You have purchased wrong parts which is why I was surprised you didn't go for The Ultimate Single Core Combo instead. It's something I have been looking to buy, but I have no time for it right now. The AMD 64 FX-53 is probably weaker than the Intel Pentium 4 3.4GHz Extreme Edition. AMD 64 FX-55 or AMD 64 FX-57 is what should be faster than the Intel Pentium 4 3.4GHz Extreme Edition. I also noticed that you used slightly slower ram for the AMD system.

Hmm it should be faster, but its possible there are compatability issues with your board and HD3850AGP

@Dreamer_of_the_past

Are you sure about that? I thought that Intel released the 3.4Ghz EE in response to AMD's FX-51 - hence the "Emergency Edition" nickname. Then AMD responded again with the 200Mhz higher clocked FX-53.

candle_86 wrote:

Hmm it should be faster, but its possible there are compatability issues with your board and HD3850AGP

Yeah, I'm starting to wonder. I may throw in the 7900GT and see how it fairs for a more 1-1 comparison.

I think it's Hyper Threading's "fault".
100% of programs write today are Multithreaded and Windows like's HT as well.
It may "feel" faster, but what "the benchmark's say" ?

Two things:

1. VIA chipset, I'm quite sure nForce4 board (or nForce Pro 2200 as we are talking about s940) would be faster. But of course not period correct.
2. your video card choice. GF7 / Radeon X (and older) are using different driver core, which is optimized for older CPUs - worse multithread support but also less overhead. On the other hand DX10 class GPUs tends to work better on modern multi-core CPUs.

I did some testing, for example in Far Cry:
FX-51 + GF 7900 GS + winxp = 64.5 fps
FX-51 + GTX 285 + win7 64 = 50.8 fps

Interesting... so essentially you think that HD3850 AGP is a little too new for the K8T800 / 940 Platform? I'm gonna swap for that 7900GT and see where I end up.. Should be interesting. I was just hoping to max out this board with a fast AGP card - looks like I bit off more than the system could chew.

Yes, exactly. GeForce 7 should work better in that system.

Artex wrote:

@Dreamer_of_the_past

Are you sure about that? I thought that Intel released the 3.4Ghz EE in response to AMD's FX-51 - hence the "Emergency Edition" nickname. Then AMD responded again with the 200Mhz higher clocked FX-53.

I am sorry, I am not sure. I might be confusing it with AMD 64 FX-51. I haven't checked it previously, but as someone has already mentioned you're using a motherboard based on a VIA chipset, but why? I mean usually you pick top notch parts. Judging by all those reviews back then it was all about NVIDIA nForce chipset series for performance.

Dreamer_of_the_past wrote:

Artex wrote:

@Dreamer_of_the_past

Are you sure about that? I thought that Intel released the 3.4Ghz EE in response to AMD's FX-51 - hence the "Emergency Edition" nickname. Then AMD responded again with the 200Mhz higher clocked FX-53.

I am sorry, I am not sure. I might be confusing it with AMD 64 FX-51. I haven't checked it previously, but as someone has already mentioned you're using a motherboard based on a VIA chipset, but why? I mean usually you pick top notch parts. Judging by all those reviews back then it was all about NVIDIA nForce chipset series for performance.

Cause it was $25 bux. 😀 Seriously though, this SK8V board was considered THE Socket 940 board to have for the FX-51/53 - at least according to the reviews I've dug up that compare to the SK8N (Nforce3 150) to it. I know the Nforce3 Ultra 250 chipset was highly praised on the socket 939 side of things.

The Asus board in your p4 is exceptionally fast. I mentioned this in mu Athlon 3200+ video, you can see this in old reviews.

I would use the same gpu and ram as in the p4. Hard to compare otherwise.

And in general I also found the ee to be a fantastic gaming cpu, but I don't have 940 gear. Skipping it for 939.

havli wrote:

Two things: […]
Show full quote

Two things:

1. VIA chipset, I'm quite sure nForce4 board (or nForce Pro 2200 as we are talking about s940) would be faster. But of course not period correct.
2. your video card choice. GF7 / Radeon X (and older) are using different driver core, which is optimized for older CPUs - worse multithread support but also less overhead. On the other hand DX10 class GPUs tends to work better on modern multi-core CPUs.

