AMD Athlon 64 3200+ CPU

Like an aging athlete contemplating a comeback, when Geeks offered to provide me with a AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (Socket 939 Venice core) for site review I will admit to being a little apprehensive. After all, it had been an eternity (nearly two years) since my last big upgrade. With all the new technology (die shrinks, dual channel memory, PCI-E video cards) to name a few would it take a long time to get back up to speed? Surprisingly the answer was no! Unlike the old days most of the new technology offered a seamless transition. Well, the PCI-E motherboard video card retention mechanism is completely bone-headed, but more on that another time. Today we are talking about a new CPU.

Since these days the Athlon 64 3200+ isn't a just released CPU and AMD seems to have once again forgotten to send me my twenty page PR folder with the pretty graphs and a listing of all the new architectural innovations most sites get , I figured I would focus this review on the areas that I thought most of the readers--as well as myself--would be interested in: price, performance, overclocking, and temperatures.

     
The particular CPU we are reviewing here is an OEM tray model. Unlike a retail boxed processor the OEM version doesn't include a HSF. Personally this isn't an issue with me since I do too much overclocking and overvolting to rely on a stock HSF for cooling under those conditions. As to which is a better choice, in particular for overclocking, well, tons of ink have been spilled in this debate with no clear winner--all while Intel and AMD, two companies that surely know the answer to this question, have remained silent. My own personal experience is a mixed one. I have had both retail boxed and OEM tray processors that were both good and bad overclockers. To solve this issue once and for all someone needs to round up a dozen retail and OEM tray CPU of the same speed and average the overclocking results of one group, and compare them to the other. Naturally this would require a site with lots more resources at their disposal than this one to accomplish that task. Maybe one of the big three will pick up the task.

Curious of the details of the CPU you just bought or are looking to buy? Look no further than Ocinside and their great product ID guide.


Using a Thermalright XP-120 at stock speeds, and voltage my Socket 939 Athlon 64 3200+ runs about 37 C under full load. This was about 5 to 7 C cooler than my Socket 754 Athlon 64 3200+ runs, the Socket 754 CPU, however, runs at a stock speed of 2.2GHZ vs. 2.0GHZ for the Socket 939. Initially, I thought this difference in frequency between the two CPUs might account for the temperature difference. This turned out to not be the case, because when overvolted and overclocked at 2.5GHZ the Socket 939 CPU still ran cooler than the Socket 754 CPU had ran at 2.35GHZ.

System was stable at 2.55GHZ (10X255) no freezes, crashes, or reboots. Since whenever possible I like nice round numbers for comparison purposes, all overclocked testing was done at 2.5GHZ (10X250) HT divider 4, BIOS memory 333 setting resulting in 208MHZ or DDR 416 if you prefer, timings 2.5 3-3-6 1T. This included benchmark testing for this article, some additional light gaming, as well as a whole slew of general use applications. In addition SuperPi was run out to 32M with no errors or crashes. Due to review time constraints and owing that this is my main rig which I update the site from, there were no marathon torture sessions of Prime95 logged but with all the above info I am still confident of system stability at this speed.

          
Overclocking results were very good: 2.5GHZ with decent air-cooling should be within the reach of most users buying this CPU, placing this Athlon 64 3200+ ahead of a stock clocked Athlon 64 4000+ which costs twice as much. If you aren't into overclocking though I would consider going with a faster model maybe a Athlon 64 3500+.

Test System Specs:

AMD A64 3200+ O/C 2.5GHZ (250X10) 1.475v
ASUS A8N-E Motherboard
1024MB Kingston Hyper-X PC4000
Western Digital 160 GB SATA HDD
BenQ DW1620 DVDR
XFX GeForce 6800 GS (485, 1.1)
Thermalright XP-120 HSF Enenermax 460W PS
WIN XP Home - SP2
DirectX 9
Det 81.85

Benchmarks:

There will probably never be a widespread consensus what programs belong here. Listed below is my take. If you have feedback on this list, drop me a line. My e-mail address is at the end of this review. As for the reason for the absence of any office benchmarks in the testing I just don't see that they are relevant anymore. For instance, even though I use Open Office several times a week on different computers, I can't tell any difference in usability and responsiveness between this machine and the wife's old AMD XP 2700+.

SiSoft Sandra Professional 2005.SR2a
CPU Arithmetic Benchmark
CPU Multi-Media Benchmark
Memory Bandwidth Benchmark
Futuremark PCMark04
SuperPi 1M calculation
Futuremark 3DMark2001SE Build 330
Doom 3 1.0 Timedemo demo1 (run at 640x480 LQ and 1280x1024 HQ)


These SiSoft Sandra Professional 2005.SR2a scores seem a bit lower than those I have seen on other sites. Maybe it is because most of the other results I saw were for SiSoft Sandra 2004? Anyway, I rechecked the results and they are correct.


About the results I had expected here. As noted elsewhere in this review Super Pi is not only a good CPU benchmark but it is a fine overclock stability test if your rig can complete the 32M test without locking up you usually have a stable overclock.


I don't know why this system benchmark is not more widely used. I thought about moving over to PCMark2005 but I figured I would hold off as I knew what to expect here with this version. Very nice increase, here due to overclocking.


I guess some commentary is due here since this is not a normal CPU benchmark you probably see very often, but it also usually the first one I run when I get a new CPU. How many minutes does it take to complete a WU under SETI 2? Since I like to inject a little humor into my reviews I will let you guys have a good belly laugh at my expense. You see, why the SETI WU times are so important to me is we run a tiny little SETI team here, That I am currently the only active participant in. You heard that right: we have an actual team of ONE. Go me! LOL! Sigh. If I only had a nice X2 dual core CPU I could really pump out the team WU. Next year, maybe.


Even though this test is five years old it is a decent speed test as well as a stability test. It is also the only 3DMark of them all that I run. I haven't heard as many bad things about the newest 3DMark as usual and since they decided to put back a CPU element in the test, I might even give it a try. Who knows? Stranger things have happened. Moving on.


I must say that the low SiSoft Sandra scores above didn't seem to overly affect the results here, which seems pretty much what I was expecting. I picked up Doom 3 in the bargain bin for under 20 usd to use as a benchmark for this review. Despite all the negative reviews I read about it I am actually enjoying playing the game too.

Conclusion:

So do I think that the Athlon 64 3200+ (Socket 939 Venice core) is a good buy? Well, it depends on what is in your rig at the moment. For instance, if you already have a Socket 939 system and an Athlon 64 2800+, or Athlon 64 3000+ I would say no; barring some extreme overclocking the speed increase is likely to be minimal. On the other hand, if you are still running a Socket 754--or worse yet--Socket 462 system, and are looking to upgrade, the time is perfect to do so. The Socket 939 is a mature platform that has fallen in price to a mainstream level, and as we go to press rumor is that the upcoming Socket M2 is going to be delayed somewhat.

Pros:

Good performance

Runs cool

Overclocks well

Low price

Cons:

Stock S939 A64 3200+ not any faster than S754 A64 3200+

I would like to thank Geeks for providing us with the OEM AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Processor. Help support the sites who help support us. This item can be purchased from Geeks for 160 usd and is in stock and ready to ship.

Added: February 10th 2006
Reviewer: Jim Adkins
Score:
Hits: 22841
Language: english