Athlon64 3000+: 64-bit at Half the Price

Final Words

While the Athlon64 is a better designed and better performing processor than the Athlon XP in almost every way, people have not been waiting in line to buy the processor. Certainly the cost of motherboards is not the reason, since there are many Socket 754 boards in the $100 and less price range. Performance compared to Intel is also not the reason, since the Athlon64 3200+ performs very well compared to Intel's best. The issue seems to be price. AMD loyalists want it all, but they seem to want it all at a cheap price. Perhaps the long wait for Athlon64 with AMD prices dropping spoiled AMD buyers to expect incredible performance at very low prices. This high-performance-at-low-cost is certainly what AnandTech found with AMD processors in the recent Budget CPU Shootout.

The Athlon64 3000+ is the chip that answers the need for a lower cost Athlon64. At just over $200, the 3000+ cuts the cost of entry for Athlon64 computing in half. This in itself is significant and should have A64 3000+ chips flying off dealer shelves.

Value, however, is not just about price; it is about performance for your dollar. The Athlon64 3000+ delivers value in spades. Running at the same speed as the 3200+, the reduction in cache to 512k has only a minor impact on performance. In almost every benchmark, the 3000+ is only a few percent lower in performance than a 3200+. Even more important, the 3000+ performs very well compared to Intel's 3.2 GHz Pentium 4 - a chip that sells for almost double the cost of the Athlon64 3000+.

While the Athlon64 FX and Athlon 64 3200+ are both fairly priced considering their performance, there is no arguing that they are too expensive for many would-be buyers. The Athlon64 3000+ should fit most budgets, and the even better news is that it performs very well indeed. There are a lot of AMD potential buyers who want a more reasonably-priced Athlon64 that will out-game Intel's top 3.2 and 3.0 chips. The Athlon 64 3000+ is also that chip. You get the bragging rights that the 3000+ does outperform the 3.2 in most games at a price that most budgets can handle. The Athlon 64 3000+ looks like a winner!

Anand has an in-depth look at the Athlon64 3000+ in the works that will provide all you would want to know about Newcastle. If these initial performance benchmarks have excited you, as they have excited us here at AnandTech, then you don't want to miss Anand's upcoming Newcastle Technology Review.