AMD Releases Barton: Athlon 3000+

Harle writes "Today AMD has introduced a new version of the Athlon, codenamed "Barton," that features twice as much L2 cache as previous chips. Along with the increase in L2 cache comes an increase in the Athlon's performance rating -- specifically the new 2.17 GHz chip is rated at 3000+. The clockrate is actually slighly lower than the Athlon XP 2800+'s 2.25 GHz speed, so the question becomes "Does the cache improve performance enough to counter the loss in clockspeed?" For the most part, the answer seems to be "yes," however, it doesn't unilaterally stand up to the 3.06 GHz Pentium 4. With the recent delay of the Athlon 64 to September, this is AMD's top desktop chip for some time to come. The reviews are starting to pop up at Ace's Hardware and Extremetech." There's also reviews on The Tech Report, SimHQ, HotHardware, EarthV, in Norwegian on Hardware.no, and last but not least AMD's press release. I'm sure there's many many more links, but I'm tired of pasting them all in here, so post 'em below. *grin*

Comments

THG

[MasTRE]

The only site that had the guts to say what's sad but true: "More Cash for Cache - Model Rating Unjustified"

Hmm, let's see - leave the core untouched, double the cache and play the marketing trick of upping the multiplier of the lame performance rating - since the layman doesn't know any better anyway, why not milk it for all you can?

Anyone in their right mind willing to pay $600+ for a slow POS 2.167GHz part as opposed to a P4 3.06 w/HT?

On the other hand, prices for the chip I want have dropped under $150, right in the sweet-spot. Yay!