Can this Intel setup match a 3.0ghz A64 in gaming?

[Carfax]

Tell me if you think this Intel rig can match an 3.0ghz FX in gaming performance:

Intel 650 overclocked to 4.3ghz (310x14 using Asus CPU lock free)
Asus P5WD2 Premium
1GB Corsair low latency DDR2-667 (overclocked)

You think a 650 armed with 1240 FSB and high speed DDR2 at 4.3ghz speeds can match an FX at 3ghz for gaming?

I'm not sure it will match the FX exactly, but it should come within striking range easily. At high clockspeeds and FSB, the Prescott starts to grow some pretty sharp teeth.

[Wiggy McShades]

Tell me if you think this Intel rig can match an 3.0ghz FX in gaming performance:

Intel 650 overclocked to 4.3ghz (310x14 using Asus CPU lock free)
Asus P5WD2 Premium
1GB Corsair low latency DDR2-667 (overclocked)

You think a 650 armed with 1240 FSB and high speed DDR2 at 4.3ghz speeds can match an FX at 3ghz for gaming?

I'm not sure it will match the FX exactly, but it should come within striking range easily. At high clockspeeds and FSB, the Prescott starts to grow some pretty sharp teeth.

no 3 ghz fx will not really be touched by that pentium4, but what ram is the fx running and what's the htt at for the fx ? another say 300-400mhz maybe that pentium 4 would be on par with the fx. but the fx could get to 3.0ghz on air 4.6 on a pentium 4 is gunna need high end water cooling.

[Supertim0r]

maybe an overclocked Pentium D @ 4.5Ghz... ;)

[perkam]

That might match a venice 3000+ at 3ghz but an fx is just another level --> it hangs on with EEs, not pressies ;)

Perkam

[Dillusion]

Tell me if you think this Intel rig can match an 3.0ghz FX in gaming performance:

Intel 650 overclocked to 4.3ghz (310x14 using Asus CPU lock free)
Asus P5WD2 Premium
1GB Corsair low latency DDR2-667 (overclocked)

You think a 650 armed with 1240 FSB and high speed DDR2 at 4.3ghz speeds can match an FX at 3ghz for gaming?

I'm not sure it will match the FX exactly, but it should come within striking range easily. At high clockspeeds and FSB, the Prescott starts to grow some pretty sharp teeth.

Someone awhile back did a test against a stock FX-55, to find how much you need to OC a P4 until it matches FX-55 scores. It was somewhere in the range of 5-5.2GHZ for a Presscot (IE- 5XX Series) to match up with a stock FX55.....This was in gaming though....So at 3ghz you would need like a 6ghz 24/7 stable P4 to beat it out.

EDIT: But i See you have a 6XX Series, the extra cache might help....Ide go for it :D

[Wiggy McShades]

Someone awhile back did a test against a stock FX-55, to find how much you need to OC a P4 until it matches FX-55 scores. It was somewhere in the range of 5-5.2GHZ for a Presscot (IE- 5XX Series) to match up with a stock FX55.....This was in gaming though....So at 3ghz you would need like a 6ghz 24/7 stable P4 to beat it out.

EDIT: But i See you have a 6XX Series, the extra cache might help....Ide go for it :D


wheres this test 5 ghz to equal a stock fx55 ? that dont sound right

[Dillusion]

wheres this test 5 ghz to equal a stock fx55 ? that dont sound right

i think it was one of the review sites like hothardware or pcstats, etc.

[Carfax]

wheres this test 5 ghz to equal a stock fx55 ? that dont sound right

Yeah, that doesn't sound right to me either. Maybe for 3Dmark 2001, but definitely not for general gaming.

That might match a venice 3000+ at 3ghz but an fx is just another level --> it hangs on with EEs, not pressies

As the Prescott gains in speed, it starts to equal and then surpass the Northwood clock for clock. To equal the Northwood EE clock for clock would require over 4ghz for sure, but I'm not sure about the exact speed. Probably around 4.5ghz or something.

The thing is, to make the Prescott fast you have to clock it to where the L2 cache won't be slow. Intel designed Prescott's L2 cache to run at speeds in excess of 5ghz, so at very high clock speeds, the L2 cache latency starts to diminish and it turns into a demon.

