b
Benchmarks & Applications used
- Sisoft Sandra 2004
- Prime95
- PcMark04
- DVD Shrink 3.2
- 3DMark03
- Far cry v1.1
- Unreal Tournament 2004
- CPU-Z
As we mentioned earlier, apart from the recently released Service Pack 2
for Windows XP, we used a Windows XP 64-bit edition beta, or as Microsoft likes
to call it, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition Customer Preview, to test our
hardware. We were hoping to see a few improvements or changes but it seems
not much has changed after all. For the tests we installed a beta version
of the 64-bit ATI Catalyst drivers. We were pleasantly surprised to
discover than not only the drivers are quite stable, but also on some benchmarks,
we
even got better results from the 32-bit platform. Of course, we noticed some
minor bugs, especially in the 2-D acceleration area, but after all, it's
still a beta version, isn't it?
4. Prime95
AMD Athlon 64 3800+ - Page 4
Prime95
Prime95 is basically a Mersenne prime number discovery program. It's a great
example of Distributed Computing but it's most loved by overclockers for
its powerful system stress-testing and benchmarking abilities. It can torture
test your CPU to produce its maximum heat or spit out any errors due to excessive
overclocking. Also using the blend test it can consume all your physical memory
and run error-checking tests on your modules to ensure their quality. However,
right now we're mostly interested in it for its benchmarking capabilities.
Here are the timings for our Athlon 64 3800+, Athlon XP 2000+ and an Intel
P4 2.4GHz.
The power of the 3800+ is self-evident.We were excited to see that when comparing
it to the Athlon XP processor, its calculations took almost half the time of
the latter, therefore justifying it's name. However, when it comes
to the Intel P4 running at 2.4GHz, we can see it falls behind but only for
a few microseconds (µs).
You might wonder why we are comparing one of AMD's latest processors with
a previous generation Intel Pentium 4 and actually be satisfied with the results.
The fact is that AMD processors are well known for their lousy results in computational
applications such as Prime95 and their generally decreased performance in applications
where the actual CPU clock speed plays the most important role. Keep that in
mind and also note that Prime95 is mostly optimised for Pentium 4 processors.
5. PCMark04
AMD Athlon 64 3800+ - Page 5
PCMark04
PCMark04 is an application-based benchmark and a premium tool for measuring overall PC performance. It uses portions of real applications instead of including very large applications or using specifically created code. This allows PCMark04 to be a smaller installation as well as to report very accurate results. As far as possible, PCMark04 uses public domain applications whose source code can be freely examined by any user.
PCMark04 includes 4 categorized suites for benchmarking your computer. These include a CPU, Graphics, Memory and a Hard Disk Drive benchmark.
As you can see, we've excluded the HDD results from the chart, since
they are completely worthless for our purposes. Also, we had some problems
running the CPU suite under 64-bits.
