AMD newbie help.

[jose]

Hi everyone, I've been building systems for years but all intel based. I'd like to tryout AMD's offerings.

But what's the difference in the procs ?? Athlon FS 53, Athlon 64 3400, Opteron 848 ?? I've heard that the Opteron's are the best processor out currently & require ecc memory ? correct ?

I'm going to wait for the 940 socket of new processors, but which do these's apply to ?

Thank you for your help,

Regards,
Jose

 

[clarkey01]

fx 53 is high end gaming, best desktop CPU for gaming out at the mo, A64 3400+ is a desktop chip and quite fast too, more or less beats a p4 3.4 in most tasks, in gaming it will pull ahead, encoding will fall behind a bit.

Opterons are ment for servers,workstations -I dont really follow the opteron, so another user will have to inform you

Id say get a A64 3400+ if you can afford it, or if your loaded the FX-53, it blows games away.

Whats your system going to be used for ?

Id say stay away from the XP range, there good chips but I dont raelly think they can truely compare with some of the stuff thats being turned out at the moment, plus the Xp would be a bottleneck in new games coupled with a high end card like a 6800, or new ATi one.

 

[jose]

Web browsing, programming, encoding, enterprise databases, video editing & games.

Are the Opterons the same as a A64 ? except no smp ?
After looking around it seems that a FX processor on the 939 platform is probably goning to be the best performer..

Regards,
Jose

 

[Avalon]

Encoding and video editing...you may want to stick with a P4 over an AMD solution
but if not, an A64 3400+ will do you nicely

 

[mechBgon]

To give you some idea what to expect: I recently set up a 2.4B Hyperthreading Xeon with 1GB of dual-channel DDR333 and SCSI RAID1 on a cacheing 32MB 64-bit SCSI controller. I had it do an antivirus scan of a certain set of files that it'll have onboard throughout its life (this is a server, btw). The scan took 11 minutes 53 seconds.

For the heck of it, I had my Athlon64 3000+ do the same scan, on the same files, with the same AV software and configuration. It took 6 minutes 32 seconds. The A64 has a single 15k SCSI drive on a basic SCSI card, and 1GB of DDR400. VERY impressive, and very relevant since antivirus scanning is something that business computers do non-stop (as well as backscanning all their existing data on a daily basis, where I work anyway).

Opterons have both memory controllers enabled and use Registered ECC memory so you can pile on a lot of modules. The 100-series are the single-processor-certified ones, not sure what happens if you try them in a dual role. The 200-series are dual-certified and the 800-series are quad + 8-way certified. A single 240 will perform the same as a single 140 or a single 840, they don't vary in actual core architecture (unlike Xeon < XeonDP < XeonMP, where they have different cache sizes and stuff).

 

[VIAN]

But what's the difference in the procs ?? Athlon FS 53, Athlon 64 3400, Opteron 848 ?? I've heard that the Opteron's are the best processor out currently &amp; require ecc memory ? correct ?

Athlon64 FX - Dual Channel - these are too much money to even consider
Athlon64 (754) - Single Channel
Opteron 848 - Server Chip capable of 8-way processing; I don't know about the RAM though

Out of these, I would get the Athlon64.

'm going to wait for the 940 socket of new processors, but which do these's apply to ?

Socket 939 is what it's called. This will apply to the Athlon64. Socket 939 chips will have Dual Channel and 64-bit support. Future Socket 754 chips will be just 32-bit, but based on the Athlon64 core.

Web browsing, programming, encoding, enterprise databases, video editing &amp; games.

Athon64 wins more tests than the P4 in all those areas.

 

[jose]

Thanks everyone, AMD is really impressive nowadays.

MechBgon, that's impressive !! Will there be any "939" mobo w/ 64bit pci slots ??

Regards,
Jose

 

[Avalon]

The A64 doesn't win most tests in media encoding
definitely not saying the A64 isn't the way to go for what he wants...it is
but I just wanted to point that out so he knows

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: jose
Thanks everyone, AMD is really impressive nowadays.

MechBgon, that's impressive !! Will there be any "939" mobo w/ 64bit pci slots ??

I don't know if they'll bother. PCI Express will probably grab the consumer market if there's a need for higher bandwidth. The move to chipset-based gigaLAN and SATA RAID is underway and that takes two high-bandwidth items off of the PCI bus, reducing the need for PCI-X in the consumer realm as well. Or I should say, it *could* take them off the PCI bus... the stupid mobo makers keep ignoring the chipset capabilities and tacking on PCI-based equivalents! :|

The architecture of the AMD64 stuff is such that they could technically put a PCI-X tunnel on anything they want to. Getting people to buy it is probably the hard part You notice in Tyan's lineup that only their dual-ready Opteron boards have PCI-X. Even their dedicated single-Opteron server boards that have no AGP slots still don't have PCI-X.