All I have is high end air cooling though, in the form of a Big Typhoon from Thermaltake. It should get me to 4.2ghz easily, but I may be pushing my luck above that.

[Carfax]

As a second thought, I wonder how far a Cedar Mill could go on high end air cooling compared to a 600 series Prescott?

From what I hear, Intel's 65nm process is very healthy, and leakage has been cut down alot.

Maybe 5ghz on air will be possible, but I doubt it. Definitely 5ghz on high end water cooling though, and up to 8ghz on more exotic methods.

If Intel hadn't screwed up with Prescott and achieved the clockspeeds it wanted, Prescott would have been a good performer; even faster than an A64 FX.

[ZX7891]

Definitely 5ghz on high end water cooling though, and up to 8ghz on more exotic methods.



Show me 8ghz, :stick:

[PkG.1337]

Heres a artice on oc 5.2Ghz prescoott vs fx-55
http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/1787/
however,
http://www23.tomshardware.com/index.html?modelx=33&model1=57&model2=115&chart=19
stock 660 with DDR2-533 already outperform a FX-55 DDR400 in 3Dmark05 CPU
so, i m guessing a 4.3Ghz prescott will outperform a 3Ghz fx-55

[skate2snow]

You will need AT LEAST! 4.5GHz and greatly overclocked RAM's to beat the FX at 3GHz.... Most likely 333MHz 3-2-2...

[NeGe0]

Heres a artice on oc 5.2Ghz prescoott vs fx-55
http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/1787/
however,
http://www23.tomshardware.com/index.html?modelx=33&model1=57&model2=115&chart=19
stock 660 with DDR2-533 already outperform a FX-55 DDR400 in 3Dmark05 CPU
so, i m guessing a 4.3Ghz prescott will outperform a 3Ghz fx-55

Match them up in the game benchmarks and you will definitly see the differences.

[Crow]

fx-55= owning intel in gaming, period.

[Kunaak]

4.3 ghz P4's are very easy to take down.
anything less then 4.8 ghz or so, for a P4, just isnt that powerful anymore.

[Peen]

Man I wanna see some benchies with Intels top Dothan, P4's vs A64's all overclocked

[Carfax]

Show me 8ghz, :stick:

Did you realize I said Cedar Mill and not Prescott?

[Xassius]

There is no way you can easily achieve 5Ghz on high end water cooling on a 6xx series N0 stepping prescott (without water chillers). And there is absolutely no way you could get 8Ghz with even the most extreme cooling on a prescott. Unless you were speculating about Cedar Mill....

As for the prescott surpassing the Northwood clock for clock. It simply doesn't happen. Prescott's cache would speed up as you ramp up the clocks, but so will the Northwood's cache!

[Carfax]

Heres a artice on oc 5.2Ghz prescoott vs fx-55
http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/1787/
however,
http://www23.tomshardware.com/index.html?modelx=33&model1=57&model2=115&chart=19
stock 660 with DDR2-533 already outperform a FX-55 DDR400 in 3Dmark05 CPU
so, i m guessing a 4.3Ghz prescott will outperform a 3Ghz fx-55

Look at the 4ghz scores compared to the FX-55. The FX-55 is only 5% faster on average than the Prescott at 4ghz in Doom III, and about 10% faster in Far Cry. It has the largest lead in HL2, coming in at close to 19% faster. He's also using slow timings on the DDR2-533 memory (4-4-4-11).

This implies that my Intel rig at 4.3ghz should easily match a FX-55 or FX-57, especially considering that I'd be using the higher performing 955x chipset.

As for the overclocked scores, he's using high quality settings which limit the performance impact of the 5.2ghz P4.

[Carfax]

There is no way you can easily achieve 5Ghz on high end water cooling on a 6xx series N0 stepping prescott (without water chillers). And there is absolutely no way you could get 8Ghz with even the most extreme cooling on a prescott. Unless you were speculating about Cedar Mill....

Well I WAS speculating about Cedar Mill! Cedar Mill will be a marvelous overclocker, no one can doubt. If they can hit 7ghz on a Pressie with LN2, they should be able to hit 8ghz on a Cedar Mill.

