Athlon XP vs Athlon 64

[jwl812 0]

I consider myself a fairly educated computer "geek". But when it comes down to these new processor "speed designations" i'm lost. For example, the Athlon XP 3200+. The name implies its basically a 3.2 Ghz proc. But we all know its not, its AMD marketing gimick to make us believe their 2.2 Ghz chip runs so good, it should be. Therein lies my dilema.

 

I have an oppurtunity to score a plain vanilla Athlon XP 3200+ processor and a VIA KT880 mobo for almost nothing. These fell into my lap almost for free. I was going to build an Athlon 64 3200 system. Now, considering the XP 3200+, according to AMD naming scheme, and the A64 3200 should be identical insofaras performance hence the 3200 designation.

 

I have searched the net far and low for any benchmark comparisons on these two seemingly identically clocked chips, but so far nothing. Anyone know of a site that compares these two? Or anyone have any first hand experience?

 

This should be a no brainer, spend almost nothing on an XP 3200+

or spend several hundred on an A64.... But I was going to spend the money anyway on the A64...

 

Thanks,

 

Jeff

[jmmijo 1]

Well, actually is no longer an AMD marketing gimmick as you say as now Intel uses a model number to describe their latest P4 cpu's as well

 

As for the performance difference, well if you had everything identical, including the OS and apps, then you would see a slight increase in performance with the Athlon 64 over it's cousin the XP. The reason is simply the more effecient design of the 64 architecture and the fact that the Athlon 64/FX/Opteron have onboard MMU's thus bypassing the need for the chipset to do this function.

 

As for web site showing benchmarks, well, I can't think of any except perhaps checking out Toms Hardware Guide.

 

Myself I take many benchmarks with a grain of salt, as real world experience and use is a better guage for me.

 

I've built quite a few XP and 64 systems and have come to the conclusion that the 64-bit CPU's will really come into their own once you see the official release of Windows XP 64-bit Edition.

 

Currently you can see a substantial performance gain from using a 64-bit distro of *nix as well

 

[theefool 0]

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20041220/index.html

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20041221/cpu_charts-15.html#directx_9

[mdb83 0]

I had an AthlonXP running at 3200+ speeds and switched to an Athlon64 3000+ and found that the Athlon64 edged out the XP in most every benchmark. Everything in the system stayed the same, with the exception of the motherboard of course, and the RAM was running at about the same speed. I have all the benchmark results saved but I don't want to post them because I know that my testing methods aren't as scientific and reliable as any decent review website.

 

One thing to note is that my Athlon64 runs a bit cooler than my old AthlonXP Barton. Running either idle or hot the A64 is between 10-20 degrees F cooler than the old AXP (and that's even without using the whole "Cool n Quiet" feature).

 

I'd normally recommend the Athlon64 hands down for the extra few bucks but you can't beat free if you can score that AthlonXP.

 

By the way, unlike Intel's recent numbering, I wouldn't consider the AMD speed designations to be any sort of gimmick, just a fair way to gauge performance (with perhaps a couple exceptions). If AMD labeled their products with only the clock speed, no normal person would know that they're comparable in performace.

[jwl812 0]

Thanks for the links theefool, and thanks to everyone for replying so quickly. Those links are what I was looking for. Seems like the A64 and XP are fairly close on the benches. They look even closer when the XP 3200+ is almost free. I think I'm gonna go with the free XP proc and turns out the mobo is a dual channel DDR board. I do mostly video editing and the XP and A64 are pretty close on most of those benches, give or take 15 - 20 seconds or so to encode.

[theefool 0]

One thing I noticed. Though, my noticing could be all wrong....

 

the XP and Sempron (non 754) all are able to use dual channel memory.

A64 socket 754 and socket 754 sempron can't use dual channel memory

A64 Socket 939 can use dual channel memory