Please help an Intel user buy his first Athlon64!!!..

[Dance123]

Hi,

Since Northwood is hardly available anymore, Prescott with its high heat doesn't impress me very much and many people recommend an Athlon64 anyway, I was wondering if people could help me with following list of questions I have prepared regarding the Athlon64. Before you ask, I did read as much as possible about Athlon64 in reviews etc.., but for an Intel user it is all very confusing so I hope experienced Athlon64 users can give some clear answers to following questions (please maintain my numbering if possible). I would really appreciate it.

1/ am I understanding it right that the Athlon64 3200+ and 3400+ are the AMD equivalent of the Pentium 4 3Ghz? Any reason to still consider AthlonXP or is 64 the best choice. Also, what is so much better about the s939 compared to s754, as s939 only seems available in the higher priced 64's. Is it worth paying the extra money for a s939, which starts at 3500+ I believe, or not really?! Which are the advantages of the s939 over the s754 or am I not going to see a big (any?) performance difference between those two?!

2/ apparently you also have to choose between chipsets with Athlon64. Which is the best choice: NVidia nForce 3 or VIA K8T800 (Pro?) and why?!

2/b/ is it true that there are many problems with the Athlon64 chipsets, cause I read that alot in reviews. For instance, is it true that the nForce 3 has still many problems and isn't "mature" yet and does the same count for the VIA chipset? Which problems are those exactly and how are they different between the NVidia and VIA chipsets?!

3/ regarding "dual channel" (which I believe is only supported by s939?), is it true that this isn't as important with Athlon64's then with Pentiums where dual channel makes a huge difference in performance, especially if you do things like music production and audio/video editing which I do. Should I really get dual channel then, or isn't it so important for the Athlon64 platform then it is for the Intel CPU's, even if you do audio/video work?! I really would like to know this.

4/ is "Cool 'n Quiet" really that great? If I understand it right it adapts your CPU clockspeed depending on what you do. Doesn't mean that you can get latency sometimes if it needs to recalculate clockspeed all the time, esp. if there is a sudden demand for higher clockspeed?! Is it best to keep Cool 'n Quiet on or can you also disable it or isn't that a smart thing to do?!

Thanks very much to everybody who can help with the above questions!!

Cheers, Mike.

 

[MDE]

1) The Athlon 64s match up well with P4s model vs clock speed (3200+ is ~ 3.2GHz P4). Socket 939 only adds dual channel, which doesn't help Athlons all that much.
2) IMO, nForce3 250 Gb hands down. The "problems" you heard about are probably tied to the nForce3 150, and that has been fixed (and more) with 250. The main differences are the nForce3 250 overclocks better, and the Gb version adds gigabit ethernet and a hardware firewall. Otherwise, they're pretty much equal.
2b)The chipsets have been refreshed, so the problems are all but gone.
3)Dual channel is mainly marketing, it doesn't help all that much.
4) It works just like PowerNow does in laptops, which is seamless.

This is coming from someone with an Athlon 64 3000+ laptop and a P4 3.2 desktop.

 

[Jeff7181]

am I understanding it right that the Athlon64 3200+ and 3400+ are the AMD equivalent of the Pentium 4 3Ghz?

Where would you get that idea?

 

[Mik3y]

the athlon 64's are generally faster then any comparable intel cpu. the 3000+ is rougly comparable to an intel 3.1ghz, and a 3400+ is roughly comparable to an intel 3.5ghz...that is if they had those processors. it seems that you are going for socket 754. with socket 754, amd beats intel in most benchmarks except encoding/decoding, but with socket 939, amd beats about every benchmark against intel.

 

[Dance123]

Hi,

Thanks for the replies.

1/ maybe dual channel isn't important for mainstream stuff, but I know from experience that dual channel on a Pentium 4 definitely gives better performance, especially when doing audio/video editing work for instance, which I do. Is this not the same on the Athlon64 system?! Why is that?

2/ I amnot familiar with PowerNow and laptops, so how come that with Cool 'n Quiet you don't risk in certain situation to have (very short) latencies when it needs to recalculate and adapt clockspeed all the time, especially with sudden high CPU demands, etc.. Isn't that inevitable with those energy saving technologies?