As for the prescott surpassing the Northwood clock for clock. It simply doesn't happen. Prescott's cache would speed up as you ramp up the clocks, but so will the Northwood's cache!

Yes, Northwood's cache would speed up aswell, but the Prescott has 2MB of L2 cache, compared to only 512kb for Northwood. This is significant at higher clockspeeds.

Because the Prescott has way more cache, it won't touch the main memory as much as the Northwood will and thus perform it's computations faster.

[Peen]

I wouldnt really worry about it, unless your into hardcore cyber olympics I got a 4ghz P4 and it plays everything just fine. some ppl just make it sound like a P4 is gunna lag or something in games. A 4.3ghz P4 like you mentioned will kick plenty ass in games

[PkG.1337]

I wouldnt really worry about it, unless your into hardcore cyber olympics I got a 4ghz P4 and it plays everything just fine. some ppl just make it sound like a P4 is gunna lag or something in games. A 4.3ghz P4 like you mentioned will kick plenty ass in games
yup, i play farcry and CS-S at ultra high resoultion + max setting (1920X1600 AS/AA MAX), it runs very smooth.
:woot:
4.3Ghz will kick ass with a single OC'd 6800GT, no ned for a $800 processor or even SLi/crossfire setup :clap:

[SlimySquid]

[QUOTE=Carfax]Maybe 5ghz on air will be possible, but I doubt it. Definitely 5ghz on high end water cooling though, and up to 8ghz on more exotic methods. QUOTE]

I second the show me a 8ghz rig please

[Dillusion]

[QUOTE=Carfax]Maybe 5ghz on air will be possible, but I doubt it. Definitely 5ghz on high end water cooling though, and up to 8ghz on more exotic methods. QUOTE]

I second the show me a 8ghz rig please

It was speculation about cedar mill! Its not out yet!

[hixie]

yup, i play farcry and CS-S at ultra high resoultion + max setting (1920X1600 AS/AA MAX), it runs very smooth.
:woot:
4.3Ghz will kick ass with a single OC'd 6800GT, no ned for a $800 processor or even SLi/crossfire setup :clap:

LOL i have CS source at 800X600 so much easier to get headshots. Looks horrible but with a little practice u can get headshots so much easier than with large resolutions. Best record so far is 170 kills and 5 deaths :banana:

[Xassius]

Because the Prescott has way more cache, it won't touch the main memory as much as the Northwood will and thus perform it's computations faster.

Dude, The extra cache on the original prescott was to make up for the slow pipelines. And the recent 6xx cache increase SLOWED down the cache (17% slower).

And plus, the doubling of the L2 Cache did jack all in significantly improving performance in the 6xx series

Show me results prescotts will overtake northwoods at high speeds...

You think that a 4.3Ghz would match a FX55? Well I'm running at 4.55Ghz and I'm pretty sure it doesn't!

[Lithan]

Look at the 4ghz scores compared to the FX-55. The FX-55 is only 5% faster on average than the Prescott at 4ghz in Doom III, and about 10% faster in Far Cry. It has the largest lead in HL2, coming in at close to 19% faster. He's also using slow timings on the DDR2-533 memory (4-4-4-11).

This implies that my Intel rig at 4.3ghz should easily match a FX-55 or FX-57, especially considering that I'd be using the higher performing 955x chipset.

As for the overclocked scores, he's using high quality settings which limit the performance impact of the 5.2ghz P4.


Uhh? Do you know what the definition of imply is? Because it isn't, "demonstrates nothing thereby leaving assumption open to whatever I want it to be"

4.3ghz prescott gets absolutely slaughtered in games by 3ghz FX. Not even competitive in 90% of games. This is assuming a top notch single card config. Throw in sli and it's a two year old fighting Muhammad Ali.

yup, i play farcry and CS-S at ultra high resoultion + max setting (1920X1600 AS/AA MAX), it runs very smooth.
:woot:
4.3Ghz will kick ass with a single OC'd 6800GT, no ned for a $800 processor or even SLi/crossfire setup :clap:

Hell, a stock A64 or Prescott will play farcry and cs-s smooth at just about whatever you want provided the rest of your rig is up to snuff. Yeah $800 is stupid to spend on a proc, but the question I saw was will a 4.3ghz pressy equal a 3.0ghz fx in gaming. Anyone who has even a slight understanding of current gaming performances knows that it wont. Isn't that the answer and therefore the end of discussion?

