CPU speeds have been increasing very quickly over the past few years and have now reached the 64-bit mark. AMD’s release of their Athlon 64 3200+ was a landmark for the computing world. AMD released two models, the Clawhammer which is a socket 754 Athlon 64 and the Sledgehammer which is a socket 940 Athlon 64 FX. The only real difference between the the two is that the FX model has a dual channel memory controller while the regular Athlon 64 only has a single channel memory controller.
Below is a magnified image of both the Clawhammer and Sledgehammer core, as you can see they are identical. The only differentiation between the two like I mentioned earlier is that the FX has a dual channel memory controller built in. This new Athlon 64 core boasts 105.9 million transistors which is more than double that of the Athlon XP Barton core which had 54.3 million transistors. This new core also has Intel’s SSE2 built in which should give applications that use this instructions set a good performance boost.
The block diagram below gives a bit of explanation as far as what each part of the core is deigned to do. Some of these new features are not fully being taken advantage of yet because of other hardware being behind. The enhanced virus protection that will come with SP2 for Windows XP looks pretty interesting. I’m curious to see if this new feature will actually help against viruses.
These new processors output up to 80w of heat therefore a better cooling solution was needed. With this socket 754 interface gone are the days of capacitors getting in the way or large heatsinks. No longer do we need to fear damaging the core of the CPU because AMD has integrated a heat spreader like that of the Pentium 4. Also with this new cooling solution you don’t have to worry about having your screwdriver slip of some heatsink clips causing you to damage your motherboard. This new solution is quite similar to that of the Pentium 4 with a plastic retention frame, the heatsink will simply clip into place.
The retention frame is held on by a metal or plastic plate on the back of the motherboard. This plate also provides protection for the motherboard so the force from the heatsink will not bend and warp the PCB. I have seen PCB warping happen from waterblocks on video cards and motherboards and its a pretty scary sight. This particular back plate came with my Albatron K8X800 Pro II.
I go the retail version of this Athlon 64 3200+ so it comes packed as such. It is well protected within thick plastic and designed for retail display. From the back of the package you can see the model number of the CPU so if you are looking for a specific processor you can hunt it down.
The CPU that I got from Directron is model number ADA3200AEP5AP, below is what these letters and numbers really mean. Also on the line below is the stepping information which is CAAMC and from the second half of that line we can see that the CPU was made in week 38 of 2003. I was not able to find any information on this particular stepping or production date so we will have to see how well it overclocks.
ADA = AMD Athlon 64 Desktop
3200 = 2000MHz 1MB Cache
A = 754-pin Lidded OµPGA
E = 1.50
P = 70
5 = 1 Mbyte
AP = Model 4 P-state support Rev. C0
The stock heatsink that comes with this processor also comes with a retention frame and metal back plate. On the bottom of the heatsink there is a generic thermal pad which I would suggest removing and replacing with a better aftermarket product if you are going to use this heatsink. This retail processor comes with a certificate of authenticity, warrantee, case badge, and brochure.
Instead of using a stock heatsink I will be using a Zalman 7000-Cu which was sent over by Sharka Corporation. With this Zalman heatsink you do not need the retention frame so I removed it. I installed the Zalman mounting bolts which screwed into the metal plate on the back of the motherboard then installed the CPU.
I applied a very thin layer of Arctic Silver 3 to the heat spreader then secured the 7000-Cu into place. As you can see the heatsink is really large and does not conform to AMD’s heatsink specifications however it still fit without a problem. In many cases large heatsinks like this would have problems on socket A motherboards because of the capacitors around the socket.
All of the memory settings were at the most aggressive settings and all of the resolutions were set to 640×480. Both machines were running Windows XP Professional with the newest Nvidia & VIA drivers. The 1800+ Thoroughbred in test bed 2 was overclocked to 1600MHz with a FSB of 200MHz to get a little closer to comparing with this Athlon 64 3200+ as far as FSB goes. There are some minor hardware differences in the two test beds however most of the components that would effect performance are the same.
