Athlon 64 vs Athlon 64 X2

[JJDubs]

OK. I just replaced an AMD Athlon 64 3400+ with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+. My score actually got worse! This is depressing. Anybody got any ideas?

Asus A8V-VM SE
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
1G memory (single channel)

Score: 356.8

Asus A8V-VM SE
AMD Athlon 64 3400+
1G memory (single channel)

Score: 382.5

John

[David (PassMark)]

Are you using the latest version of PerfomanceTest? Old versions didn't always pick up and use multiple cores.

Where was the difference? Was it in for example in the CPU results, or Disk results, or somewhere else?

The single core 3400+ does have a higher clock speed than the Dual core x2 3800+. So it would be expected that the 3400+ outperforms the 3800+ in some single threaded tasks.

[JJDubs]

Here's an image (gif) of my results. The only change made to the system was the processor.

Blue=Old processor
Green=New processor
Red=My work laptop (Intel 1.8Ghz Dual)

http://www.jjdubs.com/images/072507.gif

[JJDubs]

Compared to other systems similar to mine, my CPU results all seem to be 1/2 what they should be.

Bad processor? Or something not set right?

John

[David (PassMark)]

Are you using the latest version of PerfomanceTest? Old versions didn't always pick up and use multiple cores.

Does the O/S detect 2 CPUs in task manager. Maybe you have the Uniprocessor HAL installed as a result of your old CPU. Or maybe you have XP home, which doesn't support multiple CPUs?

[JJDubs]

Hmmmm. I changed the number of CPU Test Processes from 1 to 2 then 4 then 10 and finally 64 and lo and behold my results shot up like a rocket. I went from 369 to 506 which seems to be where similar machines rank.

[JJDubs]

I failed to mention earlier that I also doubled my ram so now I have 2G/Dual Channel mode.