[nikhsub1]

There is no way you can easily achieve 5Ghz on high end water cooling on a 6xx series N0 stepping prescott (without water chillers).
I guess I am one of the few... with rad based H20, no pelts or chillers.
http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc?id=19923

[Lithan]

Is that stable Nikh? If so, that's very impressive and I'd be shocked if it was normal.

[nikhsub1]

No 5Ghz is not stable for benchies :( but ~4.9 is... I run at 4530 on a daily basis as I fold 24/7 and it is summer here... dont want to hork my WU's :D

[Carfax]

Dude, The extra cache on the original prescott was to make up for the slow pipelines. And the recent 6xx cache increase SLOWED down the cache (17% slower).

And how does this impact what I said? I said that cache becomes more important as clockspeed rises, because it offsets the processor's dependance on main memory. The faster the processor is, the more it has to WAIT for data from the slower main memory.

And plus, the doubling of the L2 Cache did jack all in significantly improving performance in the 6xx series

Didn't do jack all is exaggerating. It boosted performance by about 5>7% in games, and certain apps. Anyway, I agree that the extra cache is pretty much useless for the most part, because the processor is nowhere close to 5ghz+. I think Intel did it just to add more differentiation between the 500 and 600 series.

Show me results prescotts will overtake northwoods at high speeds...

You think that a 4.3Ghz would match a FX55? Well I'm running at 4.55Ghz and I'm pretty sure it doesn't!

Well, I can't show you direct comparison, but I can show you how the Prescott scales in comparison to the Northwood cores.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=1956&p=24 (Prescott scaling)

Because of better prefetching/branch predictor, larger L1 and L2 caches, additional WC buffers, Prescott gains more from higher clockspeeds.

This is common knowledge, or atleast I thought it was.

And, a 600 series Prescott at 4.3ghz should easily match a stock FX55 in all but the most cpu intensive games.

[Carfax]

4.3ghz prescott gets absolutely slaughtered in games by 3ghz FX. Not even competitive in 90% of games. This is assuming a top notch single card config. Throw in sli and it's a two year old fighting Muhammad Ali.

Uhh. Do you know what the definition of exaggeration is? Because that is clearly what you are doing when you say a 3ghz FX would SLAUGHTER a 4.3ghz Prescott.

What do you mean by "slaughter" anyway? Do you think that 3ghz FX is going to be 50>100% faster than a 4.3ghz Prescott with a 1200FSB and fast DDR2 memory?

The GPU is responsible for most gaming performance, and couple that with the fact that most gamers tend to play at higher resolutions and with eye candy, the GPU is the primary bottleneck.

Therefore, your statement about "slaughtering" is absurd, unless you're playing at 640x480.

Hell, a stock A64 or Prescott will play farcry and cs-s smooth at just about whatever you want provided the rest of your rig is up to snuff. Yeah $800 is stupid to spend on a proc, but the question I saw was will a 4.3ghz pressy equal a 3.0ghz fx in gaming. Anyone who has even a slight understanding of current gaming performances knows that it wont. Isn't that the answer and therefore the end of discussion?

Clearly you didn't read this whole thread. The topic header was mostly to generate interest truth be known. Here is what I said in my first post:

I'm not sure it will match the FX exactly, but it should come within striking range easily. At high clockspeeds and FSB, the Prescott starts to grow some pretty sharp teeth.

In striking range to me means, within 10>15%. And this is in cpu heavy games like HL2. In GPU bound games like Doom III that range would be even less.

[SlimySquid]

[QUOTE=Carfax]And how does this impact what I said? I said that cache becomes more important as clockspeed rises, because it offsets the processor's dependance on main memory. The faster the processor is, the more it has to WAIT for data from the slower main memory. [QUOTE]

That isn't really true for all chips. More L2 does help Intel chips, but does not really play as large a roll on AMD chips as AMD clearly showed, and also why they dropped from 1 meg L2 to 512 L2 a year or so ago. They were all gung ho on 1 meg L2 until they found out it really wasn't doing much besides heating up there chips big time. When amd finally gets more of there chips on market(about 20 decades at the rate they are going) look for a comparison on the dual core chips, there is 2 flavors, 1 with 1 meg x 2( for 2 cores) and 1 with 512k x 2(for 2 cores), benches will most likely show a very very small gain by the 1meg x 2 chips.

