Thoughts
AMD's transistion to 90nm SOI has been entirely successful. With full-family, mass-market single-core products on sale today, Athlon X2 dual-core around if you know where to shop and now a new range-topping Athlon 64 FX, AMD have released consumer processors across their entire Athlon 64 product family on the new process. Sempron has been there for a while, too.This new flagship processor, clocked at 2800MHz (the highest external frequency ever seen on an AMD processor product) with 1MiB of L2 cache memory and the full gamut of features and ISA support that a latest-revision San Diego core brings, raises the bar in terms of overall single-core x86 performance, usually by the rough 7% clock increase FX-57 gets over the 2600MHz FX-55.
Gaming performance is simply unmatched and for the target Athlon 64 FX audience, that's paramount. The well-heeled enthusiast and gamer are the guys and gals picking up the FX range, the unlocked multiplier and high-frequency, full cache performance really appealing to them. High price is the only barrier to the fastest stock-clocked gaming performance money can currently buy.
Moving to 90nm has afforded the FX-57 the same thermal properties as FX-55, meaning the new CPU can be used without a heatsink change for the vast majority of customers. Only a BIOS change for the high-end boards that support Athlon 64 FX will be needed, so the mainboard can supply the lower supply voltage that San Diego needs to operate correctly.
Put simply: if you want the fastest x86 processor on the planet, measured using games and single-threaded benchmarks, the FX-57 should be the only thing on your shopping list. It should bump FX-55 pricing down slightly, and with the older FX SKU staying on sale alongside the new one, there's even more choice for those looking for an FX, now at two price points. That FX-55 can almost always be run at 2800MHz with decent cooling is more icing on AMD's fastest cake.
It's never been cheap to buy an FX processor, but those interested always seem to find the money. For the overclocker (I've seen 3600MHz from the review sample in recent days, using phase-change cooling) there's a new toy in town. For the gamer, there's nothing faster.
Technology marches on and AMD stomp with the biggest CPU-shaped boots. A performance monster for those with fat wallets. For the rest of the world, overclocking AMD's new 90nm processors should nearly always prove very fruitful. Venice always has been a nice place to visit.....
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