Athlon64 3400+ Reviews!

[microAmp]

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AMDMB.com numbers
Athlon64 3200+ 2.0 GHz
Athlon64 3400+ 2.2 GHz

10% increase of clock speed.
5.88% increase of Model #

Athlon64 3400+ % gain over Athlon64 3200+

Quake 3 Demo 001 1024x768 Normal
6.25%

Quake 3 Demo 001 1024x768 Max
6.72%

UT2K3 Citadel Min Detail 1024x768 Min Detail
1.09%

UT2K3 Citadel Min Detail 1024x768 Max Detail
5.95%

X2: The Threat 1024x768
2.79%

3D Mark 2001 SE 1024x768
3.38%

Content Creation Winstone 2001
6.37%

Content Creation Winstone 2002
8.47%

Content Creation Winstone 2004
8.02%

Business Winstone 2001
7.08%

Business Winstone 2002
2.57%

Business Winstone 2004
7.92%

XMPEG - DivX Conversion
15.297%

LAME MP3 Conversion 320kbps
8.55%

CineBench 2003 Render Time
9.10%

CineBench 2003 OPenGL Software
9.13%

SinceMark 2 Beta - Memory
.12%

SinceMark 2 Beta - Moldyn
11.02%

SinceMark 2 Beta - Primordia
8.53%

SinceMark 2 Beta - Cipher
8.92%

Average % increase 6.89685%

 

[Sid59]

awesome. thanks. gonna go read.

 

[JBT]

nice good work

 

[Ikonomi]

Awesome roundup! Starting at the top and reading my way down. O_O

 

[Corporate Thug]

sweet

 

[Markfw]

Half those reviews use the nforce3 chipset, and they even comment something like "has a problem with memory, and would be better with the via....". Why didn't they just use VIA chipset to test ? I read the techreport, and it did use the via. and a lot of the benches were close to my OC'ed results. I still don't know how I got 106 on botmatch, but......

 

[RussianSensation]

I just dont understand why all the intel lovers keep defending the P4. Look its a great processor but athlon 64 has gotten it beaten overall. At least most of us play games and do general applications like winzip, word, excel, e-mail, internet and athlon has gotten p4 beaten again. However, if the NEW processor wasnt faster, there wouldnt be any incentive for intel to introduce new technology and new ways of improving data throughput and efficiency. They would simply increase clock speed if at all. It is this type of competition that results in lower prices, great choices (in the end) for the final consumer, overall better products. I dont even want to imagine one company dominating any type of market for a long period of time thus diluting the competition.

I mean 1 year ago Athlon XP (esp. 2500+ was the cpu to get), then 6 months ago it was the 2.4/2.6C , now its the Athlon 64 quite simply an enthusiast who is interested in getting the best buck for the money would choose the processor that first serves his/her needs and hopefully provides the best price/perfomance ratio. Yes i bought intel p4 6 months ago because at the time it was the best choice, now it is not. But I just dont understand why people keep defending one cpu or the other not because of the fact that one outperforms the other but due to "pathetic" loyalty. Loyalty is a great thing, but a smart customer will no longer be loyal if a similar priced product that offers something better assuming all other things are constant (ie. warranty, customer service, etc.)

I think it is very important to support AMD as much as possible right now, because they deserve it...at least for the time being, who knows in 1 or 2 years from now....

Great reviews by the way!

 

[Bovinicus]

I just wanted to point out how well the Athlon64 seems to be scaling with clockspeed. There were multiple benchmarks where the 10% increase in clockspeed from 2 to 2.2GHz resulted in 10%+ of an increase in performance. Most were at least 7%. There were a couple of benches severely limited by other system components, of course, but in general my previous statement holds true.

 

[microAmp]

Originally posted by: Bovinicus
I just wanted to point out how well the Athlon64 seems to be scaling with clockspeed. There were multiple benchmarks where the 10% increase in clockspeed from 2 to 2.2GHz resulted in 10%+ of an increase in performance. Most were at least 7%. There were a couple of benches severely limited by other system components, of course, but in general my previous statement holds true.

I'm working on a % increase right now and will post at the top when I'm done, I used AMDMB.com numbers.

 

[kuk]

Anand's review is up.

The only thing that it didn't state is wether the 3400+ is a ClawHammer or a NewCastle.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: kuk
Anand's review is up.

The only thing that it didn't state is wether the 3400+ is a ClawHammer or a NewCastle.

Newcastles only come with 512k L2 cache don't they?

 

[XBoxLPU]

and I also thought we wouldn't see NewCastle until 939 was out

 

[XBoxLPU]

Originally posted by: Markfw900
I still don't know how I got 106 on botmatch, but......

I am getting 88 ...... with a 9700 Pro.....

 

[Markfw]

Two more things that bother be about the Tomshardware review, one with Intel bias, one with AMD bias, but still WRONG.

