It's Athlon 64 day...

[Guru]

http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1884

http://techreport.com/reviews/2003q3/athlon64/index.x?pg=1

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NTI0

http://www.hothardware.com/hh_files/CCAM/a64fx_51_launch.shtml

http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD02MjU=

http://www.legitreviews.com/Reviews/64fx_1.shtml

[Guru]

http://www.legitreviews.com/Reviews/64fx_1.shtml

http://www.athlonxp.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Diner_Wrapper&file=index&req=ShowFile&file_wrap=html/reviews_amd_athlon64_3.html

[Jammrock]

If only I had $3k to blow on a computer system. Looks like AMD is in the saddle with the A64 FX.

Jammrock

[Admiral]

While from a technical or performance point of view that on-die memory controller might be a God sent, from the upgrade point of view it could be a downfall.
Great performance but it's binding you to buy a new CPU that is more expensive than a previous motherboard upgrade.

64bit benefits would only be seen under a 64bit OS and most noticeable with 64bit apps.

The fact that only the FX supports dual channel and there will be two types of FX next year, a socket 940 at launch that supports only registered memory (inherited from the Opteron) and a socket 939 later that supports unregistered, again doesn't make it quite upgrade appealing.
I suppose there would need to be another remake to support DDR II ?
High price at start, two socket changes, need to change CPU and motherboard to use better memory, need to use registered memory in some cases...
Looking at this only the single channel, socket 754 Athlon 64 seems worth at start. On the dual channel side you might be better off with a dual Opteron system.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to bash what is the next generation CPU, I'm just picking at it from a potential buyer's view.
Between AMD's not yet (fully) supported 64bit processing; on-die memory controller and Intel's HT (working as it is) and dual channel I think I'm staying with Intel. Not that I planned on upgrading anytime soon, 2005 seems the perfect year, wait for things to clear up and PCI Express and DDR II compatible CPUs from AMD or DDR II compatible motherboards from Intel.
If the Prescott has 64bit support it could blow everything for AMD.

[KeiFront]

www.aceshardware.com

[GT98]

Well from what I've been reading it seems that the Athlon 64 isn't really gonna make an big impact in the consumer market till next spring/summer. The prices for either the Athlon 64 or P4EE is just way too fricken high for my blood. The last time I spent more then $500 on a processor was a P90

Well I'm out of the market for new PC at least till next summer if not longer so doesnt really matter to me and my current rig should support me till then...i hope

[bsdgeek]

Looks good so far, I hope AMD can scale the clocks a bit faster than the seemingly stagnant XP line near the end though.

[az]

BTW, MS announced both WinXP and Server 2003 to be available for AMD64 for 1h2004. Beta versions should be available now for MSDN members.

AZ

[Novdid]

That FX-51 looks sweet. Sadly it's too expensive for me...

[Marshmallowman]

For the price of one of those fx-51's you could buy a single 240 opteron and an AMD a dual cpu chipset server board ?

I think I will hold out a bit longer. The cheapest opteron is priced at a level I would consider...but its a bit slow, but give it 3months or so.

For me once all the 940,939, registered, unbuffered stuff is sorted out I will buy one...But currently the only decent chipset is the non desktop server chipsets with no slot for a decent graphics card.

The Choices for the desktop an under performing nforce 3 or a via chipset?

Has via finally got it right this time, bit early to tell but I won't mind eating my own words if they get it right.

[Novdid]

Originally posted by Marshmallowman
Has via finally got it right this time, bit early to tell but I won't mind eating my own words if they get it right.

It seems that Via's effort got a whole lot better when they no longer need to design a mem controller. But then again, their weakness the last couple of years haven't been the mem controller...

[Belwarrior]

Actually VIA has to improve their new chipsets somehow as practically very few people currently are actually buying boards based on their chipsets..Performance seekers go nVidia and most of the rest go with SiS. Good to see their engineers earning their pay.
As for me, thanks to ganyaik pm, I prolonged my A7V KT133 based system's life by plugging in an AMDXP2400+ currently underclocked at 16x100MHz but less noisy and sufficient for my use. Can always push the cpu later when i need it.

I'm with Marshmallowman, will rather wait till end of next year when i would have the cash (starting to save now ) and when AMD should have resolved everything as to which model will be around with what features.

One thing is for sure my next system will be AMD64

[Guru]

Originally posted by Belwarrior
thanks to ganyaik pm, I prolonged my A7V KT133 based system's life by plugging in an AMDXP2400+ currently underclocked at 16x100MHz but less noisy and sufficient for my use. Can always push the cpu later when i need it.

Uh update sig!

[Admiral]

Ace's Hardware Athlon 64 FX overclocking update.

[Jammrock]

http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=60000268

It looks like it's a special BIOS hack. I'm sure it's out on the net somewhere ...

PS - This is the Athlon 64 FX-51 overclocked to 2.8 GHz and destroying the competition in the process article.

Jammrock