AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Socket 939 90 nm

Smaller, Cooler, Faster...

by Josh Walrath

Conclusion

            AMD’s transition to the 90 nm SOI process appears relatively painless as compared to the issues that Intel has encountered with its Prescott based Pentium 4.  The 90 nm Athlon 64’s are very cool running at any given speed, and other 3^rd party figures show that it consumes a solid 10% less power than the 130 nm SOI Athlon 64.  AMD also has the luxury of transitioning its lineup to 90 nm at its own pace due to the current performance advantage AMD seems to hold over Intel.  AMD is not in a position where it absolutely has to create a 90 nm part that runs at 2.6 GHz or 2.8 GHz right off the bat, instead they can work on yield and power issues with the Athlon 64 design on 90 nm, and get those under control before it has to increase the speed bins to get higher performing parts.

            The first 90 nm products are the socket 939 versions of the 3000+, 3200+, and the 3500+.  While the 3500+ is clocked at 2.2 GHz, the 3200+ sample in my hand was able to achieve 2.4 GHz at stock voltage.  This hints at AMD being able to provide faster parts on 90 nm very soon.

            Looking down the road AMD has a very strong lineup of upcoming parts.  In January we expect to see the next speed bump for the Athlon 64 core, but this will be more than just a speed increase.  The San Diego and Venice desktop cores should make their appearance with the 2.4 GHz, 2.6 GHz, and 2.8 GHz parts.  The top end will be the San Diego (90 nm SOI, 1 MB L2 cache) and will most likely be called the FX-57 clocked at 2.8 GHz.  The Venice core (90 nm SOI, 512 K L2 cache) will fill in the rest of the field.  These cores have SSE3 thrown into the mix, as well as other general optimizations to help achieve better speed bins, and probably better per clock performance.

            AMD’s 90 nm process appears poised for the big time, and additions such as the recently announced DSL (Dual Stress Liners) strained silicon tech, we can expect to see these latest cores hit up to 3.2 GHz by the time desktop dual core products are made available.  Currently Intel has nothing to compete with the FX-55 adequately, and they certainly won’t have anything this January when AMD releases the FX-57.  Once AMD keeps raising the core speed, then even areas where Intel once held sway will begin to fall away (such as video editing, MP3 ripping, streaming applications, etc.).

            The small taste of the possible performance of AMD’s 90 nm Athlon 64’s leave me wanting more.  Much more.  It is a solid architecture, and with chipset partners like NVIDIA, ATI, and VIA, AMD will have a compelling product for shoppers for the next year.  More innovations are coming down the road, but for right now the price/performance ratio of the 90 nm Athlon 64 3200+ is truly second to none.

Pros

Cooler

Faster

Less Power

Great Price

Cons

Availability is not fantastic

Was not stable at 2.5 GHz

A big thanks to the folks at AMD for providing the sample!

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