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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.
GENERAL SYSTEM INFORMATION
THE RESULTS WHICH WILL SHOW CPU PERFORMANCE ARE THE LOW RESOLUTION 1024x768 RESULTS!
FAR CRY
 | 176 |
 | 143 |
 | 175 |
 | 143 |
 | 135 |
 | 131 |
ATHLON64 3400 SEMPRON 3100
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BENCHMARK SETTINGS
Volcano Level
Anti-Aliasing Disabled
Fullscreen Enabled
Vertical Sync Disabled
Default Render Mode
LOW QUALITY
Texture Quality Low
Bilinear
Anisotropic Filtering 1
Particle Count Low
Special Effects Low
Enviroment Quality Low
Shadow Quality Low
Water Quality Low
Lighting Quality Low
COMMENT - "The Athlon64 3400 offers very good frame rates with Far Cry, it outperforms the Sempron 3100 by between 3% to 19%."
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LEGO STAR WARS
 | 143 |
 | 108 |
ATHLON64 3400 SEMPRON 3100
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COMMENT - "Lego Star Wars isn't the usual type of game you find in pc hardware reviews but unlike most modern games it is mostly cpu limited. The Athlon64 3400 offers 25% extra performance over the Sempron 3100 in Lego Star Wars."
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PARIAH
 | 109 |
 | 108 |
 | 86 |
 | 86 |
 | 64 |
 | 64 |
ATHLON64 3400 SEMPRON 3100
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BENCHMARK SETTINGS
Fullscreen Enabled
Vertical Sync Disabled
LOW QUALITY
Texture Detail Low
Visual Effects Low
Render Quality Low
COMMENT - "Pariah was a hard game to get working well enough for benchmarking, when we first used the game we had frame rates in the low 20's which was unacceptable. With the release of the v77.77 drivers from Nvidia all of the problems were corrected. Even using the lowest settings (I even checked 640x480) both of the processors delivered the same performance."
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QUAKE 3 ARENA
 | 394 |
 | 328 |
 | 365 |
 | 314 |
 | 309 |
 | 283 |
ATHLON64 3400 SEMPRON 3100
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BENCHMARK SETTINGS
Four.dm68 Benchmark
32Bit Colour Depth
Texture Compress Disabled
Lightmap Lighting
High Geometric Detail
Full Texture Detail
Trilinear Texture Filtering
COMMENT - "Quake 3 Arena is one of the older games featured here but alot of games use the Quake3 engine so it's worth seeing how it performs. The Athlon64 3400 delivers a 17% performance increase over the Sempron 3100 at the lowest resolution tested which then drops to a 9% performance increase when using the video card limited resolution 1600x1200."
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SCRAPLAND
 | 151 |
 | 136 |
 | 132 |
 | 118 |
 | 103 |
 | 101 |
ATHLON64 3400 SEMPRON 3100
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BENCHMARK SETTINGS
Vsync Disabled
Crazy Gambler Level
LOW QUALITY
Bilinear Texture Filtering
Low Texture Detail
Shadows Disabled
Fog Disabled
Bloom Disabled
Motion Blur Disabled
Deformation Disabled
COMMENT - "Scrapland is a very graphically stunning game so is more video card than processor limited, however the Athlon64 3400 is still able to deliver a 10% performance increase over the Sempron 3100 at 1024x768."
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SQUADRA CORSE ALFA ROMEO
 | 153 |
 | 111 |
 | 110 |
 | 102 |
 | 76 |
 | 75 |
ATHLON64 3400 SEMPRON 3100
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BENCHMARK SETTINGS
Dynasty Mode
Valenciana Track
Windowed Disabled
Cubic Enviroment Enabled
Depth Of Field Enabled
Mixing Hardware Enabled
Reverbs Enabled
32 Voice Sound Enabled
COMMENT - "Scar is a very stunning racing game with wide open tracks with lots of detail, at higher resolutions we become video card limited but at 1024x768 the Athlon64 3400 outperforms the Sempron 3100 by a good 28%."
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TRACKMANIA SUNRISE
 | 188 |
 | 158 |
 | 163 |
 | 146 |
 | 134 |
 | 126 |
ATHLON64 3400 SEMPRON 3100
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BENCHMARK SETTINGS
Skidordie Level
LOW QUALITY
Shader Quality Low
Texture Quality Low
Trilinear
Shadows Minimum
Limit Depth Auto
Maximum Depth Medium
Water Geometry Disabled
COMMENT - "Trackmania Sunrise is a very fast racing game with stunning graphics and wide open tracks. The Athlon64 3400 delivers a 16% performance increase over the Sempron 3100 at 1024x768 and a 6% increase at 1600x1200."
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