This started as a simple question in the forum, what
CPU is better? The 3200+ Clawhammer or the 3200+ Newcastle? Since I have one of each flavor on hand I figured I'd do a little testing to answer that question.
The Newcastle I have is a true 3200+ but the Clawhammer I have is a preproduction model that was called the 3100+. The 3100+ never made it to retail, but it has the same core as the 3200+ Clawhammer and has the 1024KB of cache on board. The only difference is that it is clocked at 1800MHz instead of 2000MHz. I would have liked to up the timing to run it at 2000MHz, but unfortunately that
CPU is locked up tighter than Tekzoid's liquor cabinet so for testing I did the next best thing, I clocked down my Newcastle from 2200MHz to 2000MHz. That keeps the playing field exactly the same.
The gear I used for testing is of course the two
CPU's, an Asus K8VSE Deluxe
mobo, a GB of Ultra Products PC4000
RAM, and an old Ti-4200 Gainward Golden Sample vid card. I already had my mind made up on which
CPU is the better buy before testing, but ya'll make up your own mind based upon my tests. Here they are:
First off, a little Sandra action.
Sandra
CPU
ALU
Clawhammer: 7785
Newcastle: 8653
Winner: Newcastle by 10%
FPU
Clawhammer: 2843
Newcastle: 3160
Winner: Newcastle by 10%
Sandra MM
Integer
Clawhammer: 17156
Newcastle: 19067
Winner: Newcastle by 10%
Floating Point
Clawhammer: 18444
Newcastle: 20502
Winner: Newcastle by 10%
Now for a little Crystalmark testing.
ALU
Clawhammer: 6830
Newcastle: 7565
Winner: Newcastle by 10%
FPU
Clawhammer: 8338
Newcastle: 9267
Winner: Newcastle by 10%
PCMark04 is always a good synthetic test for hardware. Here, I did the
CPU test only.
PCMark04
CPU
Clawhammer: 3362
Newcastle: 3654
Winner: Newcastle by 8%
Prime95 is a little more real world when testing
CPU speed.
Prime95 2048k FFT ms
Clawhammer: 159.995
Newcastle: 146.858
Winner: Newcastle by 8%
On to some gaming benchmarks where the cache on the Clawhammer
CPU should make a difference.
AquaMark3
Clawhammer: 15993
Newcastle: 16013
Winner: Newcastle by less than 1%
Halo
Clawhammer: 34.73
Newcastle: 35.19
Winner: Newcastle by 1%
CodeCreatures
Clawhammer: 27.3
Newcastle: 27.8
Winner: Newcastle by 2%
Unreal Tournament 2004
BR Colossus
Clawhammer: 89.96
Newcastle: 89.04
Winner: Clawhammer by 1%
DM Rankin
Clawhammer: 75.56
Newcastle: 75.74
Winner: Newcastle by less than 1%
As you see, the Newcastle
CPU won every benchmark except one. Granted, it was close for all of them, but it still won. In order to give you some more comparisons, I clocked the Newcastle down to 1800MHz so it would match the Clawhammer speed and benched it again. You can compare the results to those above:
Sandra
CPU ALU: 7786
Sandra
CPU FPU: 2843
Sandra MM Integer: 17157
Sandra MM Floating Point: 18448
Crystalmark ALU: 6832
Crystalmark FPU: 8356
PCMark04: 3328
Prime95: 160.832
AquaMark3: 15988
Halo: 34.88
Codecreatures: 27.2
UT2K4 BR Colossus: 87.21
UT2K4 DM Rankin: 74.24
As you see, when I match the clock speeds the CPUs are almost the same in performance. What most people don't realize is that the core isn't the same on each, the Newcastle has some internal enhancements that the Clawhammer doesn't. That's why even at the same clock speed and giving a 512MB cache advantage to the Clawhammer, the Newcastle can still hang with it.
Since both processors are the same price, in my opinion there is no reason not to go with the Newcastle
CPU. Some folks say that the Clawhammer overclocks better, but I beg to differ. The X10 timing of the Clawhammer is not nearly as
FSB friendly as the X11 timing of the Newcastle. And if you still don't think it overclocks, check out the attached thumbnail. That is on an open air bench system running average air cooling on a board that is known not to
OC. If I had higher timings available I would have easily broke 2600.
So, ya'll got my tests and opinion. Which is the better one to buy? That decision is still up to you.