Let's examine the extended results:
CPU |
WinXP 32-bit |
WinXP 64-bit |
File Compression |
3.3 MB/s |
3.3 MB/s |
File Encryption |
37.2 MB/s |
37.3 MB/s |
File Decompression |
28.9 MB/s |
29.3 MB/s |
Image Processing |
14.6 MPixels/s |
14.7 MPixels/s |
Grammar Check |
6.5 KB/s |
6.6 KB/s |
File Decryption |
74.2 MB/s |
74.7 MB/s |
Audio Conversion |
3171.9 KB/s |
3162.2 KB/s |
WMV Video Compression |
56.2 FPS |
56.1 FPS |
DivX Video Compression |
71.8 FPS |
0.0 |
Memory |
WinXP 32-bit |
WinXP 64-bit |
Raw Block Read - 8 MB |
5941.9 MB/s |
5921.4 MB/s |
Raw Block Read - 4 MB |
5966.3 MB/s |
5928.7 MB/s |
Raw Block Read - 192 KB |
11534.1 MB/s |
11810.0 MB/s |
Raw Block Read - 4 KB |
30707.6 MB/s |
30684.1 MB/s |
Raw Block Write - 8 MB |
5940.8 MB/s |
5913.9 MB/s |
Raw Block Write - 4 MB |
5942.6 MB/s |
5911.9 MB/s |
Raw Block Write - 192 KB |
7648.0 MB/s |
7640.0 MB/s |
Raw Block Write - 4 KB |
23356.2 MB/s |
23338.1 MB/s |
Raw Block Copy - 8 MB |
2597.8 MB/s |
2531.1 MB/s |
Raw Block Copy - 4 MB |
2618.9 MB/s |
2542.9 MB/s |
Raw Block Copy - 192 KB |
4344.6 MB/s |
4788.0 MB/s |
Raw Block Copy - 4 KB |
12444.5 MB/s |
12445.5 MB/s |
Random Access - 8 MB |
3318.1 MB/s |
3307.9 MB/s |
Random Access - 4 MB |
3321.0 MB/s |
3315.6 MB/s |
Random Access - 192 KB |
7325.9 MB/s |
7447.9 MB/s |
Random Access - 4 KB |
15740.5 MB/s |
15729.2 MB/s |
Graphics |
WinXP 32-bit |
WinXP 64-bit |
Transparent Windows |
1493.9 Windows/s |
365.7 Windows/s |
Graphics Memory - 16 lines |
3012.2 FPS |
3002.8 FPS |
Graphics Memory - 32 lines |
2888.5 FPS |
2878.2 FPS |
3D - Fill Rate Single Texturing |
1631.4 MTexels/s |
1633.0 MTexels/s |
3D - Fill Rate Multitexturing |
2226.4 MTexels/s |
2223.1 MTexels/s |
3D - Polygon Throughput Single Light |
33.6 MTriangles/s |
33.5 MTriangles/s |
3D - Polygon Throughput Multiple Lights |
7.8 MTriangles/s |
7.7 MTriangles/s |
You may have noticed that it's the DivX encoding CPU benchmark we
haven't been able to run under 64-bits. Instead, we run our own little
benchmark, re-encoding our Finding Nemo DVD movie into MPEG2 format using DVD-Shrink.
Our results: On 32-bit windows: 15 minutes 36 seconds. On 64-bit windows: 15 minutes 34 seconds.
The difference is once again negligible as was the case with most of the
PCMark04 tests.
Windows XP x64 seems to work almost as well as the 32-bit version. Its
file handling has improved a bit but all the other results point to the
same
old 32-bit version.
Still, note the results on the transparent windows test under the Graphics
suite. In this test, 10 windows are drawn on-screen and then faded in and out.
The results are then recorded in average number of windows drawn per second.
Here x64 performance drops dramatically. With an average of 365 windows per second, it fails miserably to even yield half the 32-bit 2D-accelleration performance.
Apparently ATI's beta driver is the one responsible here and hopefully everything
will be fixed as soon as Windows x64 Edition draws closer to the final stage
of release.
6. SiSoftware Sandra 2004
AMD Athlon 64 3800+ - Page 6
SiSoftware Sandra 2004
SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyzer, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.
CPU Arithmetic
Sandra's CPU arithmetic benchmark suite uses 2 famous benchmarks (Dhrystone
and Whetstone) for stress testing the processor. Also it includes a new
version of the Whetstone test that makes use of a processor's SSE2 instructions
to show the performance boost an application might gain should it be optimized
for SSE2. Unfortunately this does not always represent a true real-life performance,
but is useful to compare the speed of various CPUs.
|
Note:All Intel results are taken as provided by SiSoftware Sandra 2004. |
You can see the outstanding performance we got from the 3800+ with the
Dhrystone benchmark. With just 600 iterations per second behind Intel's 4GHz
beast,
it leaves all other Pentiums behind. However, that's not the case when it
comes to the Whetstone benchmark. There, the results for AMD's top Athlon
64 processor
are not so pleasant.