[Carfax]

[QUOTE=Carfax]And how does this impact what I said? I said that cache becomes more important as clockspeed rises, because it offsets the processor's dependance on main memory. The faster the processor is, the more it has to WAIT for data from the slower main memory. [QUOTE]

That isn't really true for all chips. More L2 does help Intel chips, but does not really play as large a roll on AMD chips as AMD clearly showed, and also why they dropped from 1 meg L2 to 512 L2 a year or so ago. They were all gung ho on 1 meg L2 until they found out it really wasn't doing much besides heating up there chips big time. When amd finally gets more of there chips on market(about 20 decades at the rate they are going) look for a comparison on the dual core chips, there is 2 flavors, 1 with 1 meg x 2( for 2 cores) and 1 with 512k x 2(for 2 cores), benches will most likely show a very very small gain by the 1meg x 2 chips.

The extra cache on the FX does affect performance, just not as much as the P4s because the K8 has an on die memory controller, with latency almost equivalent to a L3 cache.

Anyway, here's a good example of how cache can affect performance:

http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/athlon939/colin%20mcrae.htm

Look at the average, minimum and maximum scores. See how the FX-53 pulls ahead in minimum frames? This is because it doesn't have to go to main memory as much as the 3800+.

[Salkcin]

Tell me if you think this Intel rig can match an 3.0ghz FX in gaming performance:

Intel 650 overclocked to 4.3ghz (310x14 using Asus CPU lock free)
Asus P5WD2 Premium
1GB Corsair low latency DDR2-667 (overclocked)


The Pentium 4 650 doesn't support CPU lock free because it's 04A platform guideline... 04B standard is required in order to use CPU Lock Free wich only the newer 3,6/3,8GHz CPU's does. To get support with a 3,4GHz you need to go back to 550 c0/d0 stepping... later models/steppings of 3,4GHz has been improved so much in terms of power that it could be rated 04A standard... unfortunately.


Irwindale (600 series) is better than the Prescott's and the Prescott's better than the Northwood's. Maybe the Northwood's in some cases render a FPS or 2 more than the Prescott, but in my experience the Prescott significantly improve the smoothyness of a game... same with Irwindale - lesser FPS drops and more smooth than Prescott. The Irwindale CPU's doesn't get as hot as Prescott either... with regular rad-watercooling a 4,2GHz is easily cooled. My P4 630 currently runs overclocked at 4,2GHz (1,375v) watercooled with a 2x120mm rad and 2x80mm rad.. fans running silent and CPU load 56 celcius after serveral hours of load (videocard and mosfets are watercooled as well).

Maybe the Athlon64 is faster in video games, but in far most concrete examples I've seen the difference haven't been so that a game was playable in a higher resolution compared the CPU's to one another... 150FPS or 100FPS - can you see the difference?
I think that any game available today will run 1600x1200 4xAA 16xAF with a 4,2Ghz P4 6xx with the right videocard... if not then I'm sure that the FX CPU's is'nt able to do so either.

My current system is:
Asus P5WD2 Premium
Intel Pentium 4 630 @4,2GHz (15x280 / 1,375v)
2x1GB Kingston Value DDR2-533 @DDR2-746 CAS4-4-4-12, Turbo, HyperPath3 (2,15v)
PowerColor X800XL VIVO, 256MB DDR @455/540MHz

Highly recommendable - the Windows GUI runs smooth no matter the task and high quality gaming is possible... of course the X800XL has it limitations, but a X850XT PE would make the difference. But a Pentium 4 is not to be recommended for high-end if not a good silent watercooling setup is avaiable.

What I wrote so MUCH to tell is that the FX will be faster than the Pentium 4, but the Pentium 4 is STILL fast enough... the FX is just to fast :stick:

[Lithan]

Uhh. Do you know what the definition of exaggeration is? Because that is clearly what you are doing when you say a 3ghz FX would SLAUGHTER a 4.3ghz Prescott.