1) They OC'ed the 3400+, but did not OC the P4 to 3400 and then to mac OC (to match the 3400 OC?) and did not include the P4ee.

2) They say how many benches each wins, but if you have 10 games benches, and 20 encoding benches, and one CPU is better than the other, you can end up saying "well my CPU(insert favorite brand) won 67% of then benchmarks. (I did not count, just seemed like a lot of encoding benches.

Anands review is MUCH more even, but I don't know why he picked the FIC motherboard for the Athlon64 (not a great performer)

 

[Tom]

I just hope Intel comes out with a socket 754 board soon !




Seriously, I don't fully grasp the advantages/disadvantages of an overclocked P4 with dual channel memeory versus an overclocked Athlon64 with single channel memory. So far I haven't seen a comparison of what is a typical budget P4 overclock, like a 2.4c running at 3.2g, that costs about $275 for cpu/motherboard, versus whatever a typical Athlon64 overclock is, preferably close to the same price, or less, even better.

 

[Dug]

Originally posted by: Dead Parrot Sketch
I just hope Intel comes out with a socket 754 board soon !




Seriously, I don't fully grasp the advantages/disadvantages of an overclocked P4 with dual channel memeory versus an overclocked Athlon64 with single channel memory. So far I haven't seen a comparison of what is a typical budget P4 overclock, like a 2.4c running at 3.2g, that costs about $275 for cpu/motherboard, versus whatever a typical Athlon64 overclock is, preferably close to the same price, or less, even better.

Don't worry about it. You couldn't tell the difference if each machine was setting next to each other.

 

[Tom]

If I'm encoding a DVD and one machine takes 6 hours and the other takes 8 hours, I think I would notice.

Not all of the differences are insignificant.

 

[JackBurton]

Originally posted by: Dead Parrot Sketch
I just hope Intel comes out with a socket 754 board soon !

Yep! When Intel comes out with their socket 754 and AMD comes out with their 939 socket, I'll make a decision which way I want to go.

 

[Markfw]

Originally posted by: Dead Parrot Sketch
If I'm encoding a DVD and one machine takes 6 hours and the other takes 8 hours, I think I would notice.

Not all of the differences are insignificant.

The only encoding I do is Pinnacle 8.8, and the only review that had that listed showed the 3.2 P4 at 202 (rounded) and the Athlon64 3400+ at 205 (rounded) If that was hours, that would be 3 hours 22 minutes to 3 hours 25 minutes. I don't think you would notice that, but I grant you the Intel is faster at encoding and that is a 3.2 compared to a 3400, but I they are close in price ($400 Intel, $404 AMD)

 

[Skyline622]

thansk

 

[Tom]

I was using encoding as an example, as I said I don't know what the differences would be, because I've never seen a comparison of budget overclocked systems.

That wouldn't be a 3400+ or a P4 EE. It would be a P4 2.4-2.8 overclocked comfortably versus an Athlon64 3000+ overclocked comfortably, I guess.

Maybe there wouldn't be much difference, but I'd like to see actual numbers, not just guesses and extrapolations from other processors.

For example in the processors you mention, I don't think a P4 3.2g running at 200fsb is necessarily as fast as an overclocked P4 2.4c running at 270fsb and 3.2g, so it doesn't really answer the question.


edit- btw, anand's review of the 3400+ shows a considerably larger difference in divx encoding than the review you saw, I think.

 

[Dug]

Originally posted by: Dead Parrot Sketch
If I'm encoding a DVD and one machine takes 6 hours and the other takes 8 hours, I think I would notice.

Not all of the differences are insignificant.

If I had that much time on my hands to encode, I wouldn't.
Especially the type of crappy encoding usually benchmarked.
And if I wanted to waste that much money on a dedicated machine for doing encoding, I wouldn't sit there and watch it for 6-8hrs.

 

[JackBurton]

I think these are some good benchmark but I think they are not testing what I consider VERY important, HT. Intel's HT comes in VERY handy when multitasking. For instance, when I compress a 600MB-1GB+ file using maximum compression, I really can't do anything else (this is on my XP 1600+ machine). I'd like to compress/encode without rendering my machine useless while the process is running. If I could sacrifce a little raw speed for multitasking speed I would. I'd like to see some benchmark of an Athlon64 3400+ vs a P4 3.2 (NON EE) compressing/encoding while running another program. I think I would find that a more useful than running one program at max speed.

 

[Dug]

Jack is right. More than one program needs to be running to see how the machines stack up.

I know from personal experience that running a DVD through Zoomplayer, WinDVDfilters, and ffdshow, scalling it to 720p or 1080i will bring an AMD system to its knees (basically useless), while a P4 w/HT can actually play the scaled movie without studdering.

 

[XBoxLPU]

HT would help but a SCSI drive for your oS/apps would help just as much if not more