Tuesday, June 28, 2005

AMD’s Athlon 64 FX-57 Launched and Reviewed. Reviews of the Fastest Microprocessor for Gamers Emerge

10:22 pm | Yaroslav Lyssenko

Advanced Micro Devices has launched its single-core AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 central processing unit that is aimed at gamers and enthusiasts. The new chip raises the performance bar set by its predecessor Athlon 64 FX-55 microprocessor, which was considered to be the most powerful gaming CPU on the planet. Although the chip is available from AMD for $1031, which is the highest price for an AMD Athlon 64-series product, the interest for details of the newest “king of the hill” is as big as ever.

“AMD is increasing the speed of their highest performing CPU today. The Athlon FX-57 is a 200MHz bump from the current FX-55, brining the clock speed of the highest performing single core CPU on the market to 2.8GHz. This modest 7.7% increase is not the be all, end all of speed bumps, but AMD is still in a much better position than Intel for extracting performance by tacking on an extra 200MHz. Intel’s successive 200MHz increases on Prescott since it’s existence have increased performance by smaller and smaller amounts 2.8 GHz to 3.8 GHz is a 35.7% increase in clock speed, which should be an overestimate of performance barring cache size increases. If we look at AMD’s performance improvements from 1.8 GHz to 2.8 GHz, the upper bound on our performance increase is greater than 55%, plus any improvement for doubling cache size,” writes AnandTech.

“The San Diego core brings with it some very important things. Primarily, it has what AMD terms as a “more flexible memory controller.” We at HardOCP would prefer to call it a “fixed memory controller.” “Fixed” as in the older one was broken. The older memory controller had substantial issues with low latency RAM and certain configurations over 2GB. Given the nature of this high end CPU, it settles better with us now that it is able to support high-end memory configurations correctly. This is not a moment too soon as we are starting to see games that might very well benefit from memory configurations up to 2GB,” writes HardOCP.

“The Athlon 64 FX-57 has performed most expectedly in all our tests, yielding predictable performance, overclocking, and power consumption results. And we guess you won’t be surprised if we call the tested Athlon 64 FX-57 the best gaming processor for today. It also performs well in many other applications, by the way. In fact, this CPU is not the leader in two cases only. It is worse than dual-core processors in multi-threading applications and than CPUs of Intel’s NetBurst architecture at encoding audio and video content,” concludes Ilya Gavrichenkov, X-bit labs’ hardware editor.

• 3D Velocity: AMD Athlon64 FX 57 Review.
• AMD: AMD Unveils World’s Ultimate PC Processor For 3D Games: The AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 Processor.
• AnandTech: AMD Athlon 64 FX-57: The Fastest Single Core.
• bit-tech: AMD Athlon 64 FX-57.
• ExtremeTech: Athlon 64 FX-57 Review.
• FiringSquad: AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 Review.
• GDHardware.com: AMD Athlon FX-57: The Ultimate Gaming CPU.
• HardOCP: AMD Athlon 64 FX-57.
• Hexus.net: AMD Athlon 64 FX-57.
• T-break: AMD Athlon FX-57.
• Tech Report: AMD’s Athlon 64 FX-57 Processor.
• Trusted Reviews: AMD Athlon FX-57.
• X-bit labs: AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 Processor Review.

ECS vs. MSI: Socket 939 Mainboards Compared. ECS KN1 Extreme Against MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum

10:17 pm | Yaroslav Lyssenko

GDHardware.com has posted a head-to-head comparison of two Socket 939 mainboards from ECS and MSI. Both ECS KN1 Extreme and MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum mainboards are built around NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra chipset and are positioned for enthusiasts and overclockers. The products were compared in terms of performance level, overclock potential level, value as well as bundle and feature richness.

“On one hand, ECS’ board will appeal to those on a budget – we think of it as the “poor-man’s ABIT” – it has OTES-like cooling, good performance, features and stability yet costs quiet a bit less than the competition and for that we give kudos to ECS. However, in this case, we do give the nod towards MSI as their product offers a lot more features and expandability – even if it is a bit more money. That said, we have no reservations at all recommending the KN1 to anyone seeking a best-of-class nForce 4 solution that won’t break the bank yet still gives them most everything they want in a good, solid motherboard,” concludes GDHardware.com.

• GDHardware.com: ECS KN1 Extreme vs. MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum.

Seagate’s "David" and "Goliath" Reviewed. Seagates Pocket and External HDDs Tested

10:14 pm | Yaroslav Lyssenko

TweakTown web-site has taken a look at a couple of Seagate’s external storage offerings: at a tiny pocket drive as well as at a capacious external hard disk drive. The Pocket Drive with USB 2.0 interface delivers 5GB of free storage space at the size of a wallet, while its bigger counterpart offers 400GB of free space and interconnection via either USB 2.0 or FireWire.

“Both of these new portable storage products from Seagate definitely get our seal of approval. They are both stylish and made of high quality materials and are priced quite well, especially the 5GB pocket drive. If you need some portable storage for your pocket, the 5GB pocket drive from Seagate won’t let you down. If you are a power user who needs massive amounts of storage to move around or just like the idea of having 400GB of storage at your mercy outside of your case (in a very cool unit with automatic backup ability), you won’t be disappointed either,” concludes TweakTown.

• TweakTown: Portable Storage from Seagate – 5GB Pocket Size and 400GB External.

Archive
All Latest News