AMD Athlon FX-57

[FarFarAway]

Well yes the FX-57 San Diego Core has arrived with us.

And yes its pretty damn fine too. But then it is an FX chip, so what did we expect?

The new chip is made on the new Rev E 90nm die, using the SD core. Being an FX chip the multi is unlocked and she's a fast one

Rev E to you and me means 90nm, a new memory controller and 1.4v vcore. Excellent - more OC'ing headroom :bow:

Also this means better power consumption and that this chip runs cooler than the FX-55. Even better

Good news again is:

Athlon 64 FX's due to the process shrink, meaning that the FX-57 should be a more cost effective CPU for AMD when compared to its 130-nanometre siblings

Although I have seen this on sale for £750ish in the UK...god our prices suck ass.

Benchies

These are looking pretty impressive.

The FX-57 seems to ahead of its AMD buddies in almost all areas, apart from Multi-Threaded apps where the X2 does a little better. Its commenly known that the FX chips are very fast, and this one is no exeption.

The memory controller seems to have improved the FX-57's performance over the 55 its definately ahead of all of its AMD rivals in gaming benchies.

See the article for full details of benchies. I'll just show one gaming one:



Farcry is always a challenge and this chip seems to breeze through it

Overclocking

Well Bit-Tech were doing the testing (wish I could afford it ), so I'll let them tell ya:

We managed to overclock our Athlon 64 FX-57 from its default 2.8GHz clock speed to over 3.0GHz without a great deal of problem by a simple multiplier adjustment. The processor was stable at this speed with a slight increase in core voltage from 1.40v to 1.43v in every application that we threw at it, with the exception of the mother of all torture tests: Prime 95.

In order to get the CPU stable in Prime 95 at 3.0GHz, we had to increase the core voltage to 1.54v. We managed to get it stable here for a little over one hour. If you are looking for complete stability, we found that 2955MHz was the highest that we could get Prime 95 to continuously loop overnight. We achieved this clock speed at 211x14.0.

So not too nad really.

They also got a nice PI score:

Not bad considering this is all with the PIB cooling. They were confident it could and would go a lot further

Conclusion

Well Bit-Tech were thinking along the same lines as me when they saw that stupid £750+ price-tag:

When you consider that an Athlon 64 4000+ featuring the same 90nm San Diego core, can be had for around £340, things don't look too rosey for the FX. At best, it is a mere 15% faster in current games, but only when tested as settings so low that nobody would play them at. With the eye-candy turned up, it is essentially no faster in real world gameplay than the the 4000+, which is less than half the price.[/QOUTE]

So yeah the 4000+ is a much better investment Having said that - those who look for the very best and the most expensive will go for an FX chip.

Bit-Tech are also ruminating over AMD going for dual core solutions in the future. I think that this will undoubtedly be the way to go, with the PS3 and XBox leading the way for developers to multi-thread games for the CPU. Maybe a couple of years off (although rumours are that the Next Unreal with use Multi-Threading).

Anyway, in sum:

It is without doubt the fastest gaming processor available today, and there are bound to be people who look to invest in the Athlon 64 FX-57 – you will not be disappointed with your purchase. However, there are some unanswered questions with regard to CPU limitations with the all-new GeForce 7800 GTX that we will attempt to cover in the near future

So those looking to build a Top-Spec gaming rig for the next couple of years will be checking these babies out

Thanks go to Bit-Tech

 

[limqareb]

very cool is ther a multitasking bench?

 

[FarFarAway]

My apologies...link to Article has been added.

BUT: this thing is mostly for gaming, so the X2 will beat it in that

 

[limqareb]

My apologies...link to Article has been added.

BUT: this thing is mostly for gaming, so the X2 will beat it in that

no problem kempy

 

[ionicle_old]

wow! *stares at in amasement* want one!!! *drooles*