"AMD has confirmed that it is set to simplify its product lineup over the next few months.
Products including the Athlon 64 X2 4800+, X2 4400+ and X2 4000+ - which all come with 1MB L2 cache per core - will be discontinued, according to a report on HardOCP.
AMD's product lineup has become increasingly confusing over the past few years with a lot of overlapping specifications. Typically, chips with 512KB L2 cache per core are only slightly faster than a chip clocked some 200MHz slower with 1MB L2 cache per core.
AMD's flagship Athlon 64 FX chips will still continue to ship with 1MB of L2 cache per core, and an unlocked multiplier. This will enable the company to re-focus its Athlon 64 FX processors and hopefully increase sales of the chips, too.
In some ways it is a good thing, but many enthusiasts have opted for the larger cache with a lower core speed, as there is always the option to overclock the lower-clocked chip."
Looks like the good old days of buying a CPU, and overclocking it to match the performance of the FX chips are comming to an end.
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04:24 PM
PFF
System Bot
Jax184 Member
Posts: 3524 From: Vancouver, Canada Registered: Jun 2005
Don't forget that they're also dropping their prices though. This should let them drop them further, since they can focus on a few high production products instead of bunches of confusing and less popular ones.
^^^I'm really anxious to see what the new Conroe CPU's are capible of. So far, it doesn't look like AMD will have anything anywhere close to their performance. And now that they're taking away the 1MB L2 cache from the average user, their CPU's are looking less appealing. On the other hand, from what I've read so far; it looks like the Conroe CPU's will have 4MB of L2 cache.
Unless AMD can come up with something that's pretty darn impressive, it looks like the next PC that I build will be powered by a Conroe CPU.
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10:01 AM
AusFiero Member
Posts: 11513 From: Dapto NSW Australia Registered: Feb 2001
Originally posted by Deabionni: Looks like the good old days of buying a CPU, and overclocking it to match the performance of the FX chips are comming to an end.
So would you say NOW is a good time to buy them before they dissappear?
I ask becouse I STILL want to build the system YOU got! I want to achieve the same overclock that you did, as it resulted in cost-effective power & stabibility. If it worked for you...............
Knowing what you know now, would you jump on it before it becomes unavailable?
Originally posted by Boondawg: Knowing what you know now, would you jump on it before it becomes unavailable?
Knowing what I know now, I would. When I bought this CPU, I was specifically looking for a chip with a 1MB L2 cache to overclock; and hopefully be able to get close to the performance of the FX-55. Once I came across the 3700+, I did a little research on the chip; and found that people were hitting overclocks of 2.8GHz pretty easily. After finding out that I could overclock the 3700+ past the speeds of the FX-55, and match the performance of the FX-57; I was sold on that CPU. Spending $213 on a processor, and overclocking it to the performance levels of a $811 processor sounds like an excellent deal to me. The only way I'd pass on it, is if you're looking for a dual-core CPU.
If you want the same performance of the FX series chip after your overclock; when now is the time to get one. If you're getting a single core chip, then you want the San Diego series; as that has the 1MB L2 cache. If you want a dual core chip, then you want the Toledo series; as that has a 1MB L2 cache for each core.
