The Latest AMD Thunderbird

Yet another addition to the ongoing processor wars, the latest Thunderbird from AMD has a total of 37 million transistors. It comes in two FSB configurations, 100 and 133 MHz DDR, to offer older users an upgrade path. However, for new users, we recommend buying the architecturally superior higher FSB processor, since they cost only a little more . This is also the version that we tested.

We usually test our systems with 128 MB RAM, but this time we decided to see the improvement with 256 MB memory. Hence, all tests were repeated on both configurations. You would notice from our table of results that a high-end system like this benefits a great deal from some extra memory. Also, we tested a 1.7 GHz P4 and 1.33 GHz Thunderbird for comparison. All systems had a GeForce2 Ultra and an IBM Deskstar 7200 rpm hard drive. In the case of Thunderbirds we used DDR-RAM, and RDRAM with the P4 system.

We tested the Thunderbird in three areas–graphics, gaming, and productivity applications. For the graphics capabilities, we used the 3Dmark 2001 benchmark. Here, it scored slightly higher than the P 4, a mere 4 percent. For gaming, we used Quake III Arena, where it’s a well-known anomaly that the P4 runs the game exceptionally well. The P4 was able to pump out 227 fps at 640x480x16 resolution, as against the 194 fps of the Thunderbird. At the highest resolution we used, 1280x1024x32, the Thunderbird scored over the P4, giving 84.2 against 71.8 fps. This might be because frame rates at lower resolutions are generally governed by the processor, whereas the system starts getting choked for bandwidth at high resolutions. So the higher frame rate figure of the Thunderbird at high resolutions might be due to the DDR SDRAM it uses, as against RDRAM used in P4s. Coming to productivity applications, the Athlon scores almost 12 percent higher than the 1.7 GHz P4 in Business Winstone 2001, and 11 percent higher in Content Creation Winstone 2001. While this difference could be termed significant, PCs based on such high-end processors aren’t specifically bought for running productivity applications. So, what market are these processors catering to?

Being such a powerful processor, the Thunderbird 1.4 GHz would be suitable in research institutes or for applications such as 3D rendering and CAD/CAM designing. But, of course, if you have the money and need to build the ultimate gaming machine, then this could be a good choice.

Anuj Jain for PCQ Labs