AMD's Athlon64 or Intel's P4?

[Daniel James]

If you go Socket 939, you'll be paying big bucks....the boards and
chips are expensive...

True, but not really fair.

The difference in motherboard prices isn't /that/ great -- and you do get
rather more for your money.

The difference in CPU prices can be explained by the fact that the S939 A64s
are generally faster than the S754 A64s. Only the fastest S754 A64 (3700) is
faster than the slowest S939 A64 (3500) -- and it also costs more. Add a few
things like support for dual-channel RAM with S939 and it's clear that the
extra cost may be worthwhile if you have applications that will benefit from a
really high-spec system today.

Cheers,
Daniel.

 

[Andrew]

I didn't know that. Do you have a link that compares Athlon 64
favorably with the P4 for server applications?

About a month ago there was a page comparing running UT2004 servers on
AMD and Intel in 32 and 64bit, unfortunately I don't know where it is.
The end result was that the reviewer could run four servers on one CPU
in 64bit compared to three in 32bit (either AMD or Intel).

 

[Nico Kadel-Garcia]

Very funny. Clock speed is meaningless, unless you are comparing
otherwise identical chips. Architecture is what is important. Notice
that a $160 Athlon 64 3000+ beats an $820 Pentium 4 EE 3.2 ghz
running Doom 3.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2149&p=7

Even with its huge cache and much higher clock speed, the P4 3.2 ghz EE
doesn't beat an Athlon 64 3000+(which is 1/5th the cost) in Doom 3.

Which is fabulous, and I'd be glad to be wrong because I consider Intel to
be incredible thieves for their wholesale theft of DEC's Alpha technologies
to create the Pentium. But Doom 3 is the way-high-end of modern games,
written with 64-bits in mind: how does it do on *other* games, say a year
old?

 

[Nico Kadel-Garcia]

I didn't know that. Do you have a link that compares Athlon 64
favorably with the P4 for server applications?

I've been talking to vendors for Beowulf clusters, and other Beowulf
facilities. They're very excited by 64-bit, especially for extremely large
data sets.

Let the benchmarks show that the Athlon 64 is really really nifty for
_game_ class applications.


I didn't know that either. Which games are inaccessible with the
Athlon 64?

It'll *play* them, my (admittedly off-the-cuff-reports from acquaintances)
is that you don't see the speed performances with slightly older games like
Max Payne or Halo.

This is the worst possible choice you can make. Using a CPU that is
much more expensive than an Athlon 64 requiring a much more expensive
motherboard for negative gain in game performance.


I know Falcon 4 and Quake 1 can use SMP with some effort, do you play
one of these? Or do you play something else that can?

No, my experience is more with server class rack machines and some user
desktops (several hundred of each right now). I get *great* markdowns on
Xeons and Xeon motherboards right now, and not many vendors are carrying AMD
based systems. But if you do go that route, I really like
www.pcsforeveryone.com. Good service, Linux friendly, and their pricing web
page is very usable.

 

[JK]

Which is fabulous, and I'd be glad to be wrong because I consider Intel to
be incredible thieves for their wholesale theft of DEC's Alpha technologies
to create the Pentium. But Doom 3 is the way-high-end of modern games,
written with 64-bits in mind:

There isn't a 64 bit version of Doom 3 out yet. Those benchmarks are for
the only version of Doom 3, which is 32 bit. I am expecting that with the the
64
bit version of Doom 3 Athlon 64 performance should really be awesome. I
wonder if it will be a porting of Doom 3 to 64 bits, or if many additional
features will be added as well, and if it might even use a name like Doom 4?

how does it do on *other* games, say a year
old?

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2065&p=8

What I am really excited about is how they will perform with 64 bit versions
of
games. We don't have any benchmarks yet, however I expect them to be awesome.

 

[JK]

The Athlon 64 is the desktop version of the Opteron. Servers typically use

one, two or four Opterons. The Opterons come in the 100 series for single
use,
the 200 series for dual use, and the 800 series for 4 way use(why didn't
AMD
call this the 400 series?). Opteron systems use registered ECC ddr ram.

http://www.anandtech.com/searchresults.aspx

Pay particular attention to

http://www.anandtech.com/searchresults.aspx

for 64 bit performance.

