PC Pro's first review of the Athlon 64

 

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By Mark Walsh

Posted on 23 Sep 2003 at 17:12

After months, nay years of waiting, 64-bit processors for desktop PCs have finally arrived. PC Pro looks at an Athlon 64 (FX-51) machine from Mesh.

Athlon 64 FX-51 PC
Mesh MatrixFX Plus

Price: £1,699 (£1,996 inc VAT)
Delivery £39 (£46)
Internet www.meshcomputers.com
Supplier Mesh Computers 0870 046 4747

After months, nay years of waiting, 64-bit processors for desktop PCs have finally arrived. First off, Apple released its G5, which will clearly keep the design conscious salivating and saving every penny to buy one for many a year yet. Us Windows users have had a few extra months to wait, but we're now privileged enough to be in the arms of Athlon 64, and this Mesh Matrix 64FX Plus is the first PC we've seen to pack the high end version of the chip, the FX-51.

There are two versions of the Athlon 64 chip: Athlon 64 standard and the FX range. Both are modified versions of AMD's server and workstation model, the Opteron, and Opteron and Athlon 64 standard processors use a Socket 754 slot. The need for so many pins (this is 280 more than a Pentium 4) is mostly down to the fact that AMD has integrated the DDR memory controller, or controllers in the case of the Opteron. Including this within the chip itself shortens the distance data needs to travel around the chip to be processed and therefore speeds up processing.

And now for the technical bit. Athlon 64 has 128KB of Level 1 cache. This is split in half between data processing and code and instruction processing. Level 2 cache is a huge 1MB - currently the highest in a desktop processor; that is until Intel next Pentium 4 revision hits the shelves later this year. The Athlon 64 also implements HyperTransport technology, which radically reduces latency and therefore speeds up the transfer of data between processor and chipset.

With the standard Athlon 64, the most significant cut to the Opteron's architecture is the removal of all but one of the memory controllers. This does slow it down quite a bit, but the extra pathways are frankly more than a single PC needs to churn data faster than anything else currently available. However, the FX line of processors goes a step further by having two controllers. Because of this, it needs a few more pins to cope. Therefore the FX processors are 940-pin chips.

The sad news is that without a 64-bit desktop operating system, the Athlon 64 can not run at peek efficiency. Instead, it must resort to its 32-bit mode. Rumours abound as to when a 64-bit Windows operating system will be released, though it's unlikely to surface this year. However, Suse and Red Hat are rumoured to have Linux kernels ready any day now.

The FX-51 processor used in this system is the first FX to be released and runs at 2.2GHz. This is a whole 1GHz slower than the current flagship Pentium 4, but despite this, our benchmarks show it runs a massive 36 per cent faster. In fact, its 2D benchmark score of 2.58 is the fastest we have ever seen.

The processor runs on an Asus's SK8N motherboard that uses nForce 3. It's fitted with two 512MB sticks of PC 2700 DDR memory, which leaves one DIMM free on each memory channel.

The FX range of Athlon 64 chips is geared specifically towards gamers, and like Nvidia, AMD is claiming its chip will herald the age of cinematic computing. Mesh has chosen an ATi Radeon 9800 Pro card from Sapphire. This is widely regarded as the best choice when it comes to frame rates per pound spent, and there's no doubting the score of 16,489 in 3DMark 2001 SE is tremendous.