AMD Athlon 64 & Athlon 64 FX - It's Judgment Day
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 23, 2003 1:25 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Motherboard Support Powered by NVIDIA & VIA
Unlike the release of the original Athlon, AMD has full industry support behind the Athlon 64 (although the same can't be said for industry confidence). We have seen chipsets from ALi, NVIDIA, SiS and VIA, however only NVIDIA and VIA are dominating AMD's launch.
Our own Wesley Fink has prepared an article comparing the NVIDIA and VIA solutions, so be sure to check that out if you're interested in the detailed differences between the implementations of the two chipsets.
Because AMD has integrated the memory controller on the Athlon 64's die, the amount of work that needs to be done by the chipset vendors has been reduced significantly. The performance difference you'll see between chipsets should be negligible (even more so than in conventional architectures) as the only variables between chipsets are the South Bridge (IDE, PCI, SATA controllers) and the AGP controller.
AMD has no favorites in the chipset game; although they shipped all initial review systems with nForce3 boards, their reasoning was primarily one of availability, as they had to ship systems out in the summer to meet the deadlines faced by print publications.
As you will find out in Wesley's review, the nForce3 is currently limited to a 600MHz Hyper Transport link between the CPU and the chipset, while VIA's solution runs at 800MHz. The performance difference due to VIA's bandwidth lead is negligible however; remember, we're not talking about memory bandwidth, rather bandwidth between the CPU and the AGP controller. NVIDIA will have 800MHz support in the next version of the nForce3, the 250.
Despite the fact that chipset costs have gone down (as there's no more memory controller), motherboards will not reflect the lower price initially according to motherboard manufacturers. AMD is positioning the Athlon 64 as a premium part and thus the motherboard manufacturers will position their solutions competitively, but don't expect to see lower-than-Socket-A prices.
What's also interesting is the incredible recognition that NVIDIA has managed to establish in the chipset industry with the nForce brand. We are seeing incredible support for nForce3, despite the fact that it doesn't really offer anything above and beyond VIA's solution. We're expecting the nForce3 to be positioned as a premium solution, while VIA will compete for the lower end of the Athlon 64 market - all because of the success of NVIDIA's nForce2 brand; the name nForce3 somehow just sounds all that much more powerful, even though NVIDIA's powerful memory controller isn't being used.
At the start, it looks like NVIDIA will begin to pull ahead as the market leader, but it is unclear how VIA's support for an 800MHz HT bus and potentially lower price point will change things (if at all).
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Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
#10 Without XP64 only Linux apps can give great performance boost over 32 bits apps. Yes, I'm not a gamer, I don't care about UT2K3 or DX9 benchmarks.Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
#19i agree. good review, and how anyone could see an AMD bias in that article, i have no idea. he fvcking said repeatedly that AMD isn't really cutting it with the A64/FX. the worst type of fanboy is one that cant read.
its sad to see AMD lagging like this... if they fall too far behind, they wont be able to compete with Intel on a high-end level at all - which sucks for competition.
Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
That was a well written review.Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
#15, doesn't the fact that you can buy an FX51 along with an Athlon64 3200+ at a variety of stores now contradict that statement? I mean someone even said they sighted them in retail stores and the sort across the world before even launch.Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
For the non-fanboys out there, I have a couple questions.1. Is dual-channel really necessary for the Athlon 64? What is the bandwidth of the Hypertransport bus?
2. Anand contends: "Ignoring the performance boost Intel gains by going to dual-channel, OEMs demanded a dual-channel solution from AMD simply as a checkbox feature." Do you buy this? I thought CPU manufacturers pushed the mobo guys around, not vice versa.
3. After launching on two different Sockets (754 & 940) - is AMD going to convert everything over to 939 in '04, or are we going to see high-end on 940 and low-end on 754?
4. Where are the UT2K3 64-bit version benches?
5. I know it's kind of hard to judge, but how is the driver support for 64-bit coming along? (As a measure, does anyone know if nvidia and/or ATI will be ready with 64-bit drivers by the new WinXP64 launch?)
6. This is more of a mobo/chipset questions, but where does PCI Express/3GIO fit into AMD's hypertransport plans?
Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
What i really dont understand is this: "AMD has lost a considerable amount of credibility" and again : "AMD has also priced the Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 FX very much like the Pentium 4s they compete with, which is a mistake for a company that has lost so much credibility"What exactly do you mean by that Anand?
Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
#13The FX-51 will not be avaiable in any reasonable quanitities until next year. The availability of any succeeding products is pure speculation.
Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
I think we'll see the athlon 64 outpacing the p4's in divx encoding once we see a 64bit enabled codec.Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
All reviews (with exception of Toms Hardware and x86secret, go figure) show the FX51 outpacing the P4 Emergency Edition in the gross majority of benches. That's not even counting the fact the P4EE isn't even going to be available until November (making this a paper launch) and by it's availability the FX53 and Athlon64 3400+ will have already been out in the market with us looking forward to the FX55 in late 2003 or early 2004.Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
#4 & #7. Please give me a couple of URLs (not thg) so i can validate your inspired response.