AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Socket 939 90 nm

Smaller, Cooler, Faster...

by Josh Walrath

Test Setup

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 939

Gigabyte GA-K8NS Ultra 939

1 GB Corsair XMS 3200 XL Pro

250 GB WD SATA Drive

Toshiba DVD-ROM

Radeon X800 Pro (Cat 4.12 Drivers)

SoundBlaster Audigy

Windows XP Professional SP2

            I decided to make this somewhat interesting and used the standard results with the overclocked results.  While the system was fairly stable at 247 MHz HTT (2.47 GHz core), it run better at 245 MHz HTT (2.45 GHz core).  The memory was set at 1:1, so when HTT is 245 MHz, the memory is running at 245 MHz as well (490 MHz DDR).  This essentially achieved a 450 MHz overclock over stock.

Results

SiSoft Sandra 2005

            The increase in memory and core speed has a significant impact in the overall bandwidth available to the Athlon 64.  While it is not close to it theoretical bandwidth potential, it is still very fast at both stock and overclocked.

            Again the overclocked results show a significant increase in overall performance.  The SSE2 unit of the Athlon 64 is not nearly as fast as the one in the latest Pentium 4’s, but it still shows improvements over stock X87 type FPU results.

            Performance again scales very nicely with the higher clock speed.  Due to the memory controller integrated into the Athlon 64, increases in clockspeed will not necessarily be limited by the bandwidth provided by the memory.  Dual channel PC3200 memory will provide more than enough bandwidth to keep the Athlon 64 busy.  Increasing memory bandwidth certainly doesn’t hurt either though! 

Sciencemark 2.0

            To get a better understanding how all aspects of performance increase with the faster core, Sciencemark has a remarkable series of tools that really can help expose the strengths and weaknesses of an architecture.

            I find it very surprising that the L2 cache does not feature significantly more bandwidth over main memory, but the strength of L2 is that it is mere cycles away from delivering data, as compared to main memory which is around 4 times slower in terms of latency.  The massive 28 GB/sec of L1 bandwidth at 2.45 GHz is very impressive though.

            These two scientific based calculations really show how well of a number cruncher the Athlon 64 is.  A Pentium 4 3.4 GHz processor usually takes around 84 seconds for MolDyn, and 401 seconds for Primordia.  The very fact that both of these processors are clocked 1 GHz slower and more, yet still can match or beat the much faster clocked P4 is pretty impressive.  The 18% increase in performance comes very close to matching the 22% increase in clockspeed.  Very impressive scaling.

3D Mark 2003

            I decided to utilize the separate CPU tests included in 3D Mark 2003 to see yet again how the architecture scales with clockspeed.

            Yet again we see around a 19% increase in performance over stock in CPU Test 2.

Quake 3 Arena

            This oldie but goodie is still a solid benchmark when considering overall performance.  I recorded a custom demo on the very graphically challenging NV15 Level (a custom level originally designed to show off the T&L capabilities of the GeForce 256).  This level is still very challenging for modern CPU’s and GPU’s.  Resolution was set at 1024x768 with 32 bit color and High Quality detail and rendering.  I also ran the standard Demo4.  Sound was enabled and also set to High Quality.

            The PSS001a demo is a real killer when it comes to performance.  When the standard demo is getting over 300 fps, the PSS001a is still less than 100 at stock speed, while it climbs to 113 fps overclocked.  Performance again scales very nicely with clockspeed and memory enhancements.  113 fps is the fastest result I have had with this particular demo.  Several years back, even on high performance machines of the time, I was barely able to hit 60 fps with the quality set to low.

Next: More Results

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