PS: can this feature be disabled or would that not be a smart idea?

3/ does everybody else agree that "nForce3 250 Gb" is better then VIA K8T800 (Pro)?!

Thanks again for anybody who can help with my questions!

 

[Markfw]

What mde said. But I personally favor the newcastle cores, as the extra cache usually doesn't make much difference. 3400 newcastle at 2.4ghz speed should rock !

Edit (after your last post) the Athlon64 doesn;t suffer on the dual channel due to the on-die memory controller. And cool and quiet is only necessary if you want the absolute minimum heat and noise. With a Thermaltake Silent Boost K8, my Athlon64 3000+ runs at 40c full load ! Its quiet (21dba) also. Yes it can also be disabled in bios, and yes, I think the nf3250 is the best (per the reviews I have read, I love my via though, but doesn;t OC that great)

 

[Mik3y]

Originally posted by: Dance123
Hi,

Thanks for the replies.

1/ maybe dual channel isn't important for mainstream stuff, but I know from experience that dual channel on a Pentium 4 definitely gives better performance, especially when doing audio/video editing work for instance, which I do. Is this not the same on the Athlon64 system?! Why is that?

2/ I amnot familiar with PowerNow and laptops, so how come that with Cool 'n Quiet you don't risk in certain situation to have (very short) latencies when it needs to recalculate and adapt clockspeed all the time, especially with sudden high CPU demands, etc.. Isn't that inevitable with those energy saving technologies?

PS: can this feature be disabled or would that not be a smart idea?

3/ does everybody else agree that "nForce3 250 Gb" is better then VIA K8T800 (Pro)?!

Thanks again for anybody who can help with my questions!

1) AMD's cpu architecture composes of a series of short pipelines, where inte's composes of a series of long pipelines. because of the shorter pipelines, amd requires only a shorter frequency to achieve the same performance as of intel's much larger frequencies for their long pipelines. because of the differences of lengths in pipelines, amd only needs a smaller clockspeed and cache to achieve the performance of intel. this is all just like physics. as for socket 939, amd is better then intel in encoding/decoding, which basically dominate's intel's last bastion of power. so in comparison between amd and intel, intel needs higher numbers to perform well, which costs money (like cache).

2) Powernow is a feature in amd notebooks that automatically set it's clockspeed now when you are not doing anything cpu intensive. it's great for saving energy and longer battery life. cool n quiet is like the same thing. it saves power, makes the system run cooler when you're not doing anyhting cpu intensive, and it can also be disabled in teh bios. with cool n quiet, it seems to work very well at going back to stock speed when the computer suddenly changes in cpu demand.

3) Yes, we all agree that the nforce 3 250 Gb chipset is better then via's K8T800 Pro. about all the benchmarks clearly show the nforce chipset dominating.

Hope this answers all your quiestions. i could explain more about #1, but it gets to be very detailed and confusing.

 

[Viditor]

Dance123 - I am also an editor (viditor=video+editor). While dual channel memory is extremely important on a P4, it is much less so on an A64, but it isn't insignificant.
The MOST important thing for you to get is a top of the line raid card (don't rely on the on-board raids, as this is critical for you!) If you can't afford SCSI, go with SATA...I recommend the WD Raptor 10k 74GB drives...
Some questions...

1. Which software will you be using?
2. Do you do a lot of FX rendering?
3. Are you using firewire for digital input?
4. What medium do you plan on delivering on?

 

[Viditor]

Another thing I should mention...I don't know what your budget is, but if you can afford it I would actually build an Opteron system. This is mainly because FX and sound files can get HUGE, and you will probably want to upgrade the amount of Ram you have down the track (some Wav files actually hit their 4GB limit...). Most of the A64 boards take less than 4GB (though the MSI K8T Neo2-FIR K8T800 Pro does take up to 4GB...).
Also, you will probably be better off with an Nvidia card. This is because the 64bit drivers on them are quite a ways ahead of ATI's drivers...

 

[ponyo]

Dual channel helps for video encoding. It might not help for games and mainstream apps but it helps in encoding. I had faster encoding times with DVD Shrink when I used Barton 3200+ with NF7-S dual channel than with my A64 3200+ in single channel. I'm talking couple of minute difference.

