3400+ Clawhammer Or Newcastle

[ManBearPig]

I can either get corsair value ram plus a newcastle 3400, or get a clawhammer and some other type of ram. I am willing to spend a 100 more dollars on some good OCing ram if you guys think i should go with the clawhammer. Anyone? Oh, i only wanna OC is a couple hundred mhz. This wont require a new hsf, will it? Thanks!

I found them for the same price, so its not an issue.

 

[cirthix]

giel ddr4400 is the best ram you can buy. get a 512mb stick or two from newegg for around 150 each

 

[ren97]

The clawhammer is a much better core. It has 1 Meg of cache vs. the 512k on the Newcastle as I'm sure you know. There is a lot of talk about how the extra 512k isn't that important and that?s certainly debatable. A one Meg cache isn't going to raise your fps in doom 3 up 40 fps, but it does have quite a performance advantage in many applications. The other thing is, the Newcastle?s, most of them anyway have a Meg cache and if it's unstable or at all imperfect amd disables 512k and ships it as a Newcastle. But, Newcastle?s overclock much better with the smaller cache. Since the threshold is around 2.4 GHz though, I choose the 3400+ clawhammer which I am going to overclock around 2.3 GHz and I will know that my 1 Meg clawhammer is not an imperfect CPU

 

[BW86]

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...7&threadid=1398988

 

[Imyourzero]

Originally posted by: ren97
The clawhammer is a much better core. It has 1 Meg of cache vs. the 512k on the Newcastle as I'm sure you know. There is a lot of talk about how the extra 512k isn't that important and that?s certainly debatable. A one Meg cache isn't going to raise your fps in doom 3 up 40 fps, but it does have quite a performance advantage in many applications. The other thing is, the Newcastle?s, most of them anyway have a Meg cache and if it's unstable or at all imperfect amd disables 512k and ships it as a Newcastle. But, Newcastle?s overclock much better with the smaller cache. Since the threshold is around 2.4 GHz though, I choose the 3400+ clawhammer which I am going to overclock around 2.3 GHz and I will know that my 1 Meg clawhammer is not an imperfect CPU

While there may be some apps that benefit from the CH's larger cache, the NC bests it most of the time. Since the A64 is not nearly as cache-dependent as the P4, most of the time the extra 200 MHz of the NC helps out more than the extra 512k of cache that the CH has. If you manage to overclock each one to 2.5 GHz, the CH would probably outperform the NC...but that's a big if, since many people don't reach 2.5 with complete stability. Besides that, the CH is 1)harder to find and 2)usually more expensive.

As for the NC having 1/2 of its cache disabled due to being imperfect, I don't know how much stock I put into that. Personally I think it's something CH owners tell themselves to make them feel better about the purchase of their older CPU. While it *may* have been true in the beginning, AMD is now phasing out the CH's and I find it very hard to believe that every single NC they are producing has 1/2 of its cache disabled because it is "imperfect." You could also turn that argument around and say that since many CH's can't reach the 2.4 of the NC, they are imperfect and clock-limited instead of cache-limited. It can go round and round all day, but the fact is either one is an extremely fast, capable CPU and I am positive that in most applications, most people wouldn't be able to tell which one that they were using. When one does pull ahead of the other, we're talking just a few % in most cases...

 

[charloscarlies]

Plain and simple...get the NC 3400+. It's already clocked at 2.4 ghz...and from my testing the extra cache makes very little difference except for very specific cases. The extra clock speed is the way to go.

 

[ren97]

I'll tell you what I'myourzero your comment, ("AMD is now phasing out the CH's and I find it very hard to believe that every single NC they are producing has 1/2 of its cache disabled because it is "imperfect.") makes a hell of a lot of sense. I still have a hard time believing that the extra 512k doesn't boost its performance at all, I've read and heard it both ways though. What if it had 256k then it wouldn?t it perform much worse then one with 512k? Is it just that because of the better designs of the k8 that anything over 512k doesn't really matter? Either way get this. I was dead set on the 1 meg cache as you can tell from my post, but I got mine from monarch computers and then sent me a new Newcastle model number ada3400aep4ax, do me a favor someone and please tell me if this is the new revision that oc's better and excepts more memory, is this a good model number. I think I'll keep it. Thanks imyouzero. I'

 

[Imyourzero]

Originally posted by: ren97
I'll tell you what I'myourzero your comment, ("AMD is now phasing out the CH's and I find it very hard to believe that every single NC they are producing has 1/2 of its cache disabled because it is "imperfect.") makes a hell of a lot of sense. I still have a hard time believing that the extra 512k doesn't boost its performance at all, I've read and heard it both ways though. What if it had 256k then it wouldn?t it perform much worse then one with 512k? Is it just that because of the better designs of the k8 that anything over 512k doesn't really matter? Either way get this. I was dead set on the 1 meg cache as you can tell from my post, but I got mine from monarch computers and then sent me a new Newcastle model number ada3400aep4ax, do me a favor someone and please tell me if this is the new revision that oc's better and excepts more memory, is this a good model number. I think I'll keep it. Thanks imyouzero. I'

No, it doesn't make sense. That would mean that every single Newcastle that is out right now--every new Newcastle that is being sold--is incapable of running 1MB of cache and that's just not so. You can't tell me that all these Newcastles failed the 1MB cache "test" and are being sold as such. They come with 512k because that is the spec for the Newcastle. ClawHammer is done. Newcastle is not. Cache is expensive. Less cache means the CPU's are cheaper to produce, and as we've found out it also usually means they overclock better as well.

Like I said, this could go on forever. So you keep your CPU, and I'll keep my "imperfect" Newcastle which performs better than the "perfect" ClawHammer in the majority of benchmarks.

Again, there is NO reason to step on anyone's toes over this. As was pointed out, both are very fast CPU's and would be a great choice for anyone wanting a speedy A64 rig.

 

[ren97]

Did you read my last post, I said that I totally agree with you and that theres no way that all newcastles are imperfect. Also monarch computers sent me a new castle and AGAIN I AGREE with you and have done more research and am going to keep my NEWCASTLE. Thanks agian.

 

[Imyourzero]

Originally posted by: ren97
Did you read my last post, I said that I totally agree with you and that theres no way that all newcastles are imperfect. Also monarch computers sent me a new castle and AGAIN I AGREE with you and have done more research and am going to keep my NEWCASTLE. Thanks agian.

Sorry, I totally misunderstood you. When you said: "I'll tell you what I'myourzero your comment ... makes a hell of a lot of sense." I couldn't tell if you were agreeing or being sarcastic. Sorry for the misunderstanding! That's one of the downfalls of the internet since we can only read words instead of having a live conversation.

 

[ren97]

np, thanks for the info.