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AMD Athlon 64 Socket 939

What the Athlon 64 should have been from day one?

But let's go back and take a closer look at the bandwidth of unbuffered dual-channel DDR memory in combination with an Athlon 64 processor. AMD claims a memory bandwidth of up to 6.4GBps which is very impressive, but does it hold true? Although we don't quote SisoftSandra scores any longer, due to it not being a benchmark as such, we still gave it a quick run to see how the numbers added up. AMD is not far off the mark with numbers higher than those of a Pentium 4 with the i875P chipset and PC4000 (500MHz) memory.

Comparing the old FX-53, which used buffered ECC memory, to the new Socket 939 model in PCMark 2004 the memory score was up almost 300 points. The result was not quite as high with the 3800+ but it still managed close to a 200 point improvement. This might not seem overly impressive, but compared to the single channel Socket 754 3400+ the PCMark 2004 memory score is up 1700 points for the 3800+ which is very significant.

AMD Socket 939 PCMark 04

We compared the 3800+ with the FX-53 in the graphs so you can see how they compare in terms of performance, and we now see little reason to go with the FX-53 as it doesn't seem to offer a significant boost in performance over the 3800+. This might, however, change with production motherboards and a faster graphics card, as the GeForce FX5900 XT card that is part of our standard test platform doesn't have enough grunt to really show off what these processors are capable of.

AMD Socket 939 SysMark 04

AMD claims that the FX-53 should offer in the region of 3-4 per cent performance advantage over the 3800+ in 3D games. But looking at the results from our 3D benchmarks this doesn't hold quite true, but as I said, this is partly down to our reference graphics card.

Neither chip comes cheap. The 939-pin FX-53 costs $799, the 3800+ $720, the 3700+ $710 and the 3500+ $500.

Overall the new Socket 939 platform is impressive and AMD's Athlon 64 platform is entering a new era, although many of the early Athlon 64 adopters might be disappointed at having to purchase a new motherboard and processor for their next upgrade. However, this is normal for life in the computer fast lane, constant change always leaves the early adopters having to pay the price. Hopefully AMD will stick with Socket 939 for some time now, as there is no logical reason to change it.

One final thing, for anyone thinking of getting one of the new processors, remember that later this year PCI Express will arrive for Socket 939, which means that if you want to be at the cutting edge, a motherboard and graphics cards upgrade is due in a couple of months. It might just be worth holding on a little bit longer and doing it all in one go. The only good news is that AMD is sticking with DDR400 memory for now, so there is no need to rush out and buy DDR2 modules for the new platform.

Verdict

AMD's new Socket-939 is what the Athlon 64 should have been from day one and will give Intel a real run for its money with excellent performance and hopefully a competitive price. AMD has yet again clawed back the performance crown from Intel, but for how long?

Related Reviews

AMD Athlon 64 FX-53
Intel 'Prescott' 90nm Pentium 4
AMD Athlon 64 3400+

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