.09 Athlon 64: Value, Speed and Overclocking
by Wesley Fink on October 14, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Gaming Performance
Gaming Performance was consistently faster on the new 90nm than the existing 130nm processors. This varied from 2% in Aquamark3 and Doom3 to 7% in Quake 3. Overall, gaming averaged about 3% faster on the new 90nm chips. While 3% is not a huge increase and it will likely not even be noticed by the average user, it was still impressive to see the new 90nm chips perform a little better than the older 130nm chips.
We have talked in past reviews about how some games respond well to CPU and memory speed increases, while others seem to be most influenced by the graphics card. This is nicely illustrated in comparing benchmarks of the 3000+ at stock speed to the same benches at 2.6GHz (290x9). Here, we see games like Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Unreal Tournament 2003, Quake 3, and Comanche 4 improve 34% to 42% as we move from 1.8Ghz to 2.6Ghz. At the other end of the spectrum, Halo and Aquamark 3 only improve 12% to 13% while the CPU speed increases 45%. Doom 3 falls in the middle with a 24% increase in frame rate for the 45% boost in CPU speed.
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gchen77 - Wednesday, March 30, 2005 - link
Can someone please explain the effects of raising vcore?I'm a relatively newbie to overclocking but I remember in the past (with Athlon XPs) raising vcore was almost certain death unless you had water cooling or your pc running in a freezer :)
jer - Wednesday, December 8, 2004 - link
Wesley Fink,could u make a screenshot of the Memory tab in CPU-Z of the 90nm A64 3000+ cpu ??
thx so much
Goomzz - Saturday, December 4, 2004 - link
Just got my winchester 3000+ and my MSI K8N MSI Neo2 Plat. Since it's an x-mas gift can put it together until then. Putting it with Corsair XMS DDR 400 memory. I'll let you guys know how it goes.Goomzz - Saturday, December 4, 2004 - link
romano25 - Wednesday, November 24, 2004 - link
I dont get it...1)IS 3500 64 voltage 1.5 Volts?
2)Looks like the decreased the CPu multiplier on 3500 coz by default it is 11? Why? Does it affect ur performance?
romano25 - Wednesday, November 24, 2004 - link
bobbozzo - Monday, November 22, 2004 - link
#82: it's been answered: get a board (MSI) that allows the Memory & FSB to run at an adjustable ratio, so the memory can run slower than the FSB.scius - Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - link
Cheaper Ram Altnernatives:A few other readers have mentioned this, but it seems there hasn't been much of an answer (though a few worthy attempts, notably that the 3200+ is probably a better choice).
The Question: What ram would let us run at the highest FSB for the least $.
Obviously you can just buy the faster stuff (DDR500, or whatever), but there must be sticks that, with looser timings(small cost), can let your processor scream(huge gains) while staying relatively stable.
Anyway, I haven't found any articles about it, but if anyone has, or has some personal experience here, i'm sure we're all eager to hear it.
VoodooGamez - Thursday, November 4, 2004 - link
Great article Wesley!cryptonomicon - Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - link
great article anand!The 90nm process sounds like a great improvement (especially for oc).