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AMD Athlon 64 3000+ CPU Review: AMD64to the Masses!

We tested a new AMD processor based on AMD64 architecture and targeted for the mainstream market. Themajor advantage of this processor is the price, which is just slightly above $200, while the performance is verynice. Let’s find out if this new attractive offer from AMD can compete successfully with the rivalry products.

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

12/28/2003 | 08:53 PM

On the threshold of the New Year AMD prepared a nice unexpected surprise for its fans. They threw into themass market the quietly announced Athlon 64 3000+ processors costing a little over $200. This way AMD madea very important move, which may become a starting point for the mass invasion of CPUs on AMD64architecture into the desktop PCs.

The arrival of low-cost Athlon 64 processor models will help AMD 64bit processor family to become really popular, which is a very important aspect of the cut-throat competition with Intel, which is actively preparing for the launch of the new Prescott based CPU family. Let’s try to analyze the situation in order to find out what the

advantages of the new AMD offer are for us, the users, and what benefits the new AMD Athlon 64 3000+ processor will bring us.

Closer Look: AMD Athlon 64 3000+

labs - Print version http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/print/athlon64-

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While everybody was waiting for the new Athlon 64 3000+ processor, they were absolutely sure that it willdiffer from the top Athlon64 3200+ model only by the core clock frequency. This confidence was based on thefact that Desktop Replacement (DTR) AMD Athlon 64 3000+ processor for the mobile solutions available sincethe end of September 2003 works at 1.8GHz core frequency and has no other differences from the DTR Athlon64 3200+. However, AMD decided to do a completely different thing this time: the new Athlon 64 3000+ worksat the same 2GHz clock frequency as the elder Athlon 64 3200+ model. The difference between these twosolutions is the size of L2 cache memory. L2 cache of the new Athlon 64 3000+ is cut down to 512KB

compared with the 1MB L2 cache of Athlon 64 3200+ CPU.

You can check this with the help of any diagnostics utility revealing the processor specifications:


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As you can see, the differences in the specs of Athlon 64 3200+ and Athlon 64 3000+ are minimal. Besides thesmaller L2 cache, the new processor is just the same as the 3200+ model announced on September 23, 2003.Even the core stepping is the same. All this means that Athlon 64 3000+ is based on the same semiconductor die

as the top Athlon 64 processor models. AMD simply disables half of the L2 cache memory in Athlon 64 3000+ just like they did in Athlon XP CPUs based on Thorton core.

As a result, you can come across three really different AMD Athlon 64 processor models in the today’s CPUmarket (I mean three models, which differ by more parameters than just the core clock frequency):

Athlon 64 FX-51 Athlon 64 3200+ Athlon 64 3000+

Packaging Socket 940 Socket 754 Socket 754

Frequency 2.2GHz 2.0GHz 2.0GHz

Manufacturing

technology0.13micron, SOI 0.13micron, SOI 0.13micron, SOI

Number of transistors 105.9 mln 105.9 mln 105.9 mln

Die size 193 sq.mm 193 sq.mm 193 sq.mm

Nominal Vcore 1.5V 1.5V 1.5V

Integrated memory

controllerDual-channel, 128-bit Single-channel, 64-bit Single-channel, 64-bit

Supported memory

types

Registered DDR400/ DDR333/DDR266 SDRAM

DDR400/ DDR333/DDR266 SDRAM

DDR400/ DDR333/DDR266 SDRAM

ECC support + + +


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L1 cache

128KB (64KB for instructions and

64KB for data)

128KB (64KB for instructions

and 64KB for data)

128KB (64KB for instructions

and 64KB for data)

L2 cache 1024KB (exclusive) 1024KB (exclusive) 512KB (exclusive)

Cool’n’Quiet

technology- + +

SIMD instructions

support

SSE2/SSE/3DNow! SSE2/SSE/3DNow! SSE2/SSE/3DNow!

AMD64 technology

support+ + +

Athlon 64 3000+ features smaller 512KB L2 cache, which is also indicated by the CPU marking:

The number “4” in the third position from the end of the marking implies that the L2 cache size of the CPU with3000+ performance rating is equal to 512KB. The Athlon 64 3200+ processor is marked with number “5” in this

position.

