Introduction
AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 and Model 4000+It's that time again. Time when AMD and Intel's marketing departments are working full bore, getting ready to extoll the virtues of their newest and fastest processors. Over four months have passed since I took a look at AMD's range-topping Athlon 64 FX-53 and 3800+ processors, running off a 939-pin form factor and clocked in at 2.4GHz. The key differences lay in the FX-53's double L2 cache, standing at 1MB, and its multiplier-unlocked status. Both processors, though, also featured on-chip dual memory channels that accepted unbuffered RAM modules running at up to DDR400 speeds. In short, they were fast, fast, and, um, fast.
Nearly five months is enough time for AMD to be confident enough to raise the ante and ramp up the model numbers and clock speeds on its premier Athlon 64 line. It comes as no real surprise, then, that we're taking a look at Athlon 64 FX-55 and 4000+ models today. AMD's ratcheted up the multiplier on the FX-55 and, consequently, bumped up speed to a heady 2.6GHz. Model 4000+ sees a bump in cache and not speed. Is it getting confusing yet?. Let's see if we can unravel AMD's newest performance babies.
