Thoughts
Question: What do you get if you lop off half the L2 cache from an Athlon 64 Model 3200+ CPU?.Answer: A CPU that performs at near-identical levels in most benchmarks and costs around £35 less.
Our biggest complaint about the Athlon 64 CPUs was never performance. They have that in spades, and they're heavy spades when discussing gaming performance. The complaint was cost. AMD helped the enthusiast out by lowering the pricing on the Model 3200+ when the 3400+, which is nothing other than a ramped-up 3200+, was released. That still put base model at around £200, or, more importantly, at the same kind of pricing as Intel's very own 3.2GHz Northwood CPU. The AMD Athlon 64 was faster in most respects, but the Pentium 4 package was more partial to being overclocked, helped by the bus-locking nature of Intel's chipsets. What's more, OEM integrators could call on any Intel Northwood CPU between 2.4 and 3.4GHz for low, midrange, and power PC duties. AMD couldn't, at least not with the K8 line.
The need for a cheaper Athlon 64 CPU was painfully apparent. AMD's answer has been a good one. The Model 3000+ produces benchmark results which are fast enough to make potential buyers re-think a purchase of a 3.0GHz Pentium 4 Northwood or Prescott. It's also around 15% cheaper than the 3200+ version but benchmarks also show that it is, in the worst case scenario, no more than 10% behind the original Clawhammer. Makes you kind of wonder why you'd purchase a 3200+ now, doesn't it?.
The Athlon 64 Model 3000+ was a much-needed CPU in AMD's performance lineup. All we now ask for is a 1.8GHz 512kb L2 cache version priced at around £140. That would cover Intel's present Prescott and Northwood range admirably. We've only evaluated the 32-bit side of the processor. Its attractiveness will be further boosted when Windows XP, in particular, launches the final 64-bit version shortly.
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