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LOSTCIRCUITS
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| AMD Athlon64 FX53 Back to the top | |
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(Review by MS, March 18, 2004) |
| AMD Athlon64 3000+ At: |
AMD ONCE AGAIN ups the ante in the high-end desktop CPU area with the release of the Athlon64 FX53. The new flagship processor tops at a high 12 x multiplier for a nominal speed of 2400 MHz, that, combined with the dual-channel memory interface is supposed to bring unprecedented performance to the Socket940 platform and reclaim the eroded victory for the Athlon64 family. Concerns about a ceiling in clock speed have been rumored against the pending release of yet higher speed grades but as long as there is no proof of either scenario, claims are claims and rumors are just what they are, that is, rumors. We took the new processor and overcame some initial setbacks in overclocking and finally got it to fly where no standard Athlon has soared before.
On the AMD home front, the situation is somewhat more complicated, the FX series has some serious in-house competition in form of the standard Athlon64, equipped with a single memory controller only. Moreover, the FX series faces a future challenge in the form of the upcoming Socket939 dual memory channel CPU that will be able to run without registers as intermediate address and command translators – and, by extension, will run at lower latencies as well. Lower memory latencies on the other hand are life for the Athlon64 family of processor. That, in turn, could mean that the newcomer will once again up the ante in performance, while allowing system builders to maintain a marginally lower price point, courtesy of the capability to use unbuffered DDR DIMMs.
Click for larger picture.
At this point, we are not there yet, the decision is still unbuffered single channel or else registered dual channel. Moreover, the situation has been spiced up by the superb performance of the recently released Athlon64 (Socket 754). That is, the “average garden variety CPU” has outperformed its FX-cousin in more than a handful benchmarks and comes at a lower fiduciary premium. In light of these issues, the death of the FX series has been proclaimed more than once, on the other hand, each such proclamation simply shows that the FX series is, indeed, still alive and kicking.
The reasonable thing to do from an AMD standpoint in this case is a very simple measure: release another speed grade of the FX series to reestablish the distance between its flagship processor and the mere Athlon64 – without moniker – series. The result is another bump in the roadmap called Athlon64 FX53, running at a whopping 12 x multiplier for 2400 MHz unrated speed. In this scenario, of course, another bunch of valid questions is whether this speed is really viable, whether there are margins as overt in terms of overclocking capability and last not least, how fast is this processor in real life applications.
During the testing, our ASUS SK8N preproduction board started to exhibit some weaknesses in form of losing peripherals and general stability problems, therefore, we moved over to the SK8V that turned out a muster in stability and even though some benchmarks scores are marginally lower than those obtained with the SK8N, overall, the performance spectrum evens out and wherever they are significantly different, we give the numbers for the SK8N as far as we have them.
next page: => Enter the FX53 =>
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