WidowPC Gaming Computers - Athlon 64 FX-57 Review
WidowPC's gaming computers feature only the best in gaming hardware. One of the most exciting new inovations is the AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 processor. The Athlon 64 FX-57 is available in WidowPC's top-of-the-line desktop gaming computers. It just got a stellar review from GDHardware.com. The following is their praise for this smokin' new chip.
"AMD continues to raise the bar in performance -- both in dual core with its recent X2 chip and now once again in the single core design with its pending FX-57 launch due on June 27th. Gamers everywhere have seen the results AMD has had with its FX line and for good reason are eagerly anticipating the FX-57. Although the FX-53 and FX-55 will still make great gaming CPUs from now until the next year or so, it's the 57 model in particular that really puts some distance between AMD and Intel's closest gaming CPU dubbed the 'Extreme Edition'.
Clocked at 2.8GHz, the FX-57 continues the 'San Diego' core AMD released with the FX-55, but is stepped up a paltry 200MHz faster. What's interesting is that 200MHz on the Intel side of things doesn't always mean that great of a performance gain -- not so with AMD. Additionally, the revamped memory controller tweak introduced on the FX continues in this new chip and it means it's not as particular as previous designs were with varying memory configurations.
AMD is also beating the snot out of Intel when it comes to power consumption and heat dissipation. Our review chip hovers around 41 degrees Celsius under normal operating modes and can jump up over 60 degrees, however, that's still a far cry from Intel's 70 degrees plus we see on a regular basis. None of this may matter to you -- especially if you bought a pre-built PC where the system builder has more than likely taken the time to properly outfit the system with adequate power and cooling.
Where heat and power mostly come into play is with do-it-yourselfers who need to know what sort of CPU cooler to spec out. We simply used a nice Thermaltake Silent Boost on ours -- no fancy heat-pipes or anything. Just a large, quiet, fan and lots of copper. If you get anything close to that, you'll most likely be alright.
Because it uses AMD's tried and true Socket939, there's a great chance it'll work in your existing Socket939 motherboard with a simple BIOS update; however, you'll need to make sure to check with your particular motherboard manufacturer be positive.
The FX-57 is armed with a total of 1152KB of cache (128KB L1 and 1024KB L2) which greatly speeds up commonly called data cues and is a great sized buffer between the CPU and system RAM. Overall, a larger on-die cache increases instruction throughput -- you'll really notice performance gains over 512KB L2 chips when using applications and games which require lots of memory.
The entire Athlon64 line use an embedded memory controller inside the CPU which means it gets to operate at the same clock frequency as the CPU. Additionally, the wait between system RAM data hitting the CPU is greatly reduced with AMD's ultra-low wait states and ultra-fast Hypertransport bus.
One of the hopes we have for AMD at time of launch is widespread availability -- let's face it, they don't have the manufacturing capacities as Intel -- and this can create quite a deficit for them at most chip launches. We also must not discount the number of OEMs and system builders lining up behind the FX-57 -- as with most high-end CPU launches, we'll see [Editor's note: . . . WidowPC . . .] on the ultimate-gaming rig side of things and HP/Compaq as the only large-scale OEM to have systems ready on launch date.
With AMD's recent launch of its X2 series we have seen them take a strategic approach to ramping up production by seeding OEMs first, system builders second and a strong retail presence later-on in the year. We're expecting AMD to follow that model on the FX-57 as well.
Although the FX-57 runs at 2.8GHz, we did have some room to overlock things a bit by raising the bus speeds -- we were able to safely clock it to a steady 3GHz and found an average performance gain of near 15-percent at that level. Your experience will most likely differ based on motherboard-type, RAM used and thermal concerns with case cooling etc.
Benchmarking this time around included the following hardware and software:
Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-SLI Motherboard
Athlon 64 FX-57
Athlon X2 4800+
1GB OCZ Platinum PC3200 CAS2 DDR
NVIDIA 6800GT PCI-E
Seagate SATA 400GB HDD w/ 8MB Cache
Sound Blaster Audigy 2
Windows XP Prof. w/ SP2
Intel P4 XE 3.73GHz / P4 670 (3.8GHz)
ASUS P5WD2 Premium
1GB Corsair DDR2 CAS3 533MHz
NVIDIA 6800GT PCI-E
Seagate SATA 400GB HDD w/ 8MB Cache
Sound Blaster Audigy 2
Windows XP Prof. w/ SP2
The real target audience for the FX-57 is going to be the ultra-gamer who insists on nothing but the absolute fastest gaming CPU money can buy. It simply crushes everything in its path in game performance and handles most of today's common applications with power to spare. While it's certainly not a multi-threaded capable chip, its pure single-threaded performance is undisputed. Intel can only dream of producing a chip this fast at this point in the game.
As one can clearly see, from our benchmarks, the FX-57 is the must-have CPU for those folks who don't need a dual core and demand the utmost in performance. The distance in performance, under games and most other apps, between it and the closest competitor is large and deals quite a blow.
At the end of the day we expect the Fx-57 -- if nothing else -- to help lower prices on existing AMD chips allowing to drop quite significantly for the mainstream market to capitalize on them. After all, the core business for any chip maker is not in the high-end or the ultra low-end -- it's right in the middle and after this chip launches we expect more users to snatch up the 4000+ chips and Fx-53's -- not to mention the recent X2 line of dual-core designs.
AMD has a real humdinger of a CPU on its hands with the FX-57 and should have itself set to out-pace Intel in raw, overall performance for quite some time to come. If you have tons of money to spend, and aren't attracted at all by the AthlonX2 then get this chip; however, at this point in the game we'd have a hard time giving a full recommendation to anyone to spend close to or over $1000 on a chip that isn't dual core. The reason? Because multi-threaded games will start hitting this year, and while the FX-57 clearly out-performs the X2 4800+ in the game benchmarks, the tides could be different once those games hit. As with any upgrade, we always recommend our readers think 18-24 months down the road and to buy appropriately.
We clearly see the FX-57 as a 'Don't you wish you could build a chip this fast Intel?' product, which will cater to the extreme, but more importantly to the rest of us � drive prices down on the chips which are currently out."
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