Now this is interesting. This guy(a regular person) has actually used an Athlon 64(non-FX) system. From what he says, he isn't about to ditch his P4 for a A64(read his last post on page 3). He actually said that it is no faster than 2.53ghz P4 systems that he has built and used.
http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=103644&st=0That score he got with the A64 and Radeon 9800 is pretty shitty considering I can get a score that is only 1,000 marks lower on a Ti4200 in this box(yeah, I got bored and stuck one in here to test for shits and giggles). So what gives? Did AMD give hardware reviewers a special engineering sample of thier chip that happens to perform better than the chips that they actually ship for resell? Do the motherboards that are supplied to reviewers have special BIOS hacks that make the systems faster for testers? Even on AMD's site at the bottom of the performance chart it says the motherboard was using a BIOS that is not available to customers.
This is the 3DMark score that I got when I stuck a Ti4200 in my rig(the card, memory and buses are not overclcoked...only the CPU is overclocked).
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=6950466 A GeForce FX 5900 Ultra and Radeon 9800 Pro breaks 19000+ easily on my rig(yes I have tested them as well). As amatter of fact, they break at least 17500 on most peoples' P4c rigs.
All in all, I'm not impressed with the Athlon 64 at all. I think that it may actually turn out to be a flop if AMD doesn't lower the prices.
[ September 28, 2003: Message edited by: Viper ]