Athlon 64: The new processors at a glance
| New AMD and Intel processors | |||
| Manufacturer |
AMD |
AMD |
Intel |
| Processor | Athlon 64 FX-51 | Athlon 64 3200+ | Pentium 4 Extreme Edition |
| Clock speed | 2.2GHz | 2GHz | 3.2GHz |
| Level 1 cache | 128KB | 128KB | 8KB + 12KB mOps |
| Level 2 cache | 1MB | 1MB | 512KB |
| Memory bandwidth | 6.4GB/s | 3.2GB/s | 6.4GB/s |
| Socket type | 940 | 754 | 478 |
| Transistors | 105.9 million | 105.9 million | 169 million |
| Power dissipation | 89W (max) /70W (typical) | 89W (max) /66W (typical) | >100W (max)/94W (typical) |
| Die size | 193mm2 | 193mm2 | n/a |
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Integrated memory controller
A key architectural feature of the Athlon 64 is its integrated memory controller. This offers a clear performance advantage over past processors, where memory access is via the Northbridge portion of the chipset. As a result, the Athlon 64´s large 1MB Level 2 cache is about 20 per cent faster at a given clock speed than that of the previous Athlon XP processor.
Test environment
The Pentium 4 and Pentium 4 Extreme Edition were tested using an Asus P4C800 motherboard, which was equipped with 1GB of DDR400 memory (CL2,5/3/3) (PAT enabled). An Asus SK8N motherboard with Nvidia´s Nforce3 chipset was the platform for the Athlon 64, with 1GB of registered DDR400 memory (CL2,5/3/3). The operating system was Windows XP Professional (SP1, 32-bit).
7%
3%