 

[Dance123]

Hi,

Thanks very much for the replies! I have some more questions if that's ok:

1/ Regarding Dual Channel -- The shorter pipelines of AMD CPU's perhaps explain why it needs a smaller clockspeed then Intel, but what does that have to do with dual channel memory, which is about memory, not clockspeed?! I mean, I thought that dual channel gives wider memory throughput, on Intel this defenitely makes a difference in audio applications and games etc.., why is this not the case with the A64, I mean doesn't every system benifit from a wider memory bus?! Does that also mean then on an A64 you only need 1 stick of DDR memory and 2 sticks aren't going to make thing any much faster or are 2 sticks always better?!

Could anybody please explain this cause I still don't understand why Dual Channel, something so important on Intel, seems to be almost irrelevant on A64?! Does this count for both music production (audio recording/editing, playing softsynths in Cubase SX, etc..) and games, which I thought both could benifit from extra memory bandwidth?!
Oh.. if you explain, please use simple words as I am not a tech expert.

2/ what is Gigabit ethernet and what is so special about it? I use ADSL, so how is this Gigabit Ethernet thing going to be different then a standard build-in 10/100 ethernet card. Does Asus K8N-E Deluxe motherboard support this Gigabit thing? They have something called "1000M Marvell PHY", and in the specs they say "Chipset built-in Gigabit MAC with external Marvell PHY supporting". What is that?? Will this also support my ADSL connection good, as this need 10/100 ethernet card I believe?!

3/ speaking of motherboards, which is the best choice? I want a mobo that is silent (I do music production). Is Asus K8N-E Deluxe my best choice then, as Asus has a good reputation and there boards are always silent (I believe they use passive cooling) where other mobo makers include extra fans etc..? Any other boards that are as silent (or more silent) and are perhaps a better choice?

4/ Regarding this hardware firewall: Great for security, but I know from experience that firewalls can give all kind of problems and also slow down internet speed quite a bit!! Isn't that gonna be the same with this hardware firewall?! In any event, can this be turned off completely if wanted?

5/ do the NVidia nForce 3 and/or VIA K8T800 also give you audio support? If so, how good is this audio support in these chipsets for gaming. Is it as good as with an Audigy soundcard which has multiple channels of DirectSound in hardware, etc.. for games or will an Audigy always be better for games then any of these chipsets? How do the NVidia nForce and VIA K8T800 compare to each other regarding audio support for games and how does it compare to the Audigy, which is ofcourse a dedicated game card, especially regarding the amount of hardware DirectSound (3D) channels which I believe is important in games, am I right?!

Thanks again to anybody who can help with my questions (please keep my numbering if possible)!!

 

[bearxor]

Dance123, I am by no means an expert on the subject, but I belive the reason that Dual-Channel memory does not affect the A64 series as much as the P4 series is because the A64 has a built-in memory controller on the processor, reducing the latency that the P4 chipsets have with having to go through the Northbridge first. I belive that the A64 just gets so much more raw bandwidth from the memory, that extra provided by a dual-channel configuration just doesn't help as much.

2. If your ADSL modem is connected directly to your computer, odds are you're getting AT MOST 6mb/s. No, the 1000mb/s (gigabit) will not really help you. It will come in handy if you setup a home network and keep files on a central server or something. It will let you transfer files between computers alot faster than the 10/100, provided that all your hardware is 1000 capable. Having said that, with the future of faster internet services becoming available, I am all for going gigabit. You never know when you may need it and it is backwards compatible with 10/100. It does not add that much cost to a board. Go for the gigabit. I don't really have a preference towards the 250Gb chipset with hardware firewall simply because I have other ways of dealing with things like that.

4. Yes, the motherboards do provide audio support, but I am not up on the chipsets.

Now, I am in the same boat as you. I have a P4 2.4C and I recently built my relatives a couple of Semperon 3100+ systems and was so impressed I'm going to be putting my stuff up for sale to pick up a S939 based system. Check this out, even though the Semperon 3100+ only runs at 1.8ghz, it totally destroyed my Pentium 4 2.4C @ 3.0(250). I ran 3DM2k3 using my 9500 Pro in both systems and this is what I got:

P4 2.4C @ 3000, 250mhz FSB Dual Channel - 3737 3D Marks
Semperon 3100+, similary equipped - 3830 3D Marks

Not alot of difference, and I may be GPU limited, but remeber that the Semperon is the BUDGET A64 Processor. I was extremely impressed it could keep up with the P4. You'll make the right choice switching to an A64, belive me.