Notice the remarkable difference in the Whetstone benchmarks, with and without
SSE2 use. Intel was the one to introduce us to these instructions with their
P4 processors. As more and more software companies implemented SSE2 code into
their applications, AMD finally decided to incorporate it too, starting with
all their Athlon 64 and FX products. So no Athlon XP supports SSE2, making
a 64-bit processor a much wiser choice if you're considering upgrading
in the immediate future.
Without SSE2, the 3800+ ranks fourth in place, with 300 iterations
per second more than the P4 3GHz and 200 less that the P4 3.2GHz. Given AMD's
much lower
CPU clock speed we have to admit it's still impressive that it didn't finish
last on this benchmark. However, when it runs the benchmark using SSE2, the
3800+ gets only 1200 more per second, whereas the Intel processors get a boost
of approximately 3000 iterations. Here it let us down and dropped to
last place with a huge difference from its HyperThreaded competitors.
CPU Multimedia
This test involves the generation of Mandelbrot Set fractals that are used to realistically describe and generate natural objects such as mountains or clouds. By using various multi-media extensions MMX, 3DNow! and SSE(2/3) better performance is achieved.
Here, the benchmark runs on all Pentiums taking advantage of
their x8 SSE2 instructions for integers and x4 SSE2 for floating points, whereas
on our AMD it could make use of its x4 Enhanced MMX and SSE instructions for
integers.
However, it's with floating point calculations where the 3800+ seems to
lack in performance, where after it was placed third in the integer test,
it managed last for floating point.
Memory
This tests examines how your memory sub-system compares to other systems with the same or similar memory. The benchmark is based on the well-known STREAM memory bandwidth benchmark.
As in all other tests, so in this one we used our high performance 2x512Mb OCZ PC3200 EL 2-2-2-5 dual channel DDR memory modules.
On the chart you can see our results compared to the top 4 memory modules, as included in the latest version of Sisoft Sandra 2004.
No wonder OCZ declares itself as the manufacturer of the best performing DDR memory.
Even though we couldn't overclock our processor due to the limitations of the A8V motherboard, the system easily broke the 6000 limit, 400Mb/s above the former fastest memory, on both Integer and Floating-Point calculation tests.
7. Futuremark 3DMark03
AMD Athlon 64 3800+ - Page 7
Futuremark 3DMark03
3DMark
is a widely used and accepted benchmark that stresses the DirectX performance
of a VGA card. For testing the performance of each card, we use the 4 game
benchmark 3DMark has. The first is a DirectX 7 game, the second and the third
use DirectX 8 and the last one stresses graphics under DirectX 9. A very
strong point of 3DMark is that its VGA card measuring does not require
a lot
of CPU power. So the resulting fps are a good reference of a VGA card's rendering
performance.
 |
 |
| GT3 - Troll's Lair |
GT4 - Mother Nature |
Using our Sapphire 9800 Pro ultimate VGA card (for which, you can read
our review here), we got 100 more 3dmarks under 64-bit Windows.
Taking a closer look at the 3dmark03 benchmarks, we can see that this virtual
difference in the total result is due mainly from the drivers DirectX 7
performance in the first test, Wings of Fury.
On the next two DX8.1 tests, the x64 drivers show that they can't hold the lead
and definitely lose it on the final game, which benchmarks DX9 performance.
Of course, the difference of a single frame per second is ridiculously small
and not even worth considering, but it still indicates a small decline in x64
performance.
Let's move on to the next test.
8. Far Cry v1.1 (DX9)
AMD Athlon 64 3800+ - Page 8
Far Cry v1.1 (DX9)
Far cry is an awesome First Person Shooter (FPS) based on a last generation
3D engine named CryEngine. Real-time editing, bump-mapping, static lights,
network system, integrated physics system, shaders, shadows and a dynamic
music system are just some of the state of-the-art features that the CryEngine
offers.