AMD has also released the models Opteron 240 EE and Opteron 840 EE
which only use 30 watts each(they are much more expensive though than
the higher power consuming versions of those chips). There are also the
55 watt Opteron 246 HE and Opteron 846 HE.

 

[JK]

To compare power consumption statistics see

http://users.erols.com/chare/elec.htm

 

[bp]

What resolution and stuff? At 1152x864 resolution, High Quality setting

How do you turn on anistropic in DOOM3 ? Are you turning it on through
the driver or from somewhere in doom ?

 

[John Hall]

If you run Doom 3 in High Quality video mode, then you automatically get
anistropic filtering.

JK

 

[Jamie_Manic]

Well, I am not ready to let go of this video card. I only had it for one year
and paid like $400 for it!!

Then you can probably still get a very good price for it on Ebay or
something

 

[bp]

If you run Doom 3 in High Quality video mode, then you automatically get
anistropic filtering.
Ohhh

 

[Michael Starke]

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action Michael Starke


Ah, what do you use to play then? I am curious of your FPS with my type
of settings in the game?

With your settings I got 28 FPS on the first pass and 33FPS on the 2nd.

I usually don't enable Anistropic filtering but use 2X FSAA.
Maybe I should use your settings since I get a slight boost of 3 FPS without
the FSAA.

P-4 3GHz Northwood
Asus P4P 800 Deluxe
1GB RAM in dual channel (512X2)
Radeon 9800 pro 128MB
Win 2000 Pro



mjs

 

[ANTant]

Then you can probably still get a very good price for it on Ebay or
something

Bah! I am keeping it until it is time to retire it.
--
"Have I told you how much I like ants, huh? Especially fried in a
subtle blend of mech fluid and grated gears?" --Rampage to Inferno,
"Transmutate" in Transformers (Beast Wars)
/\___/\
/ /\ /\ \ Phillip (Ant) @ http://antfarm.ma.cx & http://aqfl.net
| |o o| | E-mail: (e-mail address removed) or (e-mail address removed)
\ _ / Nuke ANT from e-mail address if your e-mail was returned.
( )

 

[ANTant]

Nice. It looks like minor more usage over Athlon 2200+.

To compare power consumption statistics see

(e-mail address removed) wrote:

--
"Have I told you how much I like ants, huh? Especially fried in a
subtle blend of mech fluid and grated gears?" --Rampage to Inferno,
"Transmutate" in Transformers (Beast Wars)
/\___/\
/ /\ /\ \ Phillip (Ant) @ http://antfarm.ma.cx & http://aqfl.net
| |o o| | E-mail: (e-mail address removed) or (e-mail address removed)
\ _ / Nuke ANT from e-mail address if your e-mail was returned.
( )

 

[Tony Hill]

Yeah, I believe my hardware friend activated the Raid controller (not
sure of the details) to use the 120 GB HDD. I had to get a new PSU
because it didn't have enouh juice due to the HDD AND the video card.
Sheesh.

Hehe, yup. On the upside, that new power supply should be sufficient
for your new system. If you hadn't upgraded previously you probably
would have needed to upgrade for this CPU upgrade.

Yeah, that is why I am thinking of getting an older motherboard like
754 so drivers do exist. Also, helps ot determine what is stable out
there and save money. I do NOT need the latest and newest stuff!

Even the older Socket 754 stuff could well be a bit weak on SATA
driver support in Linux. Generally speaking this has been very slow
to be implemented properly.

How about comparing to the Athlon XP?

Tough call. AMD changed the way that they report power consumption on
their chips with the Athlon64 line. Previously they had listed a
maximum power consumption for each individual processor with the
AthlonXP. With the new Athlon64s they are just listing a maximum
power consumption for the entire line (ie "if your system meets these
specs you can use ANY Athlon64 built on a 130nm process"). So as a
result the lowly Athlon64 2800+ is listed with the same power
consumption as the as-yet-unreleased Athlon64 FX 55, despite the fact
that the latter consumes quite a bit more power.

