Gigabyte K8NNXP-940: Built on Athlon64 FX51 Strengths
by Wesley Fink on October 9, 2003 11:52 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Content Creation, General Usage and Memory Performance
Content Creation is a benchmark that has long been dominated by Intel's Pentium 4 processors. It was quite a surprise to see that the Athlon64 FX51 finally hold its own in the test, tying the 3.2 P4 for first place. Athlons have always done well in the Business Winstone bench, and the FX51 just extends the lead.
Science Mark 2 was recently updated, and we used the latest 9/23/03 build for our Memory testing. The real advantage of the on-CPU Memory Controller can clearly be seen in the increased memory bandwidth of the Dual-Channel 2.2GHz FX51 compared to the 3.2GHz Dual-Channel P4. Even more striking is the improvements in latency with the on-CPU controller. The Socket 939 should exhibit even lower memory latencies, since Registered memory does add some latency overhead to these memory scores.
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Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
64-bit tests running Linux and hand-compiled programs would be:a) Really time consuming
b) Artificial
c) Not relevant to the real world
Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
It is odd that NO 64-bit tests has been made. Why don't people fire up Linux and compile a few programs like MPEG encoding, video/divx processing etc etc?Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
Has anyone tried decreasing both the memory speed and the LDT speed when overclocking an athlon 64 board via the fsb?The reason I ask is that being able to set the memory, and hypertransport ratio's, may make an independant CPU multiplier adjusment redundant.
(obviously it would be nice to rule CPU frequency out of such a test)
PrinceGaz - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
...almost forgot, why was the P4EE 3.2 not included in the benchmarks?PrinceGaz - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
Very very nice board and CPU, and impressive benchmarks throughout (you can't expect it to match the P4 for encoding). But next year's 939-pin FX is definitely the one to wait for.#4- QDR is just as unlikely as RDRAM but for different reasons, a key point of the A64/FX is the on-die memory-controller but that means you can't just add another couple of memory-channels to it without a total socket re-design (and for QDR a ridicoulously high pin-count). DDR2 is the way forwards in the future rather than more channels.
I'd really expected the fastest CPU nearly two years after getting my XP1700+ to be more than just 85% or so faster than it (the Barton 3200+ is barely over 50% faster, and the A64 3200+ about 70% faster). Unfortunately I can't justify an upgrade until its over 2x, preferably 3x as fast so I'll wait into next year and see what speed increases the shift to 90nm brings.
Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
Very impressive board, We've used Gigabyte boards almost exclusively for the past few years at our computer shop and they just keep getting better with every revision. What I'm looking forward to is what they're going to have coming out early next year for the FX, by that time, having an FX system will become a reality for those of us who can't pay an arm and a testes.Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
I want to know whats up with Gunmetal. Otherwise, great review. I just hope that the prices come down, alot, by spring for my upgrade.Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
If anyone had doubts about the A64 and FX performance there should be no questions now!FX is intended to satisfy the extreme demands of power users who want the best and they want it now. A64 is a more cost effective solution for those who want outstanding performance at a consumer price point.
As A64/FX ramp all prices will drop as is normal. You'll likely find that the FX series is quite affordable to the enthusiast market and a Helleva value as things ramp.
And there are some more goodies on the way from AMD and it's partners to make all consumers very happy. Stay tuned!
Wesley Fink - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
#5 - Regular Opterons are locked - at least that is what we found in the 2 we tested. The FX is unlocked.#6 - Yes, this is the first 1394b 800mb/sec Firewire board.
mcveigh - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
is this the first PC board with firewire800?