I will be using the following benchmarks: SiSoft Sandra 2004 professional, 3DMark2001SE, Quake 3, Unreal Tournament 2003.
Test Bed 1:
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Test Bed 2:
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Test Bed 1
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Test Bed 2
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SiSoft Sandra 2004 professional has many different informational modules and benchmarking tools. The first benchmark I ran from this program was the CPU benchmark which outputs the MIPS and MFLOPS for your CPU. As you can see the Athlon 64 3200+ just destroys the Athlon XP 1800+ which is attributed to some obvious factors but the addition of the SSE2 instruction set really helps.
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Athlon 64 3200+
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Athlon XP 1800+ Thoroughbred
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SiSoft Sandra 2004 professional can also benchmark the multimedia ability of your system. This benchmark will output the Integer aEMMX/aSSE and Floating-Point results from your system. With the multimedia benchmark the Athlon 64 3200+ was again faster however I was expecting to see a higher larger increase in scores between the two.
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Athlon 64 3200+
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Athlon XP 1800+ Thoroughbred
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Overall the most used benchmark in this software is probably the memory bandwidth benchmark. I used 1024MB (2×512) Corsair 3200LL which is one of their dual channel kits. The memory was set to 2-2-2-5 1T to achieve the fastest memory speeds possible. The 1800+ actually scored better however I believe this is because of the motherboards used. The Abit NF7-S is a far superior motherboard in every aspect and has many more memory tweaking options available. Because the same memory was used on both systems I’m sure that with a better motherboard for the Athlon 64 I would have gotten much higher scores.
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Athlon 64 3200+
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Athlon XP 1800+ Thoroughbred
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3DMark2001SE is more of a video card benchmark however it can also be used to test CPUs. I set the resolution to 640×480 and left all of the other options at their default. This Athlon 64 3200+ was almost able to double the score of the 1800+ and I’m sure with some overclocking and tweaking it could easily get there. Either way the score from this CPU is very impressive.
Quake 3 is a widely used game for benchmarking and we will use it here as well. Once the resolution was set to 640×480 I ran demo001 and got the results below. You can see that the Athlon 64 just destroys the Athlon XP 1800+ even while it is overclocked. Reaching almost 500 FPS this Athlon 64 3200+ proves that it is a great choice for games.
Unreal Tournament 2003 is the last benchmark that I used and again the results were impressive. This CPU was easily able to blow past the 1800+ in both the bot match (purple) and fly-by (blue). This final benchmark again shows that this CPU is in a class of its own. I cant wait to see some benchmarks when game developers start using 64-bit code.
When first reviewing Albatron K8X800 Pro II motherboard that I have this CPU I was not happy with the overclocking performance. I have since flashed the BIOS to 1.08 which seems to have given me the ability to get a better overclock. With this new BIOS I was able to get up to 230FSB with the stock 10x multiplier. I did have to increase the CPU voltage to 1.6 and the RAM voltage to 2.7 however that is still quite low. Setting the FSB higher than 230 would give me Prime95 errors. All of this was also keeping my RAM at 2-2-2-5 1T which is quite impressive on the RAM end as well. I am much more satisfied with this overclock than the previous that I got with this motherboard.
Conclusion
This is a great processor and I am pleased with what AMD has done with it. Not only is it a great processor now but it will only get better. With 64-bit operating systems and software not far off this Athlon 64 has a lot to look forward to soon. Another great thing about this processor is although it is indeed 64-bit capable it is also 32-bit backwards compatible.
You wont have to worry about your 32-bit software becoming obsolete or buying upgrades. Overclocking was also quite impressive as shown by the above results and with some watercooling I think this CPU has more in it.
Overall I am quite happy with this product and am going to award it a 10/10 and award it the OCmodshop Seal of Approval. I would like to thank Directron for sending me this processor to review. You can find this processor along with just about every other computer component you might need ni their online store.
Pros
- Good overclocker
- 64-bit processor
- 32-bit backwards compatible
- SSE2 instruction set
- Good heatsink included
- 3 year warrantee
- Great potential to take advantage of future hardware and software
Cons
- Somewhat expensive