The appearance of Athlon 64 processors with smaller amount of L2 cache memory is quite understandable. No


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doubt that AMD did need less expensive CPU models to be able to win a market share. And then AMD faced aquestion: how should they arrange the production of less expensive Athlon 64 processors at the minimalexpenses? Of course, the production cost of these processors is pretty high because they are based on a rather

big core. However, reducing the die size will require additional investments into the R&D (Research andDevelopment), even if they will only have to reduce the size of the on-die L2 cache memory. Therefore it willmake sense only in case the production volumes will be extremely high. At the same time large die size leads to

pretty high share of defective dies, which cannot be used in Athlon 64 3200+ CPUs. Since L2 cache memory of Athlon 64 3200+ occupies more than 50% of the die, most defective dies are discarded because of the problems

with the on-die cache memory. It is quite logical that disabling half of the L2 cache memory can help revivethese dies. Therefore the launching of Athlon 64 3000+ with 512KB L2 cache is also a good way to get rid of some defective dies. Especially since the yields are evidently pretty low, because AMD64 architecture is stillrather new.

As a result, AMD Athlon 64 3000+ is an attempt to kill two birds with one stone: the users will get low-cost processors based on AMD64 architecture, and the manufacturer will have a great opportunity to get rid of somedefective dies, which cannot be used for more expensive processors, and win some additional revenue from that.

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

Athlon 64 FX-51 Athlon 64 3200+ Athlon 64 3000+

Vcore 1.5V 1.5V 1.5V

Typical heat dissipation

(Cool’n’Quiet disabled)89W 89W 89W

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 performancerating within this family. As for the life cycle of the new Athlon 64 3000+ processor, AMD is planning tocontinue 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 bemanufactured until mid 2005.

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


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As you can see, there is one more core there aka Newcastle, which distinguishing feature is also smaller 512KBL2 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 Athlon64 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 mainboardsand features a single-channel memory controller. It is based on Clawhammer core and features the entire L2cache memory of the Clawhammer, one half of which is disabled. This way it would be completely incorrect tosay that the new Athlon 64 3000+ is the first processor on the new core. It looks as if Athlon 64 3000+ wereabout 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 thefaster 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);


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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.

Overclocking

Before we pass over to the actual benchmarks results, we decided to undertake a few overclocking attempts tofigure out the overclocking potential of the new AMD Athlon 64 3000+ processors. The thing is that the CPUs of this price range are usually considered a good buy for overclocking purposes. That is why it would make a lot of sense to add the performance rates for the overclocked AMD Athlon 64 3000+ processor to the benchmark results. I would like to stress right away that we carried out all our overclocking experiments without anyextreme cooling systems involved. We used the regular cooler shipped with the boxed Athlon 64 3000+.

At first I would like to say a few words about the overclocking friendly features of this CPU. Since Athlon 643000+ is based on the same core as Athlon 64 3200+, it doesn’t allow increasing the clock frequency multiplier

beyond the nominal 10x, just like its elder brother. However, you can set the clock frequency multiplier to alower value, though it hardly makes much sense for overclockers. This way, we will have to overclock our Athlon 64 3000+ by increasing the FSB frequency. By the way, AMD has been very specific about it: they gaveto understand very clearly that there wouldn’t be any Athlon 64 processors in the market, which would allowincreasing the clock frequency multiplier beyond the nominal value. This option will exist only in moreexpensive Athlon 64 FX processors targeted at dedicated hardware enthusiasts.

Here I would also like to point out that we overclocked the CPU on the same mainboard we used for the entire benchmarking session: it was ABIT KV8-MAX3. Since this mainboard is based on VIA K8T800 chipset, the

AGP and PCI bus frequency is increased simultaneously with the FSB frequency during overclocking. However,despite this fact we had to give up the idea of using a more advanced NVIDIA nForce3 150 chipset this time.

NVIDIA’s chipset doesn’t support SerialATA and uses “slow” HyperTransport bus, which negatively tells on the performance in some contemporary games and professional applications. That is why it doesn’t make muchsense today to build Socket754 systems with an NVIDIA based mainboard.

However, VIA K8T800 is not a bad choice for overclocking needs. Having tested 13 mainboards based on NVIDIA nForce3 150 and VIA K8T800 chipset we didn’t notice any significant differences in the actualoverclocking performance (see our Socket754 Platform: 13 Mainboards Roundup). Maybe there could appear some problems with the AGP and PCI devices on VIA K8T800 based mainboards when the FSB frequency isincreased too much. However, when we overclock today’s Athlon 64 processors with C0 core stepping and air

cooling solution, these problems are very unlikely to occur. We reached the maximum of the processor potential(2.3-2.4GHz) much sooner, then the problems with external devices.

