Anand Reviews Athlon 64 FX-53

trickofperspective writes "Anandtech has a review of AMD's latest processor, the Athlon 64 FX-53. Long story short -- the FX-53 is a "very solid processor," but you'd be better off waiting a couple months for Socket 939."

Virus protection on the chip?

[platypussrex]

The AMD website says the chip has virus protection against MSBlaster, Slammer, etc. Does anyone besides me think this is a bad idea? Not that virus protection is bad per se, but that all these "protections" built into the chip are harbingers of even more "protections" to come. I'll let your imaginations fill in the rest.

Re:Anandtech

[abscondment]

You can always get a better piece of technology by waiting just a little longer--the only real reason to wait then is if the standard is going to change. If you buy this current chip, it'll be the best you can get right now. When they change to socket 939, however, you'll be stuck with what you've got--no upgrade for you!

It's always best to buy right when the standard changes, so that you have the ability to upgrade later if you want to. If you buy right before the change, you guarantee having to purchase a whole bunch of new stuff for the next upgrade.

Whatever

[Anonymous Coward]

The two limiting factors in a PC these days (not taht home user should care) are the memory size, and the system bus speed.

Most people won't feel the limits in processor speed.

Re:Anandtech

[yppiz]

A decent motherboard costs $100 or less. Is there anything else I would have to replace, besides the CPU, if I wanted to upgrade from the current chipset?

If not, I don't see why I would want to wait for the next chipset.

--Pat / [e-mail]

Re:Virus protection on the chip?

[lederhosen]

Think it is allready in OpenBSD

Re:Anandtech

[MindStalker]

At $733 for the processor and 200-300 dollors for the motherboard, I really don't think the cost of upgrading the motherboard should really be what you are thinking about, afterall I really wouldn't want to put my $733 processor out of commission, Id rather keep it running as a backup computer or doing some other job. Its not exactly something you throw out and replace.

Wait a couple of months?

[fullofangst]

I don't get it. Why bother saying "you'd be best off waiting" for the next chip ? The Athlon FX-53 is a flagship chip. It's the currently fastest chip they do. If you want the highest performance, you would obviously buy it now. If you wait a couple of months then you don't want the highest performance. This is what this chip is for, here and now - the fastest available performance. Yes there will be a faster one in a few months but that just continues ad infinitum. If you lived by the rule of waiting for something faster to come out, you'd die of old age before you actually purchased the damn thing.

Re:Wait a couple of months?

[Phosphor3k]

What he is saying, is that the current socket form factor will be discontinued in a few months. If you want to ensure any sort of future compatibility as far as upgrades are concerned, bite your lip and wait a few months for the new socket.

Re:Addendum

[bhtooefr]

Nice FX-51 reviews, but we want FX-53 reviews.

Missing one important graph:

[scrytch]

Price. The price difference between some of these chips they're benchmarking puts them in different leagues. The FX-53 is NOT cheap compared to the 3200, but the P4EE makes them both look like chump change. This review looked like the output of a report generator (written by Macromedia I imagine), not a review.

Re:Wait a couple of months?

[juhaz]

Because the FX-5x line of chips is using a socket type that is doomed in few months. So after you want the fastest ship after few months you end up buying a new motherboard as well. The new socket on the other hand is going to be in use for some time.

Sure, if you've got money buy whole machine every time you want to update the processor (or if you already have a board that's compatible with FX) go for it.

The cycle does continue to ad infinitum, but this is more of a case of deciding at which point to enter the cycle, now it's nearing its end and beginning of another.

Re:Anandtech

[Junks Jerzey]

Personally I would wait a year, so they are cheaper. Certainly socket 939 is a "must", but I always take the view that where computers are concerned, if you wait till the last possible moment before you really must have something, you save a lot of money.

And if you had done that for the 3GHz P4, then you'd be buying one right about now, when the prices have finally dropped to mainstream prices. But then you'd see some fancy new processor on the horizon, like the latest Athlon 64, and decide to wait for that one to become cheaper...

Re:Explaining the difference...

[Oliver Wendell Jones]

My guess is something is wrong somewhere.

I'm running an AMD XP 2500+ at stock speeds and voltages with the OEM heatsink and some cheap, white thermal compound and my system sits as 119F (48C) and under heavy load (say many hours of hectic UT2K4) it gets as high as 130F (54C). That's the reading I get on the front of my case from a thermal probe touching the side of the raised center part of the top of the chip.

It's also very quiet, even with three case fans in it.

Short version: High price for little return

[Junks Jerzey]

I know, I know, these silly review sites love to have these "longer bar is better" graphics, but let's look at this rationally.

Take the SysMark 2004 benchmark. The commodity priced Northwood 3GHz P4 clocks in at 176. This new Athlon gets a 199. Ooooh, longer bar! But what does it really mean? I means that the Athlon is ELEVEN PERCENT FASTER than the processor that's one notch above the absolute bottom end you can get in a Dell PC (3GHz, the bottom end is 2.8GHz). And the price is over THREE TIMES HIGHER. Is this worth it? Does it make sense?

The answer is no, *unless* you are simply looking at the 64-bit capabilities. If that's the case, then great. Otherwise I don't see why anyone would care about these benchmarks.

Re:Flash for Graphs?!?

[beeblebrox87]

The trouble is, this requires that Flash be available for you platform. Many architectures, operating systems, and browsers are not supported by Flash at all. Until a decent, reliable, open-source (i.e. easily recompileable) flash player is available, I will continue to avoid flash-using sites like the plague.

Regarding ad revenue: why can't they just display GIF or JPEG ads? GIF ads can even be animated. What features do the advertisers need that can't be provided by a platform-independent GIF animations?

Re:Flash for Graphs?!?

[Srin Tuar]

>Therefore Anandtech makes sure the information of
>value is also in flash, to ensure that they are
>compensated for your viewing of their material.
>So please, when you find that cluestick - make sure
>to give yourself a good whack with it.

That justification can be (and often is) used for making everything suck.

Pay cable channels with more ads than show (not even counting content-embedded ads), DVDs with non-skippable "previews", DRM, Trusted computing, Windows in general, poorly documented proprietary media formats, nagware, popup ads, websites with hostile flash graphics, etc etc...

When is someone going to come up with a way to make money by making thing better? Where is the free capital market when you need it- or does it just not apply to bit and bytes at all?

The more I see, the more I'm beginning to think copyright was a bad idea from the start...

Re:Flash for Graphs?!?

[startled]

I've been using click to view since I first heard about it a few months or so ago. It's just awesome-- there's no more useful extension out there for casual web browsing. You have no excuse not to run it.