Athlon 64 Vs. Pentium 4

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There's been so much information made public about AMD's new desktop parts over the last year and a half, that we intend to make our reiteration of the specs short and sweet and cut right to the info you really want to see. Please do review the specifications, as they will show you the similarities as well as the differences between all of the CPUs. All things considered, AMD and Intel are sharing a couple of strategies today with their flagship CPUs. For one, they are both "simply" remarking a server grade CPU and calling it a desktop unit. They are also asking for many hundreds of dollars for the privilege of owning one.

AMD's Athlon 64 CPUs

AMD has been promoting their K8 CPU, better known as the Hammer series, for well over a year now. These desktop parts were postponed for about ten months while AMD's strategy changed a bit and began to focus on their Opteron server-class CPUs. Today, AMD is announcing their Athlon 64 3200+ CPU and their Athlon 64 FX 51. From this point on, we will refer to them as the Athlon64 and the AthlonFX to avoid confusion. The "64" in their name comes from the ability of these new CPUs to run the AMD64 instruction set that will be supported by the upcoming Windows XP 64-Bit Edition operating system. Moving to a 64-bit operating system with a 64-bit CPU will have some obvious advantages, although it's clear that you will not be seeing many of them right away. A 64-bit computing experience means that our PCs will no longer be limited to addressing only 4GB of RAM.

News source: [H}ard|OCP

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#1 Mav Phoenix on 23 Sep 2003 - 20:21

Can't wait.

(1 reply) #2 username on 23 Sep 2003 - 20:45

if only i had the money... or job

#2.1 divertom15 on 23 Sep 2003 - 21:11

same here username but im looking to get an opteron as soon as i do as that looks to be a cheaper route to doing the "amd64 thing"

#3 stezo2k on 23 Sep 2003 - 21:46

wow very nice. GOTTA get one of these baby's

(2 replies) #4 linsook on 23 Sep 2003 - 22:14

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030923/index.html

p4ee killin it

#4.1 ALUOp on 24 Sep 2003 - 07:25

Very interestingly, tom posted results of overclocked P4EE 3.4 and 3.6 (In the test configuration page, they listed only the 3.2 version) together with A64 at stock clock?

#4.2 Grappa on 24 Sep 2003 - 13:19

Not only that, but what do the companies' financial results and the number of employees Intel has have to do with processor review?

G

#5 Beast_4thHM on 23 Sep 2003 - 22:19

Is it me or new AMD baby isn't what its supposed to be???
It is good and fast and all that
but its pricey and its even with Intel latest product so we all can assume the prescott gonna eat it??

I still dont have any opinion about 64bit , looks useless to me

#6 sodapop on 23 Sep 2003 - 22:33

Yup P4 is kickin ass.

(3 replies) #7 kairon on 23 Sep 2003 - 23:06

As if I was to believe THG. Also why in hell would you pay close to 1,000 dollars for a stupid CPU with 2 mb cache (oooh!!ahhh! big deal.)

AMD has a winner here. Also you forget that this is a 64-bit chip as well, the real performance numbers will come when Windows for X86-64 comes out

Methinks xStainDx is going to have an anurism here.

#7.1 linsook on 23 Sep 2003 - 23:56

lol quite funny considering the 64's costs around the same

#7.2 GoogolPlex on 24 Sep 2003 - 00:38

All the benchmarks will be the same because none of the apps are 64-bit. Even if they were 64-bit, it does not neccessarily mean they'll run faster. Most current desktop OS/software won't benefit from increasing x86 to 64-bit processing.

#7.3 Proneax on 24 Sep 2003 - 02:44

No, they don't all cost the same. An athlon64 3200 is 465 on newegg. A p4 3.2 is 465 as well on newegg. So those cost the same. Look at the benchmarks and you will see that the athlon is beating the p4 in most of the benchmarks. I'm not talking about the EE at all. The EE is supposed to cost 700-800, the same as the AthlonFX51, however the Athlon FX51 is out now, while the EE isn't going to be out for a month or two; also consider that the AthlonFX 51 is beating the EE in many benchmarks, less the quake and commanche benches I've seen.

Bottom line: Athlons are tops right now, but they are in limited quantity. Lets just wait until prescott comes out and AMD ramps the Athlons, then it should get interesting.

(6 replies) #8 sodapop on 23 Sep 2003 - 23:22

Guys, It's not just Toms. It's everywhere that shows P4 in the lead.

#8.1 Zelpus on 23 Sep 2003 - 23:29

you have to remember everything is optimized for a p4 thats why

#8.2 Q25 on 23 Sep 2003 - 23:34

Yes.. P4EE aka Xeon+ looks like it's in front. But what's the price?
And as important. Is it just a pr stunt and how many of these hacked Xeon CPU's will ever show up in retail?
It does look like Intel just had to do something until they got their Prescott ready..
I think that'll be the real interesting subject. Prescott vs Athlon 64 when the time comes..

#8.3 JMA_PN on 24 Sep 2003 - 00:01

QUOTE (#8.1)

I prefer to choose the cpu that make my software go faster.... and optimization is the (or one of them) key.

#8.4 macrosslover on 24 Sep 2003 - 03:42

you need to check out xbitlabs and techreport.

P4 is definately not in the lead for everything. if it wasn't for the EE P4, Intel would have got ate up.

the only explanation for the p4 beating the fx in some benchmarks is because of the higher clock speed and maybe hyperthreading, since both fx and p4 now support sse2 instructions.

