AMD Athlon 64 FX-53 & 3800+: Socket 939 Has Arrived

Name: AMD Athlon 64 FX-53 & 3800+: Socket 939 Has Arrived - Page 9
Brand: AMD

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, June 01, 2004, 12:01 AM EDT

Next, we did some benchmarking with Epic's Unreal Tournament 2003. When testing with UT 2003, we use a specific set of game engine initialization settings, that ensure all of the systems are being benchmarked with the exact same in-game settings and graphical options. Like the other in-game tests, we used a "Low-Quality" setting with UT2003 that isolates CPU performance.

Unreal Tournament 2003

DirectX Gaming Performance

The Unreal Engine has traditionally performed very well on the AMD Athlon line of processors and that tradition continues here. The Socket 939 Athlon 64 FX-53 outperforms the fastest Intel CPU by over 53 frames per second. The 3800+ finished about 14 FPS behind the FX-53, but at over 230 FPS it was also plenty fast enough to outpace anything Intel has to offer at the moment.

X2: The Threat Rolling Demo

DirectX 9 Gaming Performance

For our last test, we used X2: The Threat's rolling demo version, which can be downloaded from http://www.egosoft.com/. If you haven't already seen this game, check it out. It is simply a gorgeous, multi-faceted space simulation. Like all of the other in-game tests, we ran X2 at a low resolution, and to further reduce the video card's affect on performance, we disabled bump-maps as well.

The Socket 939 Athlon 64 FX-53 and 3800+ would have walked away with another 1 - 2 finish in the X2 benchmark, had it not been for the 3.4GHz Pentium 4 Extreme Edition. At almost 215 FPS, the P4 E.E. finished a few frames per second ahead of the FX-53 and 3800+, but that was the only Intel CPU that was capable of outrunning AMD's new flagship parts.

Tags: AMD, Athlon, SoC, socket, fx, arrive, Athlon 64, Athlon 64 FX, Ive, AR, AM, K

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com