And Then I Saw This Chip, Now I'm a Believer

Author's Rating:

Pros: High potential, incredible performance, the best bang for the buck.

Cons: Minimal support for 64-bit technology, Minimal upgradeability.

The Bottom Line: 
Although the Athlon 64 3200 runs on passed-by technology, this CPU has tremendous performance for a small price.

Author's Review
The Athlon 64 is AMD’s answer to both the consumer chip superiority and the future of 64-bit home computing.

AMD Athlon 64 3200
At a Glance


Processor Speed = 5.0
At 2.2 GHz, it may be more than a gig slower than the Pentium, but this is FAST.
Reliability = 4.0
It’s too early to tell, but reliability is so far up to par with a Wintel setup.
Value = 5.0
Almost as capable as the FX-51 and comparable to the Pentium at half the price.
Support = 5.0
AMD firmly stands behind their product.
Benchmark Results = 4.5
Considering the price, this chip runs close to the competition.
Upgradeability = 2.5
AMD has moved on to the Socket 939 board. This 754-based CPU may be left behind.

Now I’m a Believer

Since 1987, I maintained a faithful relationship with the Intel processor. From the Intel 8086 to the Pentium 4 Xeon, I have run the gamut of Intel’s processor revolution. My experience was pleasant and relatively free of problems.

However, I picked up a Maximum PC article sometime last year that chronicled AMD’s desire to transfer their 64-bit Opteron into a consumer chip. I thought that this would fail because Intel already has a 64-bit Itanium chip and that chip is too costly to bring to the home market. Nevertheless, I promised to touch base with AMD to see how they can pull this one off.

About two months ago, my Pentium 4-based PC died and I had to look for a replacement. A new set of benchmark results for the Athlon 64 came in, and I couldn’t believe how well the CPU fared against the Pentium. Curiously, I logged on to Ebay and bought an Athlon 64 3200-based computer. After putting the chip through some rigorous work, you will see why I titled this article appropriately.

Specifications

Before I continue with the chip performance, I’ll give you a spec of my PC:

Minotaur ATX 420 Watt Case
AMD Athlon 64 3200
VIA Nvidia NForce3 Socket 754 Board
512 MB generic DDR400 RAM
128 MB ATI Radeon 9600
80 Gig 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive
Sound Blaster Live 5.1
4x DVD –RW Drive
32x CD-RW Drive

A machine like this would be classified as a mid-range PC. I only paid $750 for this rig and some of the parts (the sound card and the CD-RW drive) were transferred from the old PC.

Athlon 64 Technologies

The Athlon 64 uses some unique technologies that separates itself greatly from its Intel brethren. I’ll describe some of these technologies and try to cut through the marketing fat to tell you how you may benefit.

64-bit Processor - 64-bit processing means that the CPU can calculate an extra digit more than the current 32-bit process. This lets your software do much more complicated calculations and allows you to install more RAM into your system. Currently, there is a 4 GB limit for the amount of RAM you can install. With 64-bit, you can install much more than 4 GB.

Hyper Transport - The Athlon 64 has a 1600 MHz front-side bus compared to Intel’s maximum of 800 MHz. Hyper Transport supposedly creates a more efficient bridge between the various components of your system. Personally, I don’t see much of a difference between these bus speeds.

Enhanced Virus Protection - The Athlon 64 has onboard algorithms that act as a contraceptive for most viruses. This is not a virus scanner per se. It merely acts a defensive barrier so viruses that do attack won’t debilitate your computer. I have yet to see the benefits of this technology on my PC.

Onboard DDR Controller - The controller merely acts as a better form of communication from the CPU to the memory. According to AMD, the controller allows a maximum bandwidth of 6.4 GB memory per process. We don’t have those amounts of RAM yet, so this is largely untested.

Testing and Feedback

I’ve run some intense programs on the Athlon 64 to put the chip through its paces. Here are the results:

Rainbow Six Three - R63 is a pretty complex game that features up to 50 characters at one time. Running at “All-On” and 1600x1200 resolution, I consistently stayed at or around the 40 frames per second mark. I’ve seen the number dip to as low as 25 fps during tense moments, but this is still a very good performance.

Adobe After Effects - After Effects is a great image and video compositing program. I use this to create animated movies. I made a 30-second commercial with moving vector shapes and motion effects. Using production-quality output, the CPU created the 30-second AVI file in about 2 minutes and 15 seconds. It’s looking good.

3D Studio MAX - 3D Studio MAX is an industry-standard 3D modeling and animation program. I modeled an M-1 tank (about 3,000 polygons) rather effortlessly, placed it in a complex environment, and rendered a 20-second flyby scene. This process took about 9 minutes and 30 seconds. Pretty decent.

Multitasking - This is where the CPU truly shines. I frequently run Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and MAX at the same time. There is no noticeable hint of severe slow-down when switching between programs. The slowdown becomes a bit more pronounced when files get bigger, but the effect is not as terrible as I had gotten used to in the Pentium 4.

Conclusions

The Athlon 64 is designed primarily as a gaming rig. But multimedia producers and computer users in general will fall in love with this CPU. You’ve seen the results I got from my tests. If you’re not convinced, take a look at some scientific stat-based benchmarks on the Net:

http://www.exhardware.com/reviews.php?Id=130
Comparisons between the Athlon 64, the FX-51, and the Pentium 4 3.2MHz

http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=426
Comparisons between the Athlon 64 3000, 3200, and 3400.

There is a risk for acquiring this technology. There is a slew of new technology right around the corner (such as ATX 2, PCI Express, and Intel's own slew of 64-bit CPUs). AMD has already released the next generation of Athlon 64s and these chips run on a Socket 939 board. The Athlon reviewed here runs on a Socket 754 board. Thus, there is very little room to upgrade these computers. I would get the 939-based Athlons instead if you want to keep your PC fresh.

At $250, the Athlon 64 3200 is not only $600 cheaper than the Pentium Extreme Edition, but the performance is almost up there. Now imagine if the industry wised up to the 64-bit process right now. Then the Athlon 64 would truly shine.