AMD Athlon 64 & Athlon 64 FX - It's Judgment Day
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 23, 2003 1:25 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Socket-939: Athlon 64 FX DOA?
As we've already mentioned, AMD is planning on releasing a 939-pin version of the Athlon 64 FX sometime next year. We're hearing rumors that it will be very early next year, which would leave early FX adopters in a not-so-great situation.
Unlike previous situations where a chip manufacturer has switched sockets, the 940 situation won't leave users completely abandoned as the Opteron uses the same socket and thus you can always upgrade your CPU or motherboard to an Opteron down the road. AMD is planning on making 940-pin CPUs for a while so that shouldn't be a big problem, the only issue will be that the number of performance enthusiast boards available in a 940-pin version will eventually decrease over time; the boards you find for Opterons will obviously not be made with the enthusiast in mind.
The Socket-939 Athlon 64 FX will most likely have unbuffered memory support from the start (it doesn't make sense for AMD not to offer the support as they're redoing the package anyways, unless they simply chop off a pin with this part) and will be shipping at higher initial clock speeds than the current FX, so it makes sense to wait.
Combine the launch of a 939-pin version with the outstanding performance of the Athlon 64 and you will see why we are fairly negative on the FX at this point in time. If you want our advice, stay away from the FX for now.
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Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
Anand runs the Content Creation benchmark without the bugfix patch?!?! WTF? Like that's fair... Without the patch, it doesn't use SSE properly with the Athlons...And the FX 51 benches are completely bogus, because he used an nForce3-based motherboard.
They've got issues, and the Via boards outperform
them significantly. Hello? Anand?
http://www.tech-report.com/reviews/2003q3/athlon64...
"Notice here the contrast between the Athlon 64 FX with the K8T800 and with the nForce3 Pro. With the K8T800, the Athlon 64 FX is arguably the fastest system overall in the viewperf suite. The nForce3 Pro, however, seems to limit performance quite a bit."
Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
#9 Which planet are you on?Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
Great news for the Linux users:-) I'm seeing a lot of Windows users switching to Linux and using transcode or cinelerra:-)Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
Good thing you are not biased at atll, #4Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
Eat it #6 amd fan boyAnonymous User - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
yes, you're right #4, they're biased. just like all the other tech sites praising the new amd chip. they're obviously all wrong.... go awayAnonymous User - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
Still can't decide. Leaning Intel... I've had better experience with Intel.. but next year When XP64 shipes......Guess I will stick with my trusty 386..
Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
BIASED BIASED BIASED BIASED BIASEDThe P4EE whoops new AMDs chip and you say is "The Pentium 4 EE manages to regain some lost ground for Intel, but not enough". YOU ARE CRAZY!!!!!! The Prescott will DEMOLISH AMD once and for all. Btw, get some more benchmarks. Q3 and UT2003 are OLD GAMES using DX8. Run Battlefield and other memory/cpu entensive games.
AMD fanboys can't cry about their chip is slower but cheaper either.
Worst biased site ever. Just because they kissed your butt and showed you the cpu's a year in advance you shove your nose up AMDs socket.
BIASED BIASED BIASED BIASED BIASED
Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
What people tend to forget is that 3200+ is the INITIAL speed from the first batch of CPU's. As with the XP the speed will increase rather rapidly as well as die-quality and tweaks/performance fixes. Athlon XP debuted at what, 1500+ (?) and now ends at 3200+. The A64 going to 90nm will yield some neat increases in available speeds (4800+ anyone?) ;)Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
wtf no 640x480 game benchmarks?