Difference in Athlon 64 and 64 FX

[caffeinatedzash]

Alright, some friends and I have been debating on what the difference in a regular Athlon 64 and an Athlon 64 FX are. THey both have built in memory controllers correct?

 

[Frozen_Fallout]

Right now One is the Overclockers CPU and one is main stream.

FX is the overclocker and does really well with very OCed Ram and a watercooling+ system. Other then that it has dualchannel Memory and a hefty price tag. Right now unless you are a big OCer and use exteam cooling the Athlon64 is the only real buy. Also the Athlon64 does have OK OCing ablity but not as much as the FX.

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Remember what your fighting for, Remember why you even started fighting, and Remember who you are

 

[Frozen_Fallout]

If you are an OCer you probly want to go with the P4 anyway so the FX isn't really anything but a crown winner and a show off of AMD power .

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Remember what your fighting for, Remember why you even started fighting, and Remember who you are

 

[endyen]

Yes, they bothe have ondie memory controller.

 

[P4Man]

as it is, the major difference is that A64 has only 1 ondie memory controller, and AFX has two (or if you like, A64 has a 64 bits memory controller, AFX 144 bit, 128+ECC).

Athlon FX is really just an opteron though, and therefore also requires a 940 pin socket, as well as slightly more expensive and slightly slower registered memory. The upside of using registered ram, is that its more stable.

Fast forward a few months from here, and A64 and AFX will both use the same 939 pin motherboards, they will both have a dual channel memory controller, neither will require registered ram (though they will support it if you want it)but the difference will be that the AFX still has its 1MB cache, while A64 will be 512 Kb (but dual channel instead of single, which will most likely increase overall performance slightly inspite of the cache decrease). Athlon FX may gain a bit of performance as well, by using unregistered LL ram.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

 

[caffeinatedzash]

Wow, that's the only difference? Man that seems like a ripoff. the AFX deson't even really benchmark THAT much better than the Athlon 64. I'm going to invest in a 64 bit machine this summer when the socket 939 comes out and PCI express is out. Anyone know when this new socket with PCI Express is coming out and what Chipset they're gonna use?

 

[trooper11]

its true, its mostly just for the bleeding edge enthusiasts, the same that might buy a p4ee for evne more money. as far as the 939 socket, well i believe youll be waiting till the q4 of this year for 939 , and probably pci-e around the same time. There are hopes taht it coudl be out as early as may though, so hopefully amd can stay on track

 

[P4Man]

>Wow, that's the only difference?

That, plus the fact that typically the Athlon FX will be offered at a speedgrade above the A64. The FX53 is about to be released (or it has, not sure) and will be/is a 2.4 GHz part, while the fastest A64 is a 2.2 GHz part. Still, its an obvious fact that A64 offers a lot more value then the AFX, not unlike the regular P4 making a lot more sense than the P4 Extreme Edition.

>I'm going to invest in a 64 bit machine this summer when
>the socket 939 comes out and PCI express is out. Anyone
>know when this new socket with PCI Express is coming out
>and what Chipset they're gonna use?

This summer, there should be a choice of platforms to match your desires (S939+PCI-E). At the very least you'll have the nForce3 250 and VIA K8T880 to choose between, but likely there will be AMD/ALi and SiS solutions out there as well.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

 

[P4Man]

> as far as the 939 socket, well i believe youll be waiting
>till the q4 of this year for 939

Hu ? S939 is due in may afaik. What makes you think it will be delayed by 6 months ?? Since we are basically only a few weeks from launch, if there where any delay we would have heard about it by now. Chipsets and motherboards are ready to go, I can't see there would be any serious problem with the cpu production either, as it really isnt a big shift.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

 

[caffeinatedzash]

Indeed, I heard that is was supposed to be released in May but I hadn't heard about any delays so I wanted to make sure that I wasn't in the dark heh. I really hope that the S939 comes out by june at least b/c that's when I plan on building my new PC. What type of Memory Controllers will the A64 and AFX will be using when the s939 comes out?

 

[P4Man]

>What type of Memory Controllers will the A64 and AFX will
>be using when the s939 comes out?

The very best Both will sport dual channel ondie controllers, it doesnt get any better than that.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

 

[trooper11]

lol well if you read my entire post i did say may and that i hope they can keep to that schedual ^^

 

[caffeinatedzash]

For my next question, I was curious if the new motherboards with the S939 and PCI-Express will support the new DDR2 technology. I know that the new P4 motherboards will support DDR2 but I haven't heard anything about the Athlon 64 boards having support for DDR2

 

[trooper11]

there will be no ddr2 support for ahtlons until next year at the earliest. but odnt be discouraged by this, you wont be missing anyhting, as ddr2 will be more expensive and wont show perforamnce gains until it hits speeds beyond ddr.

 

[P4Man]

Not until price of DDR2 comes down and performance comes up. For some reason, AMD sees no point in supporting a memory standard that is more expensive and offers lower performance.. got to wonder why ?

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =