Review: Stuart
"Veridian3"
Davidson
Editor/Design: Allan "Zardon"
Campbell
Over the past few months
we have been lucky enough to have access to 2 different AMD 64bit
processors, the Athlon 64 3200+ and the Opteron 146. We were completely
impressed by the Opteron 146 and the Athlon 64 3200+ wasn’t
half bad either. Today we have the opportunity to take a look at the
final desktop model in the AMD series – the Athlon 64 FX-51.
We shall also put a Pentium 4 3.0ghz and Athlon XP 3200+ into the
mix to complete the comparison.
Test Setup
Amd Athlon 64 FX-51 (2249Mhz)
ASUS SK8V
2x256mb ddr 266 Samsung
1x512mb ddr333 CL 2.5 Supplied by and thanks to Crucial - visit them
here http://www.crucial.com/uk
Thermaltake Silentboost K8
Nvidia Geforce FX 5900 XT 128mb
IBM Deskstar 120 GXP 40GB 7200rpm Hard Drive
Sony CRX300E DVD/CDRW
Sony Floppy Drive
Mercury 400W PSU
AOC 19” 9GLR CRT
Amd Athlon 64 3200+ (2000mhz)
ASUS K8V
2x256mb ddr 3200 (twinmos)
Thermaltake Silentboost K8
Nvidia Geforce FX 5900 XT 128mb
IBM Deskstar 120 GXP 40GB 7200rpm Hard Drive
Sony CRX300E DVD/CDRW
Sony Floppy Drive
Mercury 400W PSU
AOC 19” 9GLR CRT
Pentium 4 3.0Ghz
Abit AI-7
2x256mb ddr 3200 (twinmos)
Nvidia Geforce FX 5900 XT 128mb
IBM Deskstar 120 GXP 40GB 7200rpm Hard Drive
Sony CRX300E DVD/CDRW
Sony Floppy Drive
Mercury 400W PSU
AOC 19” 9GLR CRT
Amd Opteron 146 (2050mhz)
ASUS SK8V
4x512mb ddr266(dual channel) / 1x 512mb ddr266 (Samsung) CL 2.5
1x512mb ddr333 CL 2.5 Supplied by and thanks to Crucial - visit them
here http://www.crucial.com/uk
Thermaltake Silentboost K8
Nvidia Geforce FX 5950 Ultra 256mb
IBM Deskstar 120 GXP 40GB 7200rpm Hard Drive
Sony CRX300E DVD/CDRW
Sony Floppy Drive
Mercury 400W PSU
AOC 19” 9GLR CRT
AMD Athlon XP 3200+ (2.25ghz)
ABIT NF7-S V2.0
512MB of ddr400 (2x256mb) Dual Channel (crucial) CL 3
Coolermaster Aero 7 Lite
Nvidia Geforce FX 5950 Ultra 256mb
IBM Deskstar 120 GXP 40GB 7200rpm Hard Drive
Sony CRX300E DVD/CDRW
Sony Floppy Drive
Mercury 400W PSU
AOC 19” 9GLR CRT
Software:
Windows SP1a
Direct X 9.0b
Detonator 53.03 WHQL
Via Hyperion Driver 4.51
Nforce Driver 3.13
Intel Chipset Driver 1007
Nbench 3
Aquamark 3
Unreal Tournament 2003 (build 2225)
PC Mark 2002
PC Mark 04 (build 100)
Sisoft Sandra (build 989)
Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne (patch 1.01)
The test system was built from scratch,
a format of the hard drive was performed (NTFS) and then Windows XP
was installed. Following the completion of the install the N-force,
Hyperion or Intel Chipset drivers were installed. The only updates
applied were SP1a and Direct X 9.0b. Following a reboot the or Detonator
53.03 drivers were installed. Next the benchmarking tools were installed
and finally the hard drive was de-fragmented. For all tests the ATI
and Nvidia drivers were set to best image quality.
Good Benchmarking Practice:
Each benchmark was performed 3 times and the middle result for each
resolution/setting is shown in the tables which follow. After changing
any Anti-Aliasing (AA) or Anisotropic Filtering (AF) setting and before
a benchmark was run the system was rebooted. All games/applications
had their latest patches applied.
Next: Pcmark02