#8.5 Dessimat0r on 24 Sep 2003 - 11:26

Hyperthreading does nothing to boost performance. In fact, it decreases it, because syncronisation time between threads is required with it. Do not believe the hype that Intel puts out.

#8.6 Fanon on 24 Sep 2003 - 13:55

Anandtech does not show Intel in the lead except for maybe 3%-4% of the time. The remaining 96%-97% shows Hammer being either on par or in the lead. The only reason Tom's Hardware shows the P4 EE in the lead is because they overclocked it up to 3.6Ghz (which does not exist at this time) without overclocking the Hammers. Instead of just looking at the colored bars and brands, look at the actual processor speed before making assumptions. If THG would have overclocked the Hammer chips as well, we would've seen more acurate benchmarks. Also take a look at HardOCP.com. Their benchmarks are about the same as Anandtech's.

(2 replies) #9 mealbundy on 24 Sep 2003 - 02:08

Everything is optimized for intel processors, however, any benchmarks that you see now will show the p4 toe to toe with the athlon64fx. I question the 32bit software that is holding back the 64fx. How about some true 64bit apps. to test with.

#9.1 Dessimat0r on 24 Sep 2003 - 11:25

Not to mention 32-bit hardware (PCI cards, and stuff)

#9.2 GoogolPlex on 24 Sep 2003 - 20:00

QUOTE

#10 slapnuts_ox on 24 Sep 2003 - 03:17

Well for the past few years I've heard people with Intel systems say "buy intel cause it has sse2 and is made for the future".....well to all those people Buy an Athlon 64, they are made for the future with 64bit processing. Anyone that says 64bit won't help over 32bit is just wrong....it will offer a 15-30% performance increase over 32bit programs so that lead that the P4 EE has will diminish very quickly.

(1 reply) #11 macrosslover on 24 Sep 2003 - 03:44

frankly, the only way i believe the prescott will be able to beat the fx eventually is by it's support of sse3 instructions. however considering that the athlon is a gig slower in clock speed compared to the P4, these benchmarks are great for AMD and just reinforces their marketing strategy that megahertz don't matter.

#11.1 xStainDx on 24 Sep 2003 - 05:07

there will be no SSE3 Instructions, there will be PNI instructions.

#12 bLaCKcOmB-xP2 on 24 Sep 2003 - 04:40

typo:

its [H]ard|OCP

(4 replies) #13 qdave on 24 Sep 2003 - 04:44

i still would go to Intell stuff

#13.1 Zombie9920 on 24 Sep 2003 - 08:05

Some of these people fail to realize that not only will the Prescott have 13 new instructions(SSE3) and it will have a new implementation of Hyperthreading(Hyperthreading 2) it is also supposedly going to have 64-bit extensions as well.

On the bright side, the early models of it will work with i865 and i875 boards. So the people(like me) who own a board with one of those chipset will have a little bit of an upgrade to 64-bit future. For an Athlon FX you guys have to buy the CPU and a whole new board....we won't have to buy a new board.

#13.2 xan_san on 24 Sep 2003 - 08:20

Where did you here about this 64 bit extension of prescott ? From Intel?!

To continue
I heard that that the next Athlon will have 10 GHz and the next one will be a combination of Intel and AMD called Athlon P4 Hyper(Transport, Threading) etc...

and just to be sure
Those lines should be put between [IRONY]...[/IRONY] tags

#13.3 Proneax on 24 Sep 2003 - 20:08

Yes, there is a rumor that prescott will have 64 bit capability. this is just a rumor. Also realize that this won't happen on current motherboards. If it were to happen, it would be with the new gridded socket intel id developing, meaning spring 2004.

#13.4 rafter109 on 25 Sep 2003 - 03:33

AthlonFX users do need different boards from the AthlonXPs but theres one nice feature. MSI's K8T Master2 FAR can not only use an AthlonFX but can use 2 Opterons which have already righteously kicked the Xeon and Itanium chips

#14 snocked on 24 Sep 2003 - 08:22

I have a question about the dual DDR channel capability. So with dual ddr channel 256bit is the bandwith for memory? Will there be two channels of 128bit, or two channels of 64bit?

#15 Beast_4thHM on 24 Sep 2003 - 09:16

I defiantly think we could use better and cheaper RAM... question is how

#16 ishtar on 24 Sep 2003 - 10:21

Yea go ahead and buy the p4 , when you want the advantage of 64bit you'll have to buy a 64bit intel for that , oh yea they do have the 32bit emulator for it huh you may be able to run duke nukem decently

#17 Hatez on 24 Sep 2003 - 12:12

P4 killing it? I'm sorry, but pull your head from your ass and look where it matters. Take a look at 3dmark01, it's an Athlon 64 @ 2.6ghz with only a slightly OC'd 9800. And guess what it's beating? A P4 at 4ghz + one of the best 9800 OC's.
No matter what, the A64 will be a winner.

#18 SimplyPotatoes on 24 Sep 2003 - 16:57

i said this LOTS of times on lots of forums topics ................like i said dont trust those lame french sites or w/e sites who get payed to advertise certain brands. hardocp is the truth. you should always trust them

(1 reply) #19 uniacid on 24 Sep 2003 - 17:05

I say we should all buy both of em and do our own tests

#19.1 rafter109 on 25 Sep 2003 - 03:25

Why don't we just start a consumer advocacy group. A non-profit benchmarking group that never uses synthetic benchmarks, only real world applications. Then we would fix 2 problems:
1. No accusations of who paid who
2. No compatability/optimization issues

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