Since Athlon 64 3000+ processors are based on absolutely identical cores as Athlon 64 3200+, we expectedthem to show similar overclockability. If you read our AMD Athlon 64 3200+ CPU Review, you shouldremember that we managed to overclock our processor up to 2.34GHz core frequency. As a result, we expectedour Athlon 64 3000+ to be able to notch something close to that.

However, our practical tests showed a slightly different result. Before will actually tell you about our overclocking achievements, I would like to mention that we used different memory for overclocking. TheCorsair CMX512-3200LLPRO memory, which we use for regular testing works perfectly well at the nominal


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frequency and with low memory timings. However, as soon as we increase the memory bus working frequency,the modules get significantly less stable. That is why I decided to use special overclocker’s memory for our overclocking experiments. It was OCZ PC4000 Dual Channel Gold Edition, which is guaranteed to work fine atthe frequencies up to 500MHz. This memory allowed us to overclock Athlon 64 3000+ processor withoutincreasing the memory frequency divider, which was set at 1/10 of the CPU frequency through the entire testsession (DDR400, if we use the terms of BIOS Setup).

To ensure that we achieve better results during overclocking, we increased the processor Vcore by 10%, namely

up to 1.65V, and then started increasing the FSB frequency very smoothly. The first problems turned up whenwe reached 222MHz FSB frequency. To be more exact, the RAID array simply refused to work properly. Itturned out that the SerialATA RAID controller built into the VIA VT8237 South Bridge is very sensitive to thePCI bus frequency increase. When the FSB frequency reached 222MHz, the PCI frequency was only 37MHz,however, it was more than enough for the SerialATA RAID controller to lose its stability. That is why I carriedout all ongoing overclocking experiments with a Parallel ATA hard disk drive – Western Digital Caviar WD400JB. Luckily, Parallel ATA controller of the VIA VT8237 South Bridge behaves much better duringoverclocking.

However, the change of the disk subsystem didn’t improve the situation that much. Having reached 226MHzFSB the system grew unstable again. This time it was the because of the CPU. To make sure that this not anaccidental result, we went 1MHz back and ran the entire set of stability tests. We discovered no problemswhatsoever, that is why I have every right to claim 2250MHz to be the maximum result our CPU managed toachieve during overclocking.

As you remember, the processor Vcore during overclocking was set to 1.65V, while the increase of the FSBfrequency to 225MHz pushed the other system buses to 450MHz for the memory bus, 37.5MHz for the PCI bus,


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75MHz for the AGP bus and 900MHz for HyperTransport bus.

I would hardly call this result a good one. We managed to speed up the CPU by only 12% above the nominalvalue. Moreover, we failed to reach the frequency our Athlon 64 3200+ achieved during overclocking, eventhough the two processors are based on the same core. It probably has to do with the fact that for Athlon 643000+ processors AMD uses defective dies, which cannot be used for more expensive Athlon 64 3200+ CPUsany more.

However, even a 10% frequency growth is a good result, which shouldn’t be neglected. Among the benchmark results later in this article you will also find the numbers indicating the performance of our system working withan AMD Athlon 64 3000+ processor overclocked to 2.2GHz by raising the FSB frequency to 220MHz. Iconsidered it fair to test the system with 220MHz FSB because in this case all subsystems including SerialATAdid work fine. The memory in this case worked at 440MHz and used 2.5-3-3-6 timings.

Performance in Gaming Applications

We paid special attention to the performance of the new AMD Athlon 64 3000+ in games. The biggest part of AMD processors users are hardware enthusiasts, where the gamers definitely belong in the first place.


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Athlon 64 3000+ demonstrates pretty good results in gaming applications. It is only 3-5% behind the Athlon 643200+ with twice as large L2 cache. It also looks quite attractive against the background of Intel Pentium 4

processor. In almost 50% of these tests, the new AMD CPU manages to defeat even Pentium 4 3.2GHz. And inthe games, which usually favor Athlon processors, such as Unreal Tournament 2003 or Tomb Raider, Athlon 643000+ outperforms even Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition.