 

[VIAN]

The A64 doesn't win most tests in media encoding
definitely not saying the A64 isn't the way to go for what he wants...it is
but I just wanted to point that out so he knows

He wants to do " Web browsing, programming, encoding, enterprise databases, video editing &amp; games." And what I said is true, that AMD will win more times tested all these situations. If he wants to buy a P4 to just be good in 2-3 situations, you can look at Anand's article for that, then that's his problem.

Business Winstone 2004: 3200+ VS 3.2C - AMD by 2.5; Reference 2.8C below 3.2C by 1.5.

Content Creation Winstone 2004: 3200+ VS 3.2C - AMD by 2.4; Reference 2.8C below 3.2C by 3.3.

SYSmark 2004 Overall: 3200+ VS 3.2C - Intel by 17; Reference 2.8C below 3.2C by 15.

Aquamark CPU Score: 3200+ VS 3.2C - Intel by 822; Reference 2.8C below 3.2C by 1043.

UT Flyby: 3200+ VS 3.2C - AMD by 18.6; Reference 2.8C below 3.2C by 15.1.

UT Botmatch: 3200+ VS 3.2C - AMD by 14; Reference 2.8C below 3.2C by 7.3.

Warcraft 3: 3200+ VS 3.2C - AMD by 1.3; Reference 2.8C below 3.2C by 4.1.

Quake III Arena: 3200+ VS 3.2C - AMD by 18.8; Reference 2.8C below 3.2C by 30.4.

Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy: 3200+ VS 3.2C - AMD by 2.1; Reference 2.8C below 3.2C by 4.4.

Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory: 3200+ VS 3.2C - AMD by 1.5; Reference 2.8C below 3.2C by 5.8.

DIVX Encoding: 3200+ VS 3.2C - Intel by 9; Reference 2.8C below 3.2C by 5.6.

3DStudio: 3200+ VS 3.2C - Intel by 0.8; Reference 2.8C below 3.2C by 0.37.

Lightwave: 3200+ VS 3.2C - Intel by 9.6; Reference 2.8C below 3.2C by 6.1.

Quake III Arena Source Compile: 3200+ VS 3.2C - AMD by 2.5; Reference 2.8C below 3.2C by 1.7.

Out of 14 tests, Intel wins 5. The rest is up to you.

 

[clarkey01]

Intel Fanboys, whats your reply to that ?

 

[clarkey01]

"Out of 14 tests, Intel wins 5. The rest is up to you. "


NOOCH

 

[clarkey01]

"Those tests dont matter" -----yeah sure

GO AMD!

 

[jose]

I've found the following info: all a64 chips have 1mb L2 cache.

A64-3200 (1.6) $262
A64-3400 (2.2) $369
Opteron 244 (1.8) $306
Opteron 246 (2.0) $441
Opteron 248 (2.2) $669
A64FX-51 (2.2) $688
A64FX-53 (2.4) $733

It looks like the best ~$400 chip is the A64 3400, Are all the chips the same core ?
Why are the FX versions so expensive ?

Regards,
Jose

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: jose
I've found the following info: all a64 chips have 1mb L2 cache.

A64-3200 (1.6) $262
A64-3400 (2.2) $369
Opteron 244 (1.8) $306
Opteron 246 (2.0) $441
Opteron 248 (2.2) $669
A64FX-51 (2.2) $688
A64FX-53 (2.4) $733

It looks like the best ~$400 chip is the A64 3400, Are all the chips the same core ?
Why are the FX versions so expensive ?

Regards,
Jose

The FX's are more expensive than the regular A64's because they have both memory controllers online, like the Opterons, where the regular A64's only have one. Hence all the extra pins (socket 940 versus 754). The Socket940 processors will all want registered PC3200 memory, while the Socket754 processors will all want unbuffered PC3200 memory (or faster).

Be aware of this potential gotcha: regular Athlon64's with the C0 core are probably not going to allow more than two modules at full DDR400 speeds. They downshift to DDR200 speed when a third modules is added. This is an advantage to the models that have two memory controllers... they should allow up to four DDR400 unbuffered modules. Models that use registered memory, of course, are going to do an end-run around the whole issue.

 

[jose]

Thanks everyone for the replys,

So if you want 2 gigs of ram (4 x 512) on a 939 mobo you'll probably have to get an FX or Opteron chip ?

But why is the FS-51 more expensive than an Opteron 248 ? The Opteron 248 looks to be a better chip, it runs in dual mobo's and is a bit cheaper.

Right now I'm running a p4 3.3c, I guess I'll have to wait for 6-9 months before I can find anything that is twice as fast to upgrade too. Unless the 939 platform becomes too appealing.. ie 939 FX procs drop below $400

Thanks mechBgon for your help.

Sometime soon , I may have to upgrade (1 month). I'm just trying to see what's out there that will give me a significant speed boost. I also thought of getting a P4-3.4c and put it in a Supermicro P4SCT+II mobo w/ 2gigs of ram &amp; a 64bit scsi card. I really want to increase my encoding speed. Wish Intel wouldn't had a flop w/ the Prescott.

Regards,
Jose