Test Systems

AM2 Test System (DDR-2)

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ AM2 (2.0GHz)

Memory: 2x 1GB DDR2-1000 Corsair

Motherboard: MSI K9N Platinum

Hard Disk: Seagate 7200.9 500GB SATA

Graphics Card: nVidia GeForce 7800GT

Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2

Drivers: nVidia Platform Driver 9.16, nVidia ForceWare 91.31 and DX9c

Socket 939 Test System (DDR)

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Socket 939 (at 2.0GHz)

Memory: 2x 1GB DDR-533 Corsair

Motherboard: ABIT A8N 32X

Hard Disk: Seagate 7200.9 500GB SATA

Graphics Card: nVidia GeForce 7800GT

Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2

Drivers: nVidia Platform Driver 9.16, nVidia ForceWare 91.31 and DX9c

In this article we will compare Socket 939 vs. Socket AM2. While we do have differently clocked processors, we clocked the 4200+ Socket 939 CPU back to 2GHz using multiplier reduction, giving us a 3800+ clock speed on the 939 platform.

We also overclocked the AM2 CPU to its max of 267MHz x10 giving us 2.67GHz CPU - hence making it a little quicker than a more expensive 5000+ processor. This was also replicated on the Socket 939 platform to determine what, if any, overclocking gives to the AM2 socket platform in terms of added performance.

So will we see any performance difference with AMD moving from DDR to DDR-2 - let's continue on and find out!

SiSoft Sandra

Version and / or Patch Used: 2007

Developer Homepage: http://www.sisoftware.co.uk

Product Homepage: http://sisoftware.jaggedonline.com/index.php?location=home&a=TTA&lang=en

Buy It Here

SiSoft Sandra (System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is a synthetic Windows benchmark that features different tests used to evaluate different PC subsystems.

CPU tests show no difference between the two architectures. Memory bandwidth goes up slightly with the AM2 due to a more robust amount of memory bandwidth supplied by DDR-2.