In the end though, from what I've seen the Athlon64 2800+ will
probably have about the same maximum power consumption as your
AthlonXP 2200+ while also having lower power consumption when not
going flat-out. Going to faster Athlon64's might increase your
maximum power consumption by a bit, but probably not a big change over
what you have now, and the "Cool 'n Quiet" technology will help to
keep the idle and light processing power consumption down.

 

[Tony Hill]

I didn't know that. Do you have a link that compares Athlon 64
favorably with the P4 for server applications?

Note that I think there's a bit of confusion here between "Athlon64"
(the processor) and "AMD64" (the 64-bit instruction set used by
Athlon64, Opteron and the latest Xeon processors).

Let the benchmarks show that the Athlon 64 is really really nifty for
_game_ class applications.

AMD64, as a 64-bit instruction set, does have some very definite
benefits for servers that typically will not be seen in most games
(mainly because most games are only available as 32-bit applications,
UT2004 and Far Cry are the only ones I know of that have even talked
about going to 64-bit so far).

Athlon64 CPUs, on the other hand, are very fast processors for games,
almost certainly the best bang for your buck these days.

I didn't know that either. Which games are inaccessible with the
Athlon 64?

None are inaccessible with the Athlon64, most do not make use of
AMD64.

 

[Piet Pompie]

AMD64, as a 64-bit instruction set, does have some very definite

benefits for servers that typically will not be seen in most games

It sounds like there are more 64-bit server applications in the PC
world than I realized. My impression was that you have to use
something like 64-bit Suse and compile your stuff from source.

Can the Athlon 64 execute 32-bit and 64-bit code side by side? If so,
does a context switch imply an expensive processor mode switch?

 

[Tony Hill]

It sounds like there are more 64-bit server applications in the PC
world than I realized. My impression was that you have to use
something like 64-bit Suse and compile your stuff from source.

Nope. Pretty much all the 64-bit Linux distributions are 64-bit from
ground-up.

In Windows-land things aren't quite there yet, most of the software is
still in beta, but many major commercial applications have already
been ported to 64-bit mode, just waiting on MS to get their operating
system out the door (it's already a year late... or "right on
schedule" in MS terms).

Can the Athlon 64 execute 32-bit and 64-bit code side by side?
Yes.

If so,
does a context switch imply an expensive processor mode switch?

No.

While running under a 64-bit OS, an AMD64 compatible processor runs in
"Long Mode", in which it can run either 64-bit code or 32-bit code.
The 32-bit code even gains some fairly minor improvements in long mode
over running it in standard 32-bit protected mode, most notably that
each 32-bit process can directly address a full 4GB of memory (vs a
maximum of 2 or 3GB in 32-bit protected mode).

 

[Gary Colligan]

-
"Please take the dot [.] out of the address for replies"

"> About the only trick that you might run into is that many new

motherboards only come with 2 IDE controllers, enough for 4 devices.
It looks like your system has 5 IDE devices. Often the extra parallel
IDE connectors have been dropped in favor of Serial ATA ones, though
there are at least a few boards less with 3 IDE controllers (I know
Asus' A8V Deluxe has them).

If he has a look at the Gigabyte GA-K8NS Pro, he will have no problem with
all them ATA ide's
it has 4xATA & 4xSATA

 

[K Doty]

I have The GA-K9NS Pro. Its The best board i have ever owned.

-
"Please take the dot [.] out of the address for replies"

"> About the only trick that you might run into is that many new

motherboards only come with 2 IDE controllers, enough for 4 devices.
It looks like your system has 5 IDE devices. Often the extra parallel
IDE connectors have been dropped in favor of Serial ATA ones, though
there are at least a few boards less with 3 IDE controllers (I know
Asus' A8V Deluxe has them).

If he has a look at the Gigabyte GA-K8NS Pro, he will have no problem with
all them ATA ide's
it has 4xATA & 4xSATA