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Downsides to A64?

B

Benny Blanco

2[H]4U
Joined
May 4, 2003
Messages
2,609
A friend of mine is going to ask me to build him a machine in a month. He will want a performance machine, used primarily for gaming. Although he is basically a PC noob, he wants to learn and play around with video editing also.

I havent dealt with A64 yet. Are there any downsides? I heard something about multitasking issues, like internet explorer taking 60 seconds to start... Any truth to that?

Any other stuff I should know before I recommend A64? If not for the video editing, I would just build him an athlon xp rig.

Thanks
Benny
 
Probably the main two drawbacks (and they're slight) I could think of are:

Lack of HT support, slightly bogging down during multitasking

Single Channel Memory Bandwidth which isn't much better than a Barton. An Athlon FX is a different story though.

Good cpu though.
 
Hyper Threading

It's on the P4's and it does help alot when multi tasking.
 
Originally posted by ShuttleLuv
Hyper Threading

It's on the P4's and it does help alot when multi tasking.
Click to expand...

We've discussed why the Athlon series may not require HT before. There have been some excellent responses from some folks who are much more gifted than I am. (Many of whom agreed that Intel mainly decided to implement HT on the P4 to improve its IPC.) Considering that the A64's IPC is reasonably high, it may not benefit much from HT.

Also, if you notice, there are select few benches where the A64 loses to the Athlon FX, even though it has only half the bandwidth. This is because it is not a CPU that craves bandwidth, at least as much as some other well-known CPUs. :cool:

I don't see why at this point you would build your friend an Athlon XP-based computer. The A64's on-die mem. controller is a boon, particularly in multimedia apps. I also wouldn't discount the P4 for such a use - it is well known that the P4 does well in encoding. :)

Best of luck with your friend's new system.
 
Originally posted by Benny Blanco

I heard something about multitasking issues, like internet explorer taking 60 seconds to start... Any truth to that?
Benny
Click to expand...

Hahaha, no thats not true. I usually search the web, run winamp, and code in vb.net all while running warcraft 3 in the background. I have never noticed in significant slow down while multitasking.
 
Originally posted by specter554
Hahaha, no thats not true. I usually search the web, run winamp, and code in vb.net all while running warcraft 3 in the background. I have never noticed in significant slow down while multitasking.
Click to expand...
Thats what I was looking to hear :)

How do u like the platform overall? Motherboard, cpu, etc?

Did you try the onboard sound at all? If so how was it? What were you using before, and how does it compare?

I read the review on that board and it looks good, but I wish it had more connectors on the back panel :(
 
Athlon 64 doesn't need HThreading. (double threading, is what it literraly is). It doesn't have any extra transistors that sit idly doing nothing whatsoever like a non-HT p4 does, so implementing HT on an A64 wouldn't yield any better results.

Also, I don't like dual channel because there is no dual-channel ram with BH-5 chips. Oh, and you could use an Opertron 146 in an Athlon FX-51 motherboard, it would work just fine; and perform similar to a Athlon-64 3200+; except that it has extra HTT links, and it supports dual channel ram. It costs only $20 more right now, so if you really want dual channel (i know i don't!) just get that and an FX mobo.
 
I should have been more clear earlier...

I know what HT (hyper threading is). I was confused as to why it was even mentioned, not as to what it is. I dont consider "lack of HT" a downside. Intel can keep their bag of crazy tricks. Moving on...

M4d, are you saying BH5 chips don't work in dual channel? And whats this about opterons and fx51 motherboards, i'm talking about A64, thats it and thats all!
 
Originally posted by Benny Blanco
I should have been more clear earlier...

I know what HT (hyper threading is). I was confused as to why it was even mentioned, not as to what it is. I dont consider "lack of HT" a downside. Intel can keep their bag of crazy tricks. Moving on...

M4d, are you saying BH5 chips don't work in dual channel? And whats this about opterons and fx51 motherboards, i'm talking about A64, thats it and thats all!
Click to expand...

The normal A64 is only single channel. Since only the FX runs dual and requires registered RAM, I doubt you can find any BH-5 based registered sticks. I might be wrong, but I've never heard any talk of this.
 
I'm actually hoping that socket 939 will be out by the time he is ready to build this machine.

Anyone else got any feedback about A64? General feelings (based on personal experience) about it are welcome.
 
Originally posted by Benny Blanco
Thats what I was looking to hear :)

How do u like the platform overall? Motherboard, cpu, etc?

Did you try the onboard sound at all? If so how was it? What were you using before, and how does it compare?

I read the review on that board and it looks good, but I wish it had more connectors on the back panel :(
Click to expand...

I am very happy with this setup right now. I am pretty pleased with the AK86-L. Although some people originally thought there was agp lock on this board there isn’t, so don’t buy it if you want to OC. If I push it to over 2170 my 9800 PRO won’t have it. This is fine with me because I don’t want to OC, but if you want to I would wait for nforce 250. On board sound is not bad. There is a noticeable difference between Audigy 2 and onboard, but it is not that great. The Muskin lvl 1 passes memtest at 2-3-2-6, even though it is rated for 2-3-3-6. Only thing I would change is get a 74 gig raptor because the 37 gig is kind of loud. Not to bad considering the entire comp cost me about $1250.
 
