X-bit labs

AMD Athlon 64 3000+ CPU Review: AMD64 to the Masses! (page 3)

Category: CPU

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 12/28/2003 | 08:53 PM ]

Since Athlon 64 3000+ is based on the same dies as Athlon 64 3200+, all its specifications are just the same as those of its elder brother. It is also true for the support of Cool’n’Quiet technology, which we have already told you about in great detail in our AMD Athlon 64 3200+ CPU Review, and for all thermal parameters:

According to AMD’s current plans, Athlon 64 3000+ processors will remain the slowest model in the family for the entire family existence. In other words, AMD is not going to release any processors with lower performance rating within this family. As for the life cycle of the new Athlon 64 3000+ processor, AMD is planning to continue making them for at least Q3’04. This way, these processors will stay in the market for quite a while. However, Athlon 64 3000+ will still be unable to last longer than Socket A processors, which should be manufactured until mid 2005.

Speaking about the future of CPUs based on AMD64 architecture and featuring 512KB L2 cache, we should definitely take into account the company’s official roadmap:

As you can see, there is one more core there aka Newcastle, which distinguishing feature is also smaller 512KB L2 cache. Therefore, many of you could have considered Athlon 64 3000+ to be the first representative of the Newcastle family, but this is not quite correct. Newcastle core will be used for the upcoming Socket939 Athlon 64 processors, which will also feature a dual-channel memory controller besides the 512KB L2 cache. The idea behind Newcastle core has to do with the intention to reduce the production costs for the new AMD64 processors by reducing the die size. The freshly released Athlon 64 3000+ is designed for Socket754 mainboards and features a single-channel memory controller. It is based on Clawhammer core and features the entire L2 cache memory of the Clawhammer, one half of which is disabled. This way it would be completely incorrect to say that the new Athlon 64 3000+ is the first processor on the new core. It looks as if Athlon 64 3000+ were about to stay the only processor with 512KB L2 cache for Socket754, at least for the next half a year.

Testbed and Methods

Our test session should help us figure out how fast the new AMD Athlon 64 3000+ actually is compared with the faster models from the same CPU family as well as with the competing products from Intel.

Our test systems were built with the following components:

• CPUs:
• AMD Athlon 64 FX-51 (2.2GHz);
• AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (2.0GHz);
• AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (2.0GHz);
• AMD Athlon XP 3200+ (2.2GHz);
• Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz (800MHz FSB);
• Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.2GHz (800MHz FSB).
• Mainboards:
• ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe (Socket 478, i875P);
• ASUS SK8V (Socket 940, VIA K8T800);
• ABIT KV8-MAX3 (Socket 754, VIA K8T800);
• ASUS A7N8X 2.0 (Socket A, NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400).
• Memory:
• 1024MB DDR400 SDRAM (Corsair CMX512-3200LLPRO, 2 x 512MB, 2-3-2-6);
• 1024MB Registered DDR400 SDRAM (Mushkin High Performance ECC Registered 2 x 512MB, 2-3-2-6).
• Graphics card: ASUS RADEON 9800XT (Catalyst 3.10).
• Storage subsystem: 2 x Western Digital Raptor WD360GD HDDs in RAID 0 array.

Notes:

• The memory (registered and unbuffered) was working in the same mode in all cases, namely with the timings set to 2-3-2-6;
• We ran all tests in Windows XP SP1 with installed DirectX 9.0b pack.