I did some testing, for example in Far Cry:
FX-51 + GF 7900 GS + winxp = 64.5 fps
FX-51 + GTX 285 + win7 64 = 50.8 fps

Much of the performance difference between chipsets was eliminated with the adoption of the IMC. Disk and USB performance will be better, but that's about it.

This might be a lame suggestion, but it could be driver related. Are you using the hotfix drivers for the AMD board? It'll have the PCI Express to AGP bridge thing.

Artex wrote:

Cause it was $25 bux. 😀

Heh, what has happened to good old Artex, I remember days when I had to overpay for some auctions due to bid wars with you =)

Artex wrote:

Seriously though, this SK8V board was considered THE Socket 940 board to have for the FX-51/53 - at least according to the reviews I've dug up that compare to the SK8N (Nforce3 150) to it. I know the Nforce3 Ultra 250 chipset was highly praised on the socket 939 side of things.

I see. Well, too bad I don't know much about socket 940 and plan on getting parts for socket 939 anyway.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

The Asus board in your p4 is exceptionally fast. I mentioned this in mu Athlon 3200+ video, you can see this in old reviews.

I would use the same gpu and ram as in the p4. Hard to compare otherwise.

And in general I also found the ee to be a fantastic gaming cpu, but I don't have 940 gear. Skipping it for 939.

True - that board is a beast. Can't use the same ram since it that platform uses registered DDR. The timings are a little different (cas3 vs cas2) but I can't imagine its the memory that would be so impactful. If anything, the FX-53's integrated memory controller & explosive Dual DDR400 (PC3200) 6.4GB/s of memory bandwidth should do quite the opposite. I'll be doing a Socket 939 build next so it should be interesting to see the difference.

I should also note that when swapping the video card for the older "slower" 7900GT, the scores improved dramatically and now outpace the P4 3.4Ghz EE with the exception of 3DMark 2003 (???) - so Havli seems to be correct in his assumption. The other odd result here is the 3850 on the FX-53 in 3DMark 01 where it pulled way ahead for whatever reason.

Aquamark (7900GT: P4EE) - 75,206
Aquamark (HD3850: FX-53) - 69,181
Aquamark (7900GT: FX-53) - 75,806

3DMark 01 (7900GT: P4EE) - 24,064
3DMark 01 (HD3850: FX-53) - 27,163
3DMark 01 (7900GT: FX-53) - 25,432

3DMark 03 (7900GT: P4EE) - 16,083
3DMark 03 (HD3850: FX-53)) - 10,637
3DMark 03 (7900GT: FX-53) - 15,800

3DMark 05 (7900GT: P4EE) - 6,963
3DMark 05 (HD3850: FX-53) - 3,796
3DMark 05 (7900GT: FX-53) - 7,575

3DMark 06 (HD3850: FX-53) - 2,328
3DMark 06 (7900GT: P4EE) - 3,663
3DMark 06 (7900GT: FX-53) - 3,870

nekurahoka wrote:

This might be a lame suggestion, but it could be driver related. Are you using the hotfix drivers for the AMD board? It'll have the PCI Express to AGP bridge thing.

Good thought - yes, I tried the 12.1 hotfix drivers as well as the 14.4 - same results.

Dreamer_of_the_past wrote:

Artex wrote:

Cause it was $25 bux. 😀

Heh, what has happened to good old Artex, I remember days when I had to overpay for some auctions due to bid wars with you =)

Simple my friend... KIDS. 😵

The Athlon 64 does like fast memory timings. I haven't done any extensive testing, but it is mentioned frequently. There are also different steppings. Not sure about the FX, but for the 3200+ there is a newer stepping which lets you set command rate to 1 for a small performance boost.

You're right, thanks to the integrated memory controller the performance is much more consistent between boards. The P4 can be all over the place depending on what board you're using.

I used a X850 XT instead of the 6800 GT for a while and it does better in some tests (Far Cry mostly), but in OpenGL (Doom 3 and Serious Same SE) the 6800 GT is faster.

3DMark results can vary, I wouldn't rely on them too much 😀

Artex wrote:

Simple my friend... KIDS. 😵

Which is why you need to sell some of your stuff that you won't be using especially low end and get this Zalman CNPS9700 NTman it hurts my eyes and years when I see you using stock coolers...