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Overclocking Athlon 64 3000+ to 2.2GHz appears quite advantageous and improves the performance by another 7-8%. It is not only higher CPU clock frequency that contributes to the performance improvement here, but alsofaster memory, higher working frequencies of HyperTransport and AGP buses. Overclocking makes our hero runas fast as Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, although it still fails to catch up with the Athlon 64 FX-51 working at2.2GHz and featuring 1MB L2 cache and dual-channel memory controller.

As for the performance ratio between the overclocked Athlon 64 working at 2.2GHz and featuring twice as smallL2 cache, and the Athlon 64 3200+ with the full 1MB L2 cache and 2.0GHz core clock, we can see that the

additional 200MHz do matter much more for the performance than another 512KB of the L2 cache memory. Asa result, AMD Athlon 64 3000+ overclocked to 2.2GHz outperforms Athlon 64 3200+ with the nominalfrequency of 2.0GHz in all gaming tests.

Performance in Office and Content Creation Applications

E usually offered you the results obtained in Winstone test packages, when we were talking about performancein office and content creation applications. Now we are using more advanced versions of these tests, which werereleased in the end of 2003. They are Business Winstone 2004 and Multimedia Content Creation Winstone2004.

Business Winstone 2004 is a benchmark, which shows the average performance of the tested platform duringwork in regular office applications. The test imitates the everyday work of an average user in a bunch of widelyspread programs and displays the result basing on the time it took the programs to complete the tasks. The list of applications used in this benchmark for proper performance analysis is pretty long and includes MicrosoftAccess 2002 SP-2, Microsoft Excel 2002 SP-2, Microsoft FrontPage 2002 SP-2, Microsoft Outlook 2002 SP-2,Microsoft PowerPoint 2002 SP-2, Microsoft Project 2002, Microsoft Word 2002 SP-2, WinZip 8.1 SR-1 and

Norton AntiVirus Professional Edition 2003.

Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004 is very similar to Business Winstone 2004, however, it usesabsolutely different applications. All of them are intended for creation and processing of audio and videostreams. The complete list of applications includes a number of popular and widely spread professional tools,such as Adobe Photoshop 7.0.1, Adobe Premiere 6.50, Macromedia Director MX 9.0, Macromedia

Dreamweaver MX 6.1, Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 9 Version 9.00.00.2980, NewTek LightWave 3D7.5b and Steinberg WaveLab 4.0f.

Besides these two benchmarks we also decided to use a new Futuremark PCMark04. This test also measures thesystem performance during typical tasks processing. However, unlike Winstone tests, Futuremark developersincluded not only a few popular applications, but also a few popular algorithms apart from the applicationswhere they are actually used. Here is a list of applications and tasks which are used within the PCMark04

package to measure the performance of our test system: ZIP archiving, spelling checking with the help of Link Grammar Parsing Library, web-sites rendering in Internet Explorer 6.0, image conversion into JPEG format, mp3files decoding with the help of Ogg Vorbis library, video decoding with Windows Media encoder 9 and DivX5.0.5, 2D graphics primitives processing, work in 3D via Microsoft DirectX 9 with Havok Physics engine 2.1

physical modeling system, anti-virus checking with F-Secure Anti-Virus, info encoding and decoding withBlowfish Algorithm.


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In Winstone tests Athlon 64 processors performed impressively great. For instance, Athlon 64 3000+demonstrated the performance as high as that of Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.2GHz. One more pleasing thing isthe performance difference between Athlon 64 3000+ and Athlon 64 3200+, which was equal to 2% at the most.


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PCMark04, on the contrary, indicates dramatic lag of the AMD processors behind the Pentium 4 rivals. Franklyspeaking, I even suspected this test to be optimized for Pentium 4 architecture, because the lag of all Athlon 64

processors even behind Pentium 4 3.0GHz was too evident. However, the obtained results can be easilyexplained. Have a look at a little bit more detailed PCMark04 performance table for Pentium 4 3.2GHz andAthlon 64 2300+:

Athlon 64 3200+ Pentium 4 3.2

Multithreaded test 1

File Compression 2.7197 5.3799

File Encryption 31.269 49.375 Multithreaded test 2

File Decompression 24.287 35.7

Image Processing 12.32 13.79

Multithreaded test 3

Virus Scanning 2002.6 2619.9

Grammar Check 3.128 1.9596

Singlethreaded tests

File Decryption 62.056 81.82


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Audio Conversion 2658.2 2650

Web Page Rendering 5.167 6.0498

WMV Video Compression 48.165 52.211

DivX Video Compression 58.764 60.842

Physics Calculation and 3D 181.38 170.58

Graphics Memory - 64 Lines 2697.7 2636.2

Athlon 64 falls behind the Pentium processor in the first 6 subtests, because of their multi-threaded nature. HerePCMark04 starts two computational threads synchronously. In this case Pentium 4 is evidently in a better situation due to Hyper-Threading technology, which allows optimal processing of two data streamssimultaneously.