 

[Algere]

1) P4's are more dependant on FSB frequencies & cache size moreso than A64's, with it's longer pipelines I assume it needs to feed it's longer pipelines & larger cache with memory throughput while the A64 with it's shorter pipelined architecture doesn't need as much memory throughput. In another assumption perhaps that's why the P4 benefits moreso from HT technology.

2) ADSL does not max out the maximum transfer rate 10/100 ethernet provides while file transfering between computers can, which is why Gigabit ethernet is wanted/needed.

3) Passive cooling is best but perhaps the louder noise of a Case + CPU's fan makes other alternative northbridge cooling solutions irrelevant when it comes to noise levels between passive and active.

4) N/A (No experience with hardware firewalls but I assume it can be turned off)

5) Pretty much every motherboard being sold today has audio support and the audio support is pretty basic and differs from motherboard to motherboard model/manufacturer. If gaming is a concern a dedicated sound card with hardware acceleration like the Audigy can offer better sound quality/effects in gaming, music, & movie watching while taking off the workload normally handled by the CPU under gaming scenarios.

EDIT: In addition to #1 it's the reason the Prescott has longer pipelines & cache than the Northwood and has been said that with the ever increasing increases in MHz frequencies the Prescotts revisions over the Northwood is more of a benefit @ higher frequencies over the Northwood while the Northwood benefits more over the Prescott @ the lower clock frequencies.

 

[Markfw]

Dual channel memory might help with music production, as there are come areas where that DOES help that Athlon64/Opteron's. What is the budget ? Does a lot of disk activity happen ? SCSI ? Don't worry about the firwall, it won;t slow anything down.

The Audigy2 seems to be king of sound cards, but I am not an expert there. And gigabit ethernet is only useful (as Algere said) between computers, and then only with a gigbit switch.

I do like ASUS motherboards. When you answer the budget question, and the disk activity questionI will reply again, as you may want to change the direction you are looking at.

 

[Jeff7181]

1/ Regarding Dual Channel -- The shorter pipelines of AMD CPU's perhaps explain why it needs a smaller clockspeed then Intel, but what does that have to do with dual channel memory, which is about memory, not clockspeed?! I mean, I thought that dual channel gives wider memory throughput, on Intel this defenitely makes a difference in audio applications and games etc.., why is this not the case with the A64, I mean doesn't every system benifit from a wider memory bus?! Does that also mean then on an A64 you only need 1 stick of DDR memory and 2 sticks aren't going to make thing any much faster or are 2 sticks always better?!

The data bus of all processors since the first Pentium (IIRC) has been 64 bits wide. That's the connection between the CPU and the motherboard chipset where the memory controller is (also called the front side bus, and is different than the memory address bus that you hear about the limitations of 32-bit processors and 64-bit processors). With dual channel memory, you have two 64 bit wide buses between the memory controller and the memory. So you have something kinda like this...

CPU-----memory controller=====memory

Since 8 bits = 1 byte, 64 bits = 8 bytes. So a 64-bit bus can transfer those 8 bytes once every cycle. Since MHz is defined as cycles per second, you multiply the MHz by the width (8 bytes) and it gives you the total bandwidth in megabytes per second.

I'll use PC3200 RAM for all my examples...

The RAM runs at 200 MHz, and it's double data rate, meaning, data is sent twice per clock cycle, so it's effectively 400 MHz. It's maximum bandwidth is 3.2 GB/s (8 x 400 = ~3200). Add the 2nd memory channel, and you have a maximum of 6.4 GB/s.