A great advantage and strong point of the CryEngine is its physics system which supports character inverse kinematics, vehicles, rigid bodies, liquid, rag doll, cloth and body effects. All physics seem to be very realistic and you never get bored when facing enemies, since character models have multiple animations that blend in believable ways.
With an integrated shader system and a massive terrain which maximizes
the view distance to 2km, these features make Far cry a perfect action game
and also a referable benchmark to speak of.
For this benchmark we recorded our own custom demo for Far Cry on the Dam stage. We started from the beginning of the level at the beach and moved around a bit until we reached the cliff, from where the whole village can be seen.
Here are the results:
We can't see any major performance difference here. Windows XP 32-bit is
able to run the game a bit faster by a lead of 2 fps. Unfortunately, we couldn't
get our hands on a 64-bit version of Far Cry, with which Ubisoft claims to
offer optimized code for AMD 64 that would take advantage of everything a 64-bit
processor can offer and probably put WinXP x64 on top.
9. UT2004 (DX8.1)
AMD Athlon 64 3800+ - Page 9
UT2004 (DX8.1)
Unreal Tournament 2004 is a multiplayer first person shooter that combines the kill-or-be-killed experience of gladiatorial combat with cutting-edge technology.
Ten game modes - both team-based and "every man for himself" -- provide even the most hardcore gamer with palm-sweating challenges through unbelievably detailed indoor arenas and vast outdoor environments.
As the ultimate techno-gladiator of the future, players will take their fates into their hands, battling against up to 32 other players online in action-packed, frag-filled arenas.
We conducted our tests using maximum details on the following two, botmatch levels.
Ons-torlan for On-Slaught and ctf-bridgeoffate for the Capture-the-flag game
type. UT2004 is not much of a graphics-intensive game, so we had the chance
to see how much CPU bound the same VGA card would be on a mid-end computer
system such as a P4 2.4GHz on an ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe motherboard with 2x256Mb
of PC3200 OCZ memory modules.
The difference in fps is exciting. UT2004 gets an average performance boost
of 60fps, a fact which proves that the Sapphire 9800 pro Ultimate is still
a remarkable card being able to deliver such framerates when the
CPU
can
keep pace with its quality.
On the other hand, we got a noticeable performance decrease with the 64-bit
drivers when benchmarking on the darker and closed set of Capture-the-flag
Bridge Of Fate map.
10. Conclusion
AMD Athlon 64 3800+ - Page 10
- Conclusion
AMD Athlon 64 3800+
AMD's
Athlon 3800+ is undoubtedly one of the best processors you can acquire for
your computer. With its only drawback being its price (around $660), even if
it's cheaper than the FX-53, it's still a large amount of money that
right now, only enthusiasts are likely to fork out for a new processor.
For those of you who are not looking for an upgrade to a high-end system
but something less pricey, obviously the 3800+ isn't the right choice
yet. You can just as well choose an Athlon 64 3500+ or an Intel 3.0Ghz, depending
on what you use your computer for. However, keep in mind that with the socket
infrastructure change from AMD, chances are that you'll have to upgrade
your motherboard as well when time comes and your processor drops to the low-end
class and needs to be upgraded again.
Microsoft Windows XP x64 Edition
It
was a relief to see that our experience with the beta version wasn't
as painful as we thought it would be. We played around with x64 for about a
week
and everything
worked out satisfactory.
Of course, it's not an operating system you can still count on for
your work and there's no reason really for you to install it just yet.
However, the work that has been done by Microsoft to port the 32-bit code into
64-bits is excellent. Keep in mind that all applications now have the ability
to do calculations twice as long, but instead of having a major drop in performance,
AMD's x86-64 architecture worked fine, along with the new OS, optimizing
everything so that such a drop never actually takes place.
Also congratulations should also go to ATI for delivering a quite stable
64-bit driver even though time has shown us that this is the area where
it's
mostly handicapped.
We really look forward to seeing the final version of WinXP x64 bit being
released. Hopefully, by that time, we'll see many more applications
ported and optimized for 64-bit computing.