Yet unannounced microprocessors from Advanced Micro Devices – AMD Athlon 64 3000+ – have shown up in various stores all around the world. The chips, however, do not feature the same specifications as their predecessors – the Athlon 64 3200+ microprocessors. In an attempt to cover mainstream desktop segments with its 64-bit technology, Advanced Micro Devices planned to roll-out some new AMD64 processor at substantially lower price-point than any other 64-bit CPUs – AMD Athlon 64 3200+ and AMD Athlon 64 FX-51 available today. The formal announcement was planned to take place at a later date, but a plethora of stores sell the chips now.
The AMD Athlon 64 3000+ processors runs at 2.00GHz, the same speed as the higher-end Athlon 64 3200+ chip. But the less expensive CPU incorporates only 512KB of level-two cache – only a half of 1MB L2 cache provided by the Athlon 64 3200+. Both AMD64microprocessors incorporate 128KB of L1 cache and one Hyper-Transport link with aggregate bandwidth of 6.40GB/s to communicate with PC I/O. The new 3000+ 64-bit processor builds-in single-channel PC3200 controller.
AMD also supplies Athlon 64 3000+ chip for desktop replacement notebooks, but those chips feature 1MB of L2 and run at 1.80GHz speed. According to recently unveiled AMD CPU roadmap for 2004, AMD is going to replace the 64-bit chips based on ClawHammer core featuring 1MB of cache with CPUs packing only 512KB of L2 based on Newcastle core.
News source: X-Bit Labs
