AMD Athlon 64 4000+ & FX-55: A Thorough Investigation
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 19, 2004 1:04 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Video Creation/Photo Editing
Adobe Photoshop 7.0.1
With the later releases of the Athlon XP, AMD began to offer fairly solid performance in Photoshop but with the Athlon 64 AMD managed to seal their fate - making AMD the platform of choice for Photoshop users.
The Top four spots in WorldBench's Photoshop 7 test are won by AMD, first by the 2.6GHz FX-55 and then by the three chips at 2.4GHz. As we've seen in the past, image editing doesn't benefit all that much from high bandwidth memory subsystems, so there's little benefit from a larger cache (0.3%) or from a dual channel memory setup (2.7%).
Despite its higher clock speed, the Pentium 4 560 takes a back seat to the Extreme Edition, justifying the EE's continued presence for a little while longer. Though with plans for a Pentium 4 4GHz scrapped, it seems like we'll be seeing a lot more of the Extreme Edition.
Athlon XP owners will find little reason to upgrade to an entry-level Athlon 64 for Photoshop use, as the two 3200+s manage to perform very similarly despite architecture and clock speed differences.
Adobe Premier 6.5
Prescott seems to do quite a bit for Intel here, with the 560 and 550 easily offering better performance than the 3.4EE, despite smaller caches. That being said, even the top of the line Pentium 4 560 can't outperform even the Athlon XP 3200+ in this test. While WorldBench does use an older version of Premier, it is one that is still widely used, making these results quite pertinent.
Once again we see very little need for the larger cache of the Athlon 64 4000+, but more of a tangible benefit from the move to Socket-939 from Socket-754 (6.7%).
AMD simply dominates this test; Premier users should know what platform is right for their needs.
Roxio VideoWave Movie Creator 1.5
While Premier is a wonderful professional application, consumers will prefer something a little easier to use. Enter: Roxio's VideoWave Movie Creator, a fairly full featured yet consumer level video editing package.
Intel has worked very closely with Roxio in the past, thus it's no surprise to see Movie Creator take advantage of the Prescott core as best as possible. The Extreme Edition still takes the crown, but the 560 and 550 manage to keep AMD's best at bay.
The Athlon 64 FX-55 is still within striking distance of the 3.4EE at only a 5% deficit, but the gap grows as we look at cheaper AMD solutions. Intel wins here with AMD in a close second.
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val - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link
for me is AMD unacceptable until there are good chipsets. All i have ever seen or had in my computers was big garbage with permanent problems and mysterious difficulties.Even SIS chipsets looks much better for intel than SIS for AMD. Its not anymore about CPU, CPU are fast for many tasks and that few percent of price or performance makes no deal, but overall quality talks strongly for Intel.
Save your time AMD fanboys to reply me something like that your AMD platform runs perfect and you had problems with intel and so on, its cheap and cannot anyway motivate me for change.
And yes, i have 2 AMD and 2 Intel computers and many i had or seen before (at home, work, school, projects, customers).
Gnoad - Wednesday, October 20, 2004 - link
3GHZ! Wow, I already was an AMD fan, but that just totally blows me away. Crazy stuff.GoHAnSoN - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
nice article. Thxcoldpower27 - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
Very nice, I await the day AMD releases a 3GHZ Athlon 64. These processor are niced but priced in a range where volumes are rather low, they have nice bragging rights though :PDa DvD - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
3GHz on air :SAMD's really out of trouble for the coming year(s)
I can imagine K8@90nm scaling well beyond 3GHz...
(lol, or even top Prescott clockspeeds? That would be insane..)
Wesley Fink - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
#30 and #43 -Once AMD informed us that strained silicon was used in the FX55 I couldn't resist a bit of a run with overclocking the FX55. The nForce4 Reference boad is not really intended or designed for overclocking, since it doesn't have any CPU or memory voltage adjustments. However it does support a wide range of multipliers so I could try a few settinngs.
I had no probelm at all running at 14.5X or 2.9GHz at default voltage. At that speed I ran quite a few benchmarks and a Quake 3 of 604.2 FPS. The FX55 actually booted at 3.0GHz but it never made it through a stable XP boot. I suspect with just a bit of CPU voltage 3.0GHz would be possible with the FX55 on air. All cooling was just the new AMD stock fan which now includes copper fins and heat pipes.
verybusy - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
There is some FX55 and 4000+ overclocking info at http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.cfm?page=2&...Assuming that my request from above is granted regarding other overclocking of 3500+, 3200+ and 3000+, I'd like to see just how overclocking turns out with the retail heatsink and fan. I hope that's not too much of a request.
Thanks...
verybusy - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
I liked the review of the Athlon 64 4000+ and FX-55 and it was nice to see it compared to the other Athlon 64 3200+ and 3000+ processors running at stock speeds.Unfortulately, with this review following so closely behind the 3500+ and 3000+ review (.09 Athlon 64: Value, Speed and Overclocking), it would have been very useful to see the 3500+, 3200+ and 3000+ overclocked to 2.6GHz as well. Afterall, the .09 3500+/3000+ @290x9 is faster than the FX53 (2.4GHz-1MB) err I mean Athlon 64 4000+). The overclocked 3500+, 3200+ and 3000+ could be pretty much as quick as the FX55 couldn't it?
That's what I want to see anyway.
ViRGE - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
#39, Anand mentions that it's multiplier locked.Zebo - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
Guys the 3400 newcastle is a way underated chip. It should have been, by all rights, called a 3600. I guess they did'nt want the 3500 to look bad agains a "old" 754 newcastle though.As for the review, total AMD performance domination at low relative speeds temps and power consumption.:) Youd have to be a fool to buy intels netburst crap right now.