AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ Preview

System Setup

ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe Motherboard (NVIDIA NForce 4 SLI chipset); XFX GeForce 6800GT PCI-Express (operating at its default speeds of 350/1000MHz); 2x 512MB Corsair TwinX1024-3200XL @ 400MHz, 2.0-2-2-10 1T; Western Digital Caviar WD2000, 200GB SATA Hard Disk Drive; LG 40x DVD-ROM drive; OCZ PowerStream 520W PSU; Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2; NVIDIA NForce 4 Standalone platform drivers version 6.53; NVIDIA ForceWare 71.89 WHQL.

Processors

• AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+
  
• AMD Athlon 64 FX-55
  
• AMD Athlon 64 4000+

Game Performance

• Doom 3: demo1.dem; 640x480 Low Quality; 1600x1200 0xAA 8xAF High Quality.
  
• FarCry v1.31: Fort demo; 800x600 Low Quality; 1280x1024 4xAA 8xAF Maximum Quality.
  
• Unreal Tournament 2004: custom Ons-Dria demo; 800x600 Low Quality; 1600x1200 Maximum Quality.

General Performance

• DVD Encoding: DVD Shrink; default settings, 50.0% shrink of The Naked Gun DVD.
  
• MP3 Encoding: RazorLAME v3.97; encode Moby - Play album from .WAV to 192kbps .MP3.
  
• File Compression: WinRAR; compress UT2004 root directory.
  
• Scientific Calculation: SuperPI 2M calculation.
  
• Memory Bandwidth: SiSoft Sandra Lite 2005; Unbuffered Memory benchmark

Multi-Tasking Performance

• Multi-Tasking 1 - Gaming while Anti-Virus is scanning: FarCry v1.31 & AVG Anti-Virus 7.0 Professional Edition; record frame rate in FarCry at 1280x1024 4xAA 8xAF while commencing a full system scan with AVG Anti-Virus.
  
• Multi-Tasking 2 - Gaming while encoding a DVD: FarCry v1.31 & DVD Shrink; record frame rate in FarCry at 1280x1024 4xAA 8xAF while encoding a DVD using DVD Shrink.
  
• Multi-Tasking 3 - Encoding a DVD while compressing a folder and during high-resolution video playback: DVD Shrink, WinRAR & Windows Media Player 10; record DVD encoding time while compressing UT2004 root directory and during playback of Episode 1 of 24 season 4 encoded in High-Resolution DivX format (700MB for 45 minutes of footage).
  
• Multi-Tasking 4 - Encoding an CD album from .WAV to .MP3 while during high-resolution video playback: RazorLAME v3.97 & Windows Media Player 10; record 192kbps MP3 encoding time during playback of Episode 1 of 24 season 4 encoded in High-Resolution DivX format (700MB for 45 minutes of footage).

Along with a fairly regular set of CPU benchmarks, we have included a selection of real-world multi-task benchmarks to hopefully display the differences between single core and dual core Athlon 64 processors.