Affordable Dual Core from AMD: Athlon 64 X2 3800+
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 1, 2005 9:36 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
The Test
Our hardware configurations are similar to what we've used in previous comparisons. For this test, we focused on CPUs at or around the Athlon 64 X2 3800+'s $354 price point.AMD Athlon 64 Configuration
Socket-939 Athlon 64 CPUs
2 x 512MB OCZ PC3200 EL Dual Channel DIMMs 2-2-2-7
ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe
ATI Radeon X850 XT PCI Express
Intel Pentium 4 Configuration
LGA-775 Intel Pentium 4 and Pentium D CPUs
2 x 512MB Crucial DDR-II 533 Dual Channel DIMMs 3-3-3-12
Intel 925XE Motherboard
ATI Radeon X850 XT PCI Express
Business/General Use Performance
Business Winstone 2004
Business Winstone 2004 tests the following applications in various usage scenarios:. Microsoft Access 2002
. Microsoft Excel 2002
. Microsoft FrontPage 2002
. Microsoft Outlook 2002
. Microsoft PowerPoint 2002
. Microsoft Project 2002
. Microsoft Word 2002
. Norton AntiVirus Professional Edition 2003
. WinZip 8.1
Office Productivity SYSMark 2004
SYSMark's Office Productivity suite consists of three tests, the first of which is the Communication test. The Communication test consists of the following:"The user receives an email in Outlook 2002 that contains a collection of documents in a zip file. The user reviews his email and updates his calendar while VirusScan 7.0 scans the system. The corporate web site is viewed in Internet Explorer 6.0. Finally, Internet Explorer is used to look at samples of the web pages and documents created during the scenario."
"The user edits the document using Word 2002. He transcribes an audio file into a document using Dragon NaturallySpeaking 6. Once the document has all the necessary pieces in place, the user changes it into a portable format for easy and secure distribution using Acrobat 5.0.5. The user creates a marketing presentation in PowerPoint 2002 and adds elements to a slide show template."
"The user opens a database using Access 2002 and runs some queries. A collection of documents are archived using WinZip 8.1. The queries' results are imported into a spreadsheet using Excel 2002 and are used to generate graphical charts."
Microsoft Office XP SP-2
Here, we see in that the purest of office application tests, performance doesn't vary all too much. 
Mozilla 1.4
Quite possibly the most frequently used application on any desktop is the one that we pay the least amount of attention to when it comes to performance. While a bit older than the core that is now used in Firefox, performance in Mozilla is worth looking at as many users are switching from IE to a much more capable browser on the PC - Firefox. 
ACD Systems ACDSee PowerPack 5.0
ACDSee is a popular image editing tool that is great for basic image editing options such as batch resizing, rotating, cropping and other such features that are too elementary to justify purchasing something as powerful as Photoshop. There are no extremely complex filters here, just pure batch image processing. 
Winzip
Archiving performance ends up being fairly CPU bound as well as I/O limited. 
WinRAR 3.40
Pulling the hard disk out of the equation, we can get a much better idea of which processors are truly best suited for file compression. 
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dougSF30 - Monday, August 1, 2005 - link
No, in that Toledo die can have 1/2-cache disabled, and run as 512K L2 x 2However this page is silly for other reasons-- they probably had a Manchester 4200+, not Toledo, and more importantly, it just shouldn't make any difference, as the 89W TDP is given to both Toledo and Manchester 4200+s. They are both Rev E parts, and with equal frequency and enabled cache size, should on average be almost identical, as not much changed from E4 to E6.
dougSF30 - Monday, August 1, 2005 - link
This whole page should go.(1) Your 4200+ was probably a Manchester part, not a Toledo
(2) Toledo vs. Manchester doesn't really matter in terms of power. Rev E4 and E6 are basically the same. AMD is simply able to choose a lower official TDP for the lower-rated parts (4200+ and 3800+), whether they are made from the Manchester die OR the Toledo die. (Both 4200+ "BV" and 4200+ "CD" receive an 89W TDP from AMD, along with the new 3800+ "BV")
Doormat - Monday, August 1, 2005 - link
If I had the money. Surely though, this is a great value and I can see people getting this chip (and subsequently OCing it to 2+GHz). Mainstream performance is about to get a kick in the pants.dougSF30 - Monday, August 1, 2005 - link
All the updates fixing the '4200+/4600+ were already manchester' issue just vanished...Houdani - Monday, August 1, 2005 - link
Page 5. Third table.This table shows AMD with higher numbers in 3 out of 4 benches, yet AMD is given the win in all 4. Did Intel get shafted by the math here? Perhaps the D830 managed to eke out 2 wins overall?
Yes, yes. Nitpick. Just keeping you honest.
Also (page 1) was AMD really late to the desktop dual core scene? While Intel did announce earlier, availability-wise weren't both companies on par?
SDA - Monday, August 1, 2005 - link
Higher numbers do not equal higher performance in all of these tests. To quote the review (what, didn't you see the caption?): "The iTunes scores are Encoding Times in Minutes, lower numbers are better."And no, Intel's dual-cores were definitely available before AMD's. I distinctly remember hearing a lot of complaints about this. The gap doesn't seem that big in retrospect, but trust me, it was there.
Houdani - Monday, August 1, 2005 - link
captions = goodAgreed -- sometimes higher is better (frames) and sometimes lower is better (time). So in that regard, wouldn't all the encode tests (and 3dsmax) be measured in time? If so, then AMD would have lost 3 of the 4, rather than the other way around. Gah!
What am I missing here .. are the Windows Media Encoder HD and the Divx 6 Encode measured in some other way besides time?
SDA - Monday, August 1, 2005 - link
No, not all are measured in time. If that were the case, it would have been stated, I'd think.Video encoding can also be measured in frames encoded per second. It usually IS measured that way, because that way higher == better (as our minds tend to think).
dougSF30 - Monday, August 1, 2005 - link
Or at least, I noticed it back on July 12 on AMD's quick reference guide. Both BV and CD.coomar - Monday, August 1, 2005 - link
the intel memory was rated at 3-3-3@533, thats pretty good, i think the lowest you can go on ddr2 is 3-2-2@533, but that would be a lot more than 2-2-2@200 ddr ram, isn't the intel board still 50 bucks more than the amd 939 boards, then the x2 3800 would be a compeititor with the 2.8 p-d but only for a month or two until they get the prices down on the new intel chipsetsthough ddr2 seems to have an easier time with larger ram modules, 1gb modules in particular
i'll be interested in the overclocking of this chip