Final Words
The 4200+ is the least expensive of the new Athlon 64 Dual-Core processors, but $500 is only cheap compared to the other members of the X2 line which can cost as much as $1000 to own. The good news is the 4200+ performs very well on its own. It performs about like a similar speed single core in gaming and 3D workstation tasks, which means it is a little slower than the 4000+ in these heavily single-threaded tasks. If you are a gamer, and that is all you care about on your PC, then the Dual-Core processors will hold no advantage for you over the current single-core models. Performance does not suffer to any great extent compared to single-core, but you need another use for dual-core to tip the scales in the more expensive dual-core direction.When even a bit of multitasking comes into play, however, the 4200+ soars ahead, with significant performance advantages in the general performance PCMark2004 benchmark and an advantage in Multimedia Content Creation 2004. Media Encoding is one particular area where the x2 4200+ shines, outperforming the higher speed 4000+ by 41% at stock speed and by almost 71% when overclocked to 2.7GHz. The performance advantage for Dual-Core in Media Encoding is so significant that the X2 becomes a "must-have" if you do much media encoding.
These results are all while running in Windows XP, and there should be even further performance improvement in the 64-bit version of XP. Until there are useful benchmarks that really take advantage of the 64-bit OS we can only speculate on 64-bit performance, but the clean implementation of 64-bit by AMD should definitely yield performance advantages in 64-bit. The advantages should be similar to those AnandTech found for Opteron in the recent article comparing processors in 64-bit Linux.
The point of this article though is OVERCLOCKING the 4200+, and there is more good news there. Our early 4000+ processors only overclocked about 11 to 12% at stock multiplier. We do have a later 4000+ (that is likely an FX55 at heart) that overclocks about 18% at stock multiplier, which is the one we use in memory reviews. This 4200+, a new speed grade, is doing 22.5% at the start, reaching 2.7GHz on air. That's a 500MHz overclock, and is 300MHz higher than the fastest x2 you can buy (2.4GHz 4800+ and 4600+). This kind of overclocking performance makes the 4200+ a much more attractive option at the $500 you will pay for it - since it will likely reach higher performance levels that a stock 4800+.
You can likely do even better than we have if you use more exotic cooling. We have seen many reports on the web of the 4200+ reaching 2.8GHz or even 3.0GHz. We have also seen reports of the 4800+ reaching even a bit higher, so even better overclocks may be available with a 4800+. Anand is reaching 2.8GHz on air with the 4800+ he has been testing.
In the end the 4200+ appears to be a good-performing dual-core CPU with quite a bit of overclocking headroom. We reached 2.7GHz with a PC Health reported CPU temperature of 61 degrees C at 1.55V. 240 was a breeze at 1.45V, exceptionally stable for days on end, with processor temps generally below 50C with our air cooling. It appears an easy task to reach the highest levels of Dual-Core performance with the cheapest 4200+ if you are willing to overclock a little - and the 4200+ is up to the task.
The 4200+ running OC at 2.4GHz is equivalent to a 4600+, which brings us back to the question of which x2 Athlon 64 we would buy for ourselves. With the 4400+ sporting 1MB cache on each core, and only a few dollars more than the 512KB 4200+, we would suspect the 4400+ may well be the Dual-Core to buy - IF it overclocks as well as the 4200+. We don't have a 4400+ to test for ourselves, but given the performance of the 1MB cache 4800+ we have seen, we expect the 4400+ will likely overclock just as well.
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val - Thursday, June 23, 2005 - link
also consider another thing. Many games and applications are never alocating all available memory, usually when they are well programmed, they are alocating for example 75-80 of available main memory and managing post loading of levels by own alghorytms. Testing now on 1 GB makes in many games no sense. Those games (for example battlefield 2, GTA,...) takes about 600 MB of RAM when you have only 1 GB but they takes with same settings up to 1 GB when you have two. Result? Less loading, no lags, smoother gameplay, higher performance.Here i am not calculating the case that windows can manage file cache so nicely when there is enough memory. In CS:S is loading another level than damn fast - result? You are first on to choose the side to play and you dont look half minute to loading screen.
Gamer should never have less than 2000MB of ram when it costs damn <200€!
Gatak - Thursday, June 23, 2005 - link
I feel something is very strange with the 3D benchmarks. I thought that Maya, 3D Studio and SPECViewperf were made to support dual CPU systems - yet we see little improvement here.Is really dual CPU enabled in those applications?
