San diego 4000 CPU

Flexo · Post by **Flexo** » Thu Jul 14, 2005 3:15 pm

Hi. Does anyone know where I can find some online reviews of the Athlon 4000 San Diego (939) CPU? Its a real challenge trying to find anything on the San Diego revision. I've already searched this forum.

Need some info on its performance compared to the 3700 San Diego version to work out if its worth the extra expense. Plus does anyone know the power consumption of both these CPU's at idle and full load?

Thanks

Planned PC build:

Antec p-180, Athlon 4000 san diego + XP-120(Nexus 120mm), Asus A8N-E , Sapphire x800xl ultimate, s-12 430w PSU, OCZ 1GB (2 x 512MB) PC3200 REV 2, Samsung SP120, T-balancer fan controller

IonYz · Post by **IonYz** » Thu Jul 14, 2005 10:31 pm

Don't have much to add but I'm also in this dilemma. I remember seeing a gaming benchmark showing very little increase in frames per second versus all AMD processors. Even the FX chips gave you 5 fps more each on up.

Then again I'm building a computer primarily for gaming so I'm not concerned with any other performance area.

Mats · Post by **Mats** » Fri Jul 15, 2005 1:46 am

The 3800+ draws 30.8 W when running Prime 95, I think that's very close to the 4000+.

I don't care much about cache, seems to make little difference in real world performance.
I don't care about higher clocked A64's either, anything above 2200 MHz is a waste of money right now (for me).
As you can see here, the small performance gain from speed and cache won't justify the high prices.
The cheaper ones can easily overclock to 2400 MHz or more.

Maybe you should have a look at a X2 3800+ when they show up?

Some links:
PC Stats
AmdBoard
AmdZone

Flexo · Post by **Flexo** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 11:17 am

Thanks for the responses IonYz and Mats.

I've decided to go along with the Athlon64 3700+ San Diego. Seems to me the extra performance of the 4000+ doesn't justify the £120 extra cost. Strange though, how theres so few reviews of the 3700+ when it seems to be a quite popular high perfomance CPU at a reasonable cost.

Cheers!

jamesm · Post by **jamesm** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 12:29 pm

^ good choice

Mar. · Post by **Mar.** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 6:44 pm

Same core as the FX, but 600MHz slower... It would be nice if you could get one unlocked somehow.

Sanderman · Post by **Sanderman** » Wed Jul 27, 2005 11:19 am

One thought. AMD has leaked info on a 4200+ San Diego single core that is supposed to be coming soon (August?, No one really seems to know) that's clocked at 2600 with 1 MB cache. That might be a useful upgrade over the 3700+ and might be worth waiting for. I say this as a happy 3700+ owner (it's a great chip, but hey.....)

Given all that you will love the 3700+ if you go that way. The thing is fast and cool running - a big improvement over my old 3000+ Barton.

Mar. · Post by **Mar.** » Wed Jul 27, 2005 6:25 pm

Sanderman wrote:One thought. AMD has leaked info on a 4200+ San Diego single core that is supposed to be coming soon (August?, No one really seems to know) that's clocked at 2600 with 1 MB cache. That might be a useful upgrade over the 3700+ and might be worth waiting for. I say this as a happy 3700+ owner (it's a great chip, but hey.....)

Given all that you will love the 3700+ if you go that way. The thing is fast and cool running - a big improvement over my old 3000+ Barton.

How would that be any different from the FX55?

Sanderman · Post by **Sanderman** » Wed Jul 27, 2005 7:13 pm

Likely to be cheaper than the FX line.

IonYz · Post by **IonYz** » Wed Jul 27, 2005 9:30 pm

Yeah, I'm seeing less and less benefit to FX with the 3700+, 4000+, etc. At least for gaming. Few more FPS?

Freelancer77 · Post by **Freelancer77** » Wed Jul 27, 2005 9:51 pm

IonYz wrote:Yeah, I'm seeing less and less benefit to FX with the 3700+, 4000+, etc. At least for gaming. Few more FPS?

Indeed. My 3700 San Diego matches or beats the FX-51 in all benchmarks for a lower price, greater efficiency and much less heat to dissipate.

As for the 4000 San Diego, I can't really recommend it, as the price increase ($150 more at Zipzoomfly) is so much more than the performance gain. Go the extra half-Benjamin and get an x2 4200 if you crave speed that much.

Many retailers aren't even stocking the FX-51 now, thanks to the San Diego cores. And with the FX-53 priced near what an x2 4600 runs, I think AMD has nixed one of it's own lines before its time.

Without a doubt the price/value break is currently the 3700 San Diego. Doesn't seem to have a weakness either.

frostedflakes · Post by **frostedflakes** » Wed Jul 27, 2005 10:25 pm

FX series processors have all multis unlocked, whereas the Athlon64s are only have the lower multis unlocked. Other than that, there's no difference between the FX and Athlon64 series.

IonYz · Post by **IonYz** » Thu Jul 28, 2005 8:39 am

Cool. Yeah I'll probably end up going with a 3700. Reviews I read though said a 7800GTX SLI setup begins to bottleneck at the processor but I'm not sure by how much and they were using some FX, probably the plus-grand one.

Multis huh. Ok. I haven't built a PC in over 7 years, and have been a Mac user in that time so I don't know what a multi is. But the heat properties of the 3700+ are great and offer a bit of overclocking potential to boot.

falcon26 · Post by **falcon26** » Tue Aug 02, 2005 6:19 pm

I had to give my two cents here....I got both a AMD 3700 SD and a Amd 4000 SD, to compare the two. The price difference was about $200. Well I ran 3dmark 05 and pcmark 05, as well as 3dmark 03. The 4000+ beat the 3700 by like 200 points, big deal. Not only that the 4000+ was about 10C hotter running idle than the 3700. I overclocked my 3700, using stock voltages to exactly 4000+ speeds and it runs perfectly stable, and it even runs cooler idle. So I basicly got a AMD4000 for a 3700 price tag. not bad and I didn't even know how to overclock until I asked a few people. I'm so glad I went with the 3700+ it overclocks to the 4000+ speeds so easily its not even funny. So take the 3700 and save yourself about $200.

falcon26