AMD ATHLON64 3400 REVIEW

"AMD Athlon64 3400 review testing the powerful 2.4Ghz Newcastle Socket 754 processor from AMD. Other hardware used was the AMD Sempron 3100, AMD Athlon XP 3200 and the Gigabyte K8NS Pro motherboard."

In this review we are testing the AMD Athlon64 3400, this is a very powerful 2.4Ghz Socket 754 processor from AMD. There are two versions of the Athlon64 3400, the first is the older Clawhammer which has a clock speed of 2.2Ghz and a huge 1024K Level 2 cache. The version we are testing here is the later Newcastle version of the Athlon64 3400 which has a clock speed of 2.4Ghz (200Mhz higher than the older Clawhammer) and a 512K Level 2 Cache.

We will be comparing the Athlon64 3400 to the budget Sempron 3100 because we know alot of you are wondering how the Sempron 3100 measures up against the more expensive Athlon64. In some of the synthetic benchmarks we will also be featuring the well known Athlon XP 3200 although it isn't being featured in any of the game benchmarks.

We will be testing the Athlon64 3400 and Sempron 3100 processors using a very wide range of synthetic and game benchmarks. The synthetic benchmarks used duing this review was 3dmark 2001 SE, 3dmark 2003, 3dmark 2005, CPU Bench 2003, KribiBench, Metabench, Realstorm 2004, SiSoftware Sandra 2005, Sciencemark 2 and SuperPI.

We also used an even bigger range of old and new games software for benchmarking, we used 1944 Battle of the Bulge, Area 51, Aurora Watching, Codename Panzers Phase 2, Comanche4, Delta Force Extreme, Doom 3, Far Cry, Lego Starwars, Pariah, Quake 3 Arena, Scar, Scrapland, Trackmania Sunrise, Tribes Vengeance, Unreal Tournament, Unreal Tournament 2004, Warhammer 40K Dawn of War and Xpand Rally for a very comprehensive range of software.

3DMARK BENCHMARKS 3DMARK 2001 SE 18104 15731 13809 3DMARK 2003 7979 7610 7247 3DMARK 2005 3345 3281 2775 ATHLON64 3400 SEMPRON 3100 ATHLON XP 3200 COMMENT - "Using 3dmark 2001 SE the Athlon64 3400 puts in a good performance and finishes 2373 points ahead of the Sempron 3100 which is a 14% increase. Even though 3dmark 2003 is more of a video card benchmark the Athlon64 3400 is still able to outperform the Sempron 3100 by 369 points which is a 5% increase. Now we are testing with 3dmark 2005 and this makes even less use of the processor so the Athlon64 3400 can only deliver a 64 point increase over the Sempron 3100 which is only a 2% increase." BENCHMARK SETTINGS 3DMARK 2001 SE 1024x768 Resolution 32Bit color D3D Hardware T&L Antialiasing Disabled Double Frame Buffer Compressed Texture Format 24Bit Z-Buffer Depth 3DMARK 2003 1024x768 Resolution No Pixel Processing Optimal Texture Filtering 4x Max Anisotropy Optimal Vertex Shaders No Repeat Tests No Fixed Framerate 3DMARK 2005 1024x768 Resolution No Anti-Aliasing Optimal Filtering HLSL VS Target 2_0 HLSL PS Target 2_0 No Fixed Framerate GEFORCE 6600 GT SPECIFIC HLSL VS Target 3_0 HLSL PS Target 3_0

3DMARK 2005 CPU TEST 3DMARK 2005 CPU SCORE 4341 3663 3041 ATHLON64 3400 SEMPRON 3100 ATHLON XP 3200 COMMENT - "We are using the cpu test within 3dmark 2005 which doesn't use any dx9 effects so puts little stress on the video card. The Athlon64 3400 finishes 16% faster than the Sempron 3100 and 29% faster than the Athlon XP 3200." 3DMARK 2005 1024x768 Resolution No Anti-Aliasing Optimal Filtering HLSL VS Target 2_0 HLSL PS Target 2_0 No Fixed Framerate GEFORCE 6600 GT SPECIFIC HLSL VS Target 3_0 HLSL PS Target 3_0

CPU BENCH 2003 OVERALL 8549 6718 6590 ATHLON64 3400 SEMPRON 3100 ATHLON XP 3200 COMMENT - "Cpu Bench 2003 shows what the Athlon64 3400 can really with a 22% performance increase over the Sempron 3100."