What do you mean by "slaughter" anyway? Do you think that 3ghz FX is going to be 50>100% faster than a 4.3ghz Prescott with a 1200FSB and fast DDR2 memory?

The GPU is responsible for most gaming performance, and couple that with the fact that most gamers tend to play at higher resolutions and with eye candy, the GPU is the primary bottleneck.

Therefore, your statement about "slaughtering" is absurd, unless you're playing at 640x480.



Clearly you didn't read this whole thread. The topic header was mostly to generate interest truth be known. Here is what I said in my first post:



In striking range to me means, within 10>15%. And this is in cpu heavy games like HL2. In GPU bound games like Doom III that range would be even less.


10-15% is much more than slaughter. When talking about cpu impact on gaming performance 3%+ is devestation because cpu has so little impact unless it's a huge bottleneck. Hell a 2.4c running stock will likely come within 10-15% of an FX at 3.0 in games if both are on a 6800gt. But 10-15% is very easily the difference between playable and unplayable. 3%? Probably wont ever notice it. But for a cpu change with cpu's running at the extreme speeds we are comparing, it's a huge difference. My 3200+ @ stock vs my 3200+ @ 2800mhz isn't even 3% difference if I keep ram speeds competitive with each other. This is running 1280x1024 max everything on a 6800gt on cod:UO. We are talking extreme compairisons here, not whether it's a good upgrade for the average user remember.


"150FPS or 100FPS - can you see the difference?"

If we are talking average? Absolutely. HUGE difference. Talking minimum? Not so much, but you might notice a slight difference in some areas of some games.

the FX is just to fast

Haha, nicely put. Yeah, most anything I'd recommend buying today will be "too fast" Hell most of the stuff I tell people isn't worth squat is "too fast". But acceptable and too fast today is laggy and acceptable tomorrow. So for some people it's advisable to buy what is too fast. Most of us just want to brag however.

[fordf250]

I cant give you the HL2 benchmark off the top of my head but my 640 at the settings in my sig(4.3G) is running 90fps at 1280x1024 high quality with the latest drivers in doom3 time demo.

[Xassius]

carfax, perhaps you should post in the AMD forum saying how a 4.3Ghz Prescott can beat a FX at 3Ghz :P :P :P

[Xassius]

Didn't do jack all is exaggerating. It boosted performance by about 5>7% in games, and certain apps. Anyway, I agree that the extra cache is pretty much useless for the most part, because the processor is nowhere close to 5ghz+. I think Intel did it just to add more differentiation between the 500 and 600 series.



Well then at 6Ghz, the difference between a 5xx and a 6xx would also be 5>7% :slapass:

[Peen]

Really who cares, you would have to benchmark the difference. I'll never understand the point of spending $1000 on a chip just to see a few bigger numbers. Really pointless arguing about this. It should be "Can this Intel setup macth a 3.0ghz A64 in BENCHMARKING " ;)

[Wiggy McShades]

Really who cares, you would have to benchmark the difference. I'll never understand the point of spending $1000 on a chip just to see a few bigger numbers. Really pointless arguing about this. It should be "Can this Intel setup macth a 3.0ghz A64 in BENCHMARKING " ;)


well isnt that what most overclocking is about ? you overclock then benchmark to see the performance increase you got. i mean what modern intel or amd processor can not run curent aplications to the point u need to overclock to even run it ?

[Peen]

I run mine overclocked because I encode alot, and the difference between between 3ghz and 4ghz is ALOT. And 4ghz sounds alot better then 3ghz now days =P Look at my current video card, it isnt OC'ed to game :p:

[ibby]

You will need AT LEAST! 4.5GHz and greatly overclocked RAM's to beat the FX at 3GHz.... Most likely 333MHz 3-2-2...

I had a pressie running at 4.35 gig and it was just below par with performance to an fx55.
i think couple of extra mhz should have seen me beating the fx hands down.

5gig is alittle over the top!

[Jayw28]

i duno about a 4.35ghz prescott has a chance to beat the fx 55 @STOCK speeds but if that fx scales up to 3ghz that thing is going to be blown out of the water