X-bit labs

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Another AMD Athlon 64 X2 Review Emerges. AMD Athlon 64 X2 Lineup Benchmarks Pubslished

GamePC has posted an article about AMD dual-core microprocessors lineup and performance of the Athlon 64 X2 in real-life applications. The web-site has published results of numerous benchmarks, including 3D Studio Max 7.0, Maya 6.5, Flash MX 4000 and others. The new chips had been compared to various competitors, including Intel Pentium D and Extreme Edition, Intel Pentium 4 as well as Intel Pentium M.

“Performance wise, we are confident in saying that the Athlon64 X2 4800+ is the fastest overall processor on the market today. The vast majority of multi-threaded applications showed the 4800+ at the top of the benchmark charts, and it only falls behind to the Athlon64 FX series in gaming. Even in games, the 4800+ chip is only a small amount behind the FX. The chip is far more balanced compared to the Intel’s dual-core Pentium-D/EE processors when handling single threaded applications. However, while the 4800+ rules the charts, one should consider that most of our applications did not show much benefit from the 4800+’s 1MB of cache (per core) compared to the 4600+ 512 kB of cache (per core). In the majority of applications, the 4600+ (which is quite a bit less expensive) performs nearly identically to the top of the line 4800+ model,” concludes GamePC.

• GamePC: Dual Core Done Right: AMD’s Athlon64 X2 Processors.

Next-Generation Gaming Consoles Compared. An In Depth Look at PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360

The Tech Zone web-site has summarized all the information available about the next-generation gaming consoles, including Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3, in an article that compares microprocessors and graphics chips used in the consoles as well as available games titles and supported media types.

“We have all seen the screenshots of the games on the two systems but what about actual gameplay graphics. Despite the hot debate, when you look at the numbers the two systems use a different but equally effective method of delivering graphics processing power. The XBOX uses a custom ATI processor with 48 graphics pipelines and the PS3 has a custom NVIDA graphics processor with an estimated 24 pipelines. The numbers are misleading because the PS3 piplines are more powerful than the XBOX pipelines. In the end the two different graphics processors will deliver about the same amount of power, we can expect to see impressive results from both sides,” The Tech Zone believes.

“When considering games, you have to look at the XBOX and the PS2. The XBOX is very popular in the US and has a few great franchise games such as Halo, but the PS2 has an international reach and several popular game franchises such as Gran Tourismo that the XBOX has yet to beat. The XBOX 360 will need to appeal to foreign game developers and consumers to compete with the PS3. Only time will which console will have the quality of games which all of us are been expecting,” writes the author.

• The Tech Zone: Xbox 360 Vs. PS3: An In Depth Look.