ElFenix - Thursday, June 23, 2005 - link
what core is the 4000+?val - Thursday, June 23, 2005 - link
Wesley, it is not truth that playing games are single threaded. Problem is that you are using only demo plays and not real gameplay.Internet play is hardly multitasking and can slow down single cpu lot, same for high quality sound card. Audigy drivers are nice multitasking and needs lot of CPU.
You do not calculate with time needed for system managing the swap file and dynamic memory alocations, also very often and also nice multitasking.
In real world, everybody is able to see difference. I am now not talking only about best frames per second (who cares them) but about minimal, about that lags, short drops, loading level times and so on!!!
Who ever had dual cpu + at best dual scsi hdd machine, newer wants to go back. Fact that AMD is not able to produce at reasonable price and only trying us to think that we are buing PCs for benchmarks instead of hard gaming only shows they PR as BS.
Many of us even likes to have some applications running while gaming, ever heard about VoiceIP tools, email applications?
Thanks to intel to understanding that two slower cores are much better than useless single core PCs at any speed. At least in windows.
Wesley Fink - Thursday, June 23, 2005 - link
Houdani - We really want to do an article exactly as you describe, but we also have extremely limited Dual-Core samples. We have asked AMD for a 4400+ and 4800+ for comparison, but until supplies ease up a bit we don't have the processors for such an article.On page 1 the table specifies the speed, cache, and expected price of the x2 CPUs. We realize vendors are charging more in this early going, but that is nothing unusual. Our p.1 prices are where prices will settle after the first adopter flurry.
yacoub - Thursday, June 23, 2005 - link
#20 - Totally agree. For maybe $50 more you can get double the cache but does it overclock as well and what sort of performance gains does that net at equal overclocks?Houdani - Thursday, June 23, 2005 - link
This article almost started out as a "which X2 is the best value" piece, but turned into an overclocking article for the 4200 without any real comparison for the performance of the 4200 vs 4400 vs 4600 vs 4800 vs Cost.I suppose we could probably fill in the blanks by looking at the previous article by Anand and compare it to this article by Wesley, but we'd still be left with trying to extrapolate the performance of the 4600 and 4800 at stock settings.
Any chance we can get an article which puts all four of the current X2 processors on the same set of graphs with a performance per dollar blurb thrown in for good measure? Something like that would help the folks who are on the fence about spending the extra money for the 4400 over the 4200.
Yeah, yeah, the easy answer it to spend the extra money for the extra cache of the 4400 -- after all, you're spending $550 to $600 already so another $50 likely won't break your bank. Even so, it'd still be nice to see the performance numbers to make our wallet feel better about itself. :)
KristopherKubicki - Thursday, June 23, 2005 - link
dumbnewbie: Yonah launches Q1'06, but Intel has plans for small factor motherboars one quarter later. So I would optimistically say Q2'06.Kristopher
fishbits - Thursday, June 23, 2005 - link
"$500 would get you started on an Intel i955 motherboard and cpu, so why would you invest in the end-of-the-road on AMD socket 939 and old DDR1? It's crazy."Because it outperforms the Intel option and doesn't necessitate a new motherboard like the Intel does?
Why shouldn't folks take advantage of the upgrade capacity of 939 and its compatibility with X2? Or this i955 you speak of, you mean to say no one should ever upgrade the CPU they put in it, no option but 1 cpu per mobo ever? All chips/mobos are by definition "end-of-the-road?" If so, you'd be equally compelled to say Intel dual core and i955 is a futile path. If not, then you wouldn't see any problem with people upgrading their CPUs to X2.
Tell you what, just buy your Intel dual core and (try to) be happy with it. In fact, their low-end DCs are pretty nice for the price... if you didn't have to buy a new mobo just to get in the door and can put up with relatively anemic performance in some areas. But even buying a new 939 board to get to X2 today, you're going to get an across-the-board powerhouse that'll last anyone 2 years and beyond depending on their upgrade strategies, especially with the OC results we've seen today. What's not to love if you can or will need the power and it fits in your budget?
Viditor - Thursday, June 23, 2005 - link
There are a few reviews out there already that compare a dual cpu vs dual core...http://tinyurl.com/8dt7r