Since we have already discussed in detail all the architectural peculiarities of AMD Athlon 64 in our article called AMD Athlon 64 FX-51 vs. Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.2GHz: Clash of Strong Wills I would like just to briefly remind you of the basic things in a table below. The table you see contains specifications for Athlon 64 3200+ compared with those for Athlon 64 FX-51 and Athlon XP 3200+:

In fact, Athlon 64 differs from its elder brother, Athlon 64 FX, only by the memory controller (and the packaging form-factor, of course). Although despite that, both CPUs are designed from one and the same silicon die. The memory controller of Athlon 64 is a single-channel one, and this is its weak point and at the same time an advantage compared with the Athlon 64 FX. The bad thing about a single-channel memory controller in Athlon 64 is evident: it is the lower theoretical memory bus bandwidth. Keeping in mind that Athlon 64 can work with DDR400 memory, the maximum bandwidth of the memory controller integrated into the CPU equals 3.2GB/s. It is twice as little as this parameter value by Athlon 64 FX. The advantage of the single-channel memory controller of Athlon 64 implies that unlike the controller of Athlon 64 FX, this one supports regular non-registered memory modules. These memory modules are certainly cheaper than the Registered ones, feature more aggressive timing settings and work faster than the Registered ones even if the timing settings are the same in both cases. So, if we put it into more formal words, despite the lower bandwidth provided by the Athlon 64 memory controller, the memory subsystem using it boasts lower latencies, which we will illustrate with actual examples later in this article.

Athlon 64 3200+ processors selling in stores right now are shipped in a very original package:

Inside this plastic box you can find a CPU, of course, a cooler, and cooler retention mechanism, an installation guide and a sticker with the CPU logo.