KRIBI BENCH OFFICE 22.54 18.40 18.85 JET SHADOW 21.05 16.83 19.39 SPONGE 11.97 9.58 10.37 ATHLON64 3400 SEMPRON 3100 ATHLON XP 3200 COMMENT - "For the first time the Sempron 3100 is outperformed by the Athlon XP 3200, however the Athlon64 outperforms the Athlon XP 3200 by between 10% to 19%."

META BENCH OVERALL 4019 3030 3337 ATHLON64 3400 SEMPRON 3100 ATHLON XP 3200 COMMENT - "This is another victory for the XP 3200 over the Sempron 3100, once again the power of the Athlon64 3400 is clear and it is 17% ahead of the XP 3200."

REALSTORM 2004 OVERALL 5555 4350 3927 ATHLON64 3400 SEMPRON 3100 ATHLON XP 3200 COMMENT - "Second place swings back to the Sempron 3100's and it outperforms the Athlon XP 3200, the Athlon64 3400 finishes 22% faster than the Sempron 3100."

SCIENCE MARK 2 MOLECULAR DYNAMICS (LOWER IS BETTER) 71 96 75 ATHLON64 3400 SEMPRON 3100 ATHLON XP 3200 COMMENT - "The Sempron 3100 and Athlon XP 3200 both perform within 6% of each other but the Athlon64 is a clear 22% faster."

SISOFTWARE SANDRA 2005 PROCESSOR - ALU DHRYSTONE 10954 8217 9010 PROCESSOR - FPU WHETSTONE 3921 2939 3550 ATHLON64 3400 SEMPRON 3100 ATHLON XP 3200 COMMENT - "The Athlon64 3400 is 18% faster than the Athlon XP 3200 in the Dhrystone test and using the Whetstone test the Athlon64 3400 is 10% faster."

SISOFTWARE SANDRA 2005 MULTI-MEDIA - INTEGER 22772 17064 20665 MULTI-MEDIA - FLOATING POINT 24587 18425 22065 ATHLON64 3400 SEMPRON 3100 ATHLON XP 3200 COMMENT - "The clock speed of the Sempron 3100 which is 600Mhz slower than the Athlon64 3400 and 400Mhz slower than the Athlon XP 3200 really shows with this test. It is the only processor which can't reach 20,000 points unlike the other two processors. The Athlon64 3400 is approx 10% faster than the Athlon XP 3200 and a huge 26% faster than the Sempron 3100."

SISOFTWARE SANDRA 2005 MEMORY BANDWIDTH - INTEGER 3008 3021 2731 MEMORY BANDWIDTH - FLOATING POINT 3007 3022 2552 ATHLON64 3400 SEMPRON 3100 ATHLON XP 3200 COMMENT - "In this SiSoftware Sandra 2005 memory bandwidth benchmark we are testing the integrated memory controller on the Athlon64 and Sempron processors. The Athlon XP 3200 doesn't have an integrated memory controller which is why it's performance is between 10% to 15% slower than the Athlon64 3400 and Sempron 3100. There is only a very small difference between the Athlon64 3400 and Sempron 3100 processors."

SUPER PI 512K (LOWER IS BETTER) 17 22 1MB (LOWER IS BETTER) 39 49 4MB (LOWER IS BETTER) 195 247 ATHLON64 3400 SEMPRON 3100 COMMENT - "In this SuperPI test the Athlon64 3400 delivers a performance increase of approx 22% over the Sempron 3100."