As for the second part of the subtests, they mostly deal with streaming data encoding, and this is exactly the typeof applications where Pentium 4 is initially much faster. The advantages of Athlon 64 during physical modelingand spell-checking are definitely not enough to make up for the victory of Pentium 4 processor in other subtests.

This way, PCMark04 is a pretty fair test, since it doesn’t use any specific optimizations for Pentium 4architecture. However, all in all, its structure will always favor Pentium 4, so that it becomes an indisputableleader anyway. This is how the list of selected applications and their order affect the performance of our testing

participants in PCMark04.

Performance in Data Encoding and Compression Applications


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You can notice the influence of the L2 cache size on the performance in the tasks of the kind only during datacompression in archiving utilities we used. In all other cases Athlon 64 3200+ and Athlon 64 3000+ performvery close to one another: the performance difference lies within 1%.

As for the general performance of Athlon 64 3000+ in this type of tasks, it is pretty high during data archivingand MPEG2 data encoding. As for all other applications, such as MP3 encoding, WME and MPEG4 dataencoding, and the like, Pentium 4 processors have always been much faster there. Even overclocking Athlon 643000+ up to 2.2GHz won’t help, as well as the use of the dual-channel memory controller in Athlon 64 FX-51.

Performance in Professional Applications


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Final rendering in 3D modeling packages is not the best task for Athlon 64 processors. Pentium 4 is much moreefficient here due to Hyper-Threading technology support. As for OpenGL tests, AMD’s new solution is quitestrong here and doesn’t yield even a tiny bit to Pentium 4 3.2GHz.

Conclusion

Well, let’s cast a glance at the price-list. The official price of AMD Athlon 64 3000+ processors is $218. Itmeans that this CPU is positioned as a competitor to Pentium 4 2.8GHz, which is selling for the same money,according to Intel’s official price-list. However, as we saw in the tests, Athlon 64 3000+ can outperform evenfaster Intel CPUs in most benchmarks. We can also state that Athlon 64 3000+ is faster than Athlon XP 3200+.This way, it definitely means that this processor is one of the best buys in its price category from price-to-performance point of view.

Of course, we could complain about low overclockability of the new Athlon 64 3000+ processor. However,these CPUs are pretty fast even at nominal frequencies. Besides, the possible 10% frequency growth could

anyway ensure 7-8% extra performance.

Moreover, there are some questions about the upgradeability of the Socket754 processors, where Athlon 643000+ actually belongs. Athlon 64 3700+ will be the top model for this type of processor socket and it maycause some concerns about Athlon 64 3000+ being the best buy in its price range. However, if you take a look atany other processor sockets you will see that all of them have pretty limited prospects for future upgrades.Socket478 will be soon replaced with Socket T. Socket A CPUs will be simply discontinued after a while, andSocket940 will be replaced with Socket939 in the nearest future. This way the concern is absolutely unjustified.

As a result, there should be no doubts about AMD Athlon 64 3000+ being the best processor choice in the $200 price group today. And taking into account that this price category is the most popular among the DIY users (see

our poll results here), we dare conclude that this product release will have a great influence on thewide-spreading and popularity of the AMD64 architecture in general. The major problem AMD might face nowis the necessity to supply enough processors to satisfy the growing demand for these CPUs.

And in conclusion I would like to point out that the reduced L2 cache of the Athlon 64 processor doesn’t lead toany dramatic performance drops. The performance differences between Athlon 64 3000+ and Athlon 64 3200+working at the same clock frequency but differing in L2 cache size do not exceed 5% in most cases. It meansthat the upcoming processors on the Newcastle core will be able to cope with their task OK. If they manage toretain this expected Athlon 64 performance level, the new AMD core will allow the company to reduce

production costs and increase the revenues.


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