The hard drive has only one reason to be loud; something is vibrating. Try tightening up everything in the general vicinty of the hard drive, if that doesn't work do the opposite-- scew the bolts out loose, and fill the gaps with rubber cement, or something that stays soft even once it's dry. Or if you find a part that is vibrating because of the hard drive, you should either remove or secure it. You know floppies are noisy, right? because the floppy vibrates up and down inside. If you shove a ruler on top of the floppy in there, it will be pretty quiet.
 
Bh-5 can be used in dual channeling, but i doubt it would actually work correctly. Also, you'd then have to get two identical BH-5 sticks, which are pretty hard to obtain today. Just to get one stick i had to search all over pricewatch and newegg combined.
 
Why not? BH-5 from different manufacturers has been known to mix and match wonderfully. You don't need BH-5 these days. The manufacturers have moved on to making cheaper CH-5. If you want the speeds of BH-5, there's Mushkin and OCZ that make dedicated line of premium ram with BH-6 chips.
 
Originally posted by M4d-K10wN
Bh-5 can be used in dual channeling, but i doubt it would actually work correctly. Also, you'd then have to get two identical BH-5 sticks, which are pretty hard to obtain today. Just to get one stick i had to search all over pricewatch and newegg combined.
Click to expand...
I've a stick of TwinMos PC3200 w/BH-5 bought early last year before summer when they stopped fabrication. It worked fine in DC with a stick of older Mushkin PC2700. I picked up a stick of Hyper-X PC3200 w/BH-5 from ZipZoomFly in December and it runs nicely in DC with the TwinMos stick. I think it's safe to say they're not identical chips too :)
 
But with BH5 almost completely gone, BH6 makes a alternative that is better than CH5
 
anyways..... back on task, i just got my A64 setup (in sig) i love everything about it. i went from 10+ hour encoding times down to 2-4 hours. thats two passes also. i would HIGHLY recommend the Abit board. there is not much to complain about it. some better placement of the ATX power connections is about the only thing i don't like. the board is ROCK SOLID. threw it all together, booted on first try no hitch it was like a miracle. the manual is great, the package is great. you can have 6 SATA drives and 4 PATA drives all running in RAID if you so desire. :eek: how cool is that?:D check out the reviews on the HardOCP page. it OCs like cake too. i haven't pushed it any further than 220x10 but i will eventually. :D my SLK948 fits like a charm. (surprisingly) i've used a few different types of RAM also with no problems.
 
So wait, if I got an FX mobo, threw in an Opteron 146, how much better would it perform as compared to an Athlon 64 3200+? I seriously think that I'd not notice the difference. Dual channel RAM is more or less a gimmick for Athlon XPs, slightly less so for P4s. I'm wondering how this related to A64s, as I am also building an A64 box in a month or so.
 
The opertron 146 wouldn't perform any better, or any worse. However, it can use dual channel ram which i can see that you like. Oh, and dual channel ram for Athlon Xp is completely useless. The AXP doesn't have a bus wide enough for it to work properly. However, the A64 does :) so the performace will be a lot better as compared to the difference in AXP's but not that much better as opposed to regular ram. Dual channel is basicly what DDR is, only with a twist. The result is it doubles the bandwidth. Twice. So, you double the bandwidth because your ram is DDR, and double it again because it's dual channel.

The downside to the Opertron is it's upside-- the extra HT links, which enable dual channeling. They also limit the overclockability ar around 2.3 ghz, as opposed to A64 3200 2.5 ghz approximate limit.
 
Originally posted by M4d-K10wN
The hard drive has only one reason to be loud; something is vibrating. Try tightening up everything in the general vicinty of the hard drive, if that doesn't work do the opposite-- scew the bolts out loose, and fill the gaps with rubber cement, or something that stays soft even once it's dry. Or if you find a part that is vibrating because of the hard drive, you should either remove or secure it. You know floppies are noisy, right? because the floppy vibrates up and down inside. If you shove a ruler on top of the floppy in there, it will be pretty quiet.
Click to expand...

I suppose I shouldn't say loud, it just makes noise at a high frequency similar to some SCSI's because of its high RPM. High frequency noises drive me crazy for some reason. I like the rubber cement idea though, that is clever
 
dual channel for a64 doesn't make much of a difference in most apps. the a64 3400+ is basically tied with FX-51. only in memory sensitive apps, then the power of dual channel shows.

look around for reviews. it will show that the single-channel 3400+ is right up there with FX-51. Furthermore, the a64 memory controller on the FX/Oppie is dual-controller, not just dual-channel.

Opteron 146 DOES NOT have extra HTT links, hence the '1' in the naming.

the weakness to A64 right now is mobo. When i say that i mean no chipsets right now supports pci/agp lock, which really hampers OCing.
 
which really hampers OCing
Click to expand...
Although NF3 has a lock for the SATA controller, so if you have a SATA drive; it won't get corrupted. And then again, who needs a lock if you have a card that can run stable at 120MHz?
 
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