This way, we managed to speed up the CPU by about 17%, which is actually not that bad at all. The performance of the Athlon 64 3200+ CPU overclocked to 2.34GHz will definitely be better than that of Athlon 64 FX-51, which may inspire you to take the risks.

I also have to say that although we are talking about the FSB frequency, this is not quite correct when we refer it to Athlon 64. In fact, Athlon 64 has no front side bus at all. The memory controller is integrated into the CPU and works at the full core frequency. The chipset is connected with the CPU via the Hyper-Transport bus working at 800MHz. As for the parameter initially set to 200MHz, which we increased during CPU overclocking, this frequency is generated by the mainboard and serves as a basis for forming the CPU clock rate.

Conclusion

In this article we have just discussed a new AMD CPU targeted for the mass market aka Athlon 64 3200+. Unlike Athlon 64 FX-51, this processor features a single-channel memory controller supporting unregistered memory modules and doesn’t require expensive 6-layer mainboard PCBs. All this may make Athlon 64 3200+ a more popular solution that Athlon 64 FX-51.

I have to say that the performance of Athlon 64 3200+ is slightly lower than that of Athlon 64 FX-51. Mostly it is not because of the memory controller with lower bandwidth, but because of the lower core clock frequency. Since the memory subsystem latency of Athlon 64 3200+ is considerably lower than that of Athlon 64 FX/Opteron processors, the performance of the two is about the same on average. That is exactly why AMD hasn’t yet released Athlon 64 with 2.2GHz core clock. For the same reason AMD will not roll out faster Athlon 64 models that soon, because Athlon 64 FX family positioned as High-End stuff, will have to be faster than Athlon 64.

Also I have to stress that Athlon 64 3200+ is much faster than Athlon XP 3200+ in most benchmarks, even though both these processors have similar rating. In fact, Athlon 64 3200+ can easily compete with Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz: the tests prove it hundred percent. Of course, in some applications NetBurst architecture appears more suitable, but there definitely is a number of tasks where Athlon 64 3200+ is an indisputable performance leader.

All in all, Athlon 64 3200+ can be considered a good choice for those users who prefer AMD products. The only thing I have to mention though in conclusion is a questionable situation with the Socket754 platforms. Since the CPUs with a dual-channel memory controller cannot be used in this socket, I expect all Socket754 CPUs to be soon moved into the Budget segment. Therefore, you should consider Socket754 as a solution allowing further upgrade only if you realize that this system will not be able to set any performance records later on.