The Pentium 4 processor has a 200 MHz front side bus, but it's quad data rate, data is sent 4 times per clock cycle, so it's effectively 800 MHz. That's a total of 6.4 GB of memory bandwidth. So basically, to put it into simpler terms, with a Pentium 4 you start with a single lane highway with a 70 mph speed limit, then once it hits the memory controller it divides into two lanes with a 35 mph speed limit. Theoretically you can still move the same amount of cars... or in this case data. So as you can see, the memory bandwidth and FSB bandwidth are equal. But if you look at the old 533 MHz FSB Pentium 4's you can see why overclocking the memory helped them so much. The FSB had a total of 4.2 GB/s bandwidth, while the best DDR RAM at the time was only capable of 3.2 GB/s. So you had a bottleneck. That's why the Pentium 4 533 MHz bus models benefit so much from fast RAM, and overclocking the FSB (which in turn overclocks the RAM which increase bandwidth, and overclocks the memory controller which decreases latency).

The Athlon XP is slightly different. It has, at most, a front side bus that's effectively 400 MHz. That's 3.2 GB/s. PC3200 RAM also has an effective speed of 400 MHz and 3.2 GB/s of bandwidth. So there was no memory bottleneck with the Athlon XP. Then with dual channel RAM, you didn't see much benefit because you still only have 3.2 GB/s between the CPU and the front side bus. Dual channels help it get closer to it's theoretical maximum, but it can never surpass 3.2 GB/s.

The Athlon 64 is a bit more different. The Athlon 64's front side bus (the link between the CPU and memory controller, which is now part of the core with the Athlon 64) is a Hyper-Transport link. As far as I know, AMD only uses 16 bit, bi-directional 800 MHz HT links (which is actually up to 1 GHz, 2 GHz effective with the nForce3 250?s 1 GHz HT). Since it's bi-directional, that's why you keep seeing people say the Athlon 64 has a 1600 MHz FSB. What they're forgetting is that it's only 16 bits wide. So you only get a total of 2 Bytes per second per MHz, rather than 8 bytes on a 64-bit bus. So a 1600 MHz HT bus has 3.2 GB/s bandwidth. That?s referring to the socket 754 models. If the socket 939 and socket 940 models did things the same way, they?d be in the same boat as the old 533 MHz Pentium 4, actually a little worse. But I believe they use a second HT link for the second memory controller. So the HT bandwidth matches the dual PC3200 memory bandwidth. Otherwise there would be no possible way that the socket 939 and 940 processors could be benchmarked at 6 GB/s memory bandwidth as they have here. As you can see, the socket 754 peaks out at about 3 GB/s because of it?s single memory channel. Even though the dual channel models are benchmarked at 6 GB/s it doesn't mean they use all that during normal use. In fact, the benchmark results on that same site I linked to show that it's hardly be limited by just a single memory channel. If you compare the 3800+ to the 3400+ you see that the only difference is the dual memory channel vs. the single memory channel, and the difference in real world performance is around 5-10% depending on the task.

The Pentium 4?s architecture makes it very dependant on moving data in and out of the processor to keep the pipeline full because it?s so long. The Athlon XP and Athlon 64?s shorter pipelines aren?t as hard to keep full, so it doesn?t depend as heavily on moving large amounts of data in and out of RAM to operate at maximum efficiency. It would rather move small chunks of data very quickly... and that's why AMD when with Hyper-Transport... since it's a very low latency bus. That?s the whole reason Intel switched to a 1 MB L2 cache with the Prescott, and why they added a L3 cache to the Xeons and P4EE lines, and most recently, they?ve announced a 2 MB L2 cache for 64-bit Prescotts? to cut down the dependency on memory bandwidth. If they have more memory locally, they don?t need to hit the system RAM as often so they aren?t as dependent on the speed and bandwidth of the memory controller and memory. The Athlon 64 is better in another way too? latency. Yes, the bus width is 25% of the Pentium 4?s? but it operates 4 times faster, so latency between the CPU and memory controller is almost ¼ of the latency you get with a Pentium 4 with the same bandwidth. So even if the Athlon 64 was as dependant on memory bandwidth as the Pentium 4, it would work better simply because of the lower latency of the connection to the RAM.

In short? single channel Athlon 64?s (and possibly the dual channel ones as well to a certain extent since they're capable of using the full bandwidth that dual PC3200 channels provide) are starved for memory bandwidth. But that doesn?t affect performance as much as it does with a Pentium 4 because of the way the processors themselves are designed. The Pentium 4 needs lots of memory bandwidth to operate at maximum efficiency.