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AMD's 'Newcastle' Budget Athlon64 Chips Analyzed

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the that-was-just-noise dept.

Edward Scissorhands writes "CNET News.com reported on Thursday that AMD had released a new "budget" Athlon64 CPU. Appearing on the AMD roadmap under the codename of "Newcastle", these chips are identical to the 754-pin Athlon64 3200+ in every way except for the size of their L2 cache (512KB vs. 1MB). CNET suggests that some of these chips may be 3200's that don't pass QA as having full 1MB caches. Newcastle chips are about half the cost of their 1MB cached counterparts, though preliminary benchmarks from Anand indicate favourable performance/price."

6 of 266 comments (clear)

  1. Many companies do this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is what many companies do. If certain chips cannot pass Q&A then remark them down and you do not lose your inventory.

    cheers
    Rick

    1. Re:Many companies do this... by Zathrus · · Score: 5, Informative

      They're on the roadmap for Q1, which would just miss christmas at the earliest.

      To be technical, Q1 would just miss this year at the earliest.

      That said -- you didn't read the article, did you (feign shocked surprise)? The chips aren't supposed to be out yet according to the roadmap, but they are. You can order them at a reseller near you (they're available cheaper elsewhere, but I like vendors that never, ever give me trouble, ship on time (or ahead of time), and have good return policies) right now and AMD added them to their pricing sheets on Dec 15. So it's an official product that got out ahead of time.

      Of course, unless you have someone who stocks them locally you'll be hardpressed to actually get it before Christmas. There's always overnight shipping, but that'll eat a large chunk of the money you're saving over the 3200+.

  2. price? by Nate+Fox · · Score: 5, Informative

    $213USD seems to be the lowest on pricewatch, for those who are wondering
    http://www.pricewatch.com/1/3/5867-1.htm

  3. Re:AMD changing pin # anyway by the_2nd_coming · · Score: 5, Informative

    well since they run 32 bit code natively and FASTER than the top of the line P4, I would say the shelf life is good.

    --



    I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
  4. Re:[H]ardOCP has had this story for a few days now by Zathrus · · Score: 5, Informative

    Argh. No.

    The 386SX was a completely and utterly different chip from the 386DX. The SX only had a 16-bit data path while the DX had a full 32-bit data path. This is not a minor change in the chip or board layout -- in fact, one of the major reasons that Intel released the 386SX was to reduce transition costs from 286 motherboards -- there's considerably less difference between 286 and 386SX than 286 and 386. The 386SX had no feature differences -- it was just slower.

    I believe what you're thinking of is 486DX vs 486SX. The 486DX was the first Intel chip (in the 80x86 line) to integrate the FPU onboard. The 486SX didn't have the FPU, or the FPU was disabled post-manufacture (most likely due to failures in the FPU module, while the rest of the chip was fine). This is something that can be done during product test.

    The funny thing about that was the poor schmucks who bought a 486SX and then decided they wanted the FPU after all... there was a second processor socket onboard, and when the "FPU" was plugged in it simply disabled the primary CPU completely -- the "FPU" chip was a full fledged 486DX. IIRC, there was another varient where the second CPU sat on top of the first CPU (and disabled it), but I can't recall for sure.

  5. sample buildouts by erikdotla · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's example systems you could build, with the best possible motherboards. Each assumes you need to buy some DDR400 RAM so that is not included, since it's all the same:

    My Athlon XP system:
    Athlon XP 2800+: $150
    Abit NF7: $100
    Total: $250
    I'm quite happy with it. Best price/performance choice (last week, anyway.)

    Top-End Athlon XP system:
    Athlon XP 3200+: $289
    Abit NF7: $100
    Total: $389
    A complete waste of money, especially after today.

    P4 3.2 system for comparison:
    P4 3.2 CPU: $366
    Asus P4C800-E: $164
    Total: $530
    Better than both of the above, but only by a few percent for most things.

    That was the situation last week. Including an Athlon 64, Athlon 64 FX, or P4Extreme in the examples would have been useless since they're insanely expensive.

    However:

    Athlon 64 system you can build now:
    Athlon 64 3000+ 512k cache: $230
    Gigabyte GAK8VT800M: $106
    Total: $336
    Yowza.

    So, to jump from the top-end Athlon XP to an entry level Athlon 64 actually saves you $53. I could have spent an extra $86 and got all this. The Athlon 64 system will now save you $194 over the best P4 Intel has to offer, and it will beat it (for virtually all applications.) Of course, if $336 is too much, you can still build a good Athlon XP system and cut costs dramatically, but $336 is very reasonable for building a brand new system. It'll be interesting when Intel gets it's P4Extreme down to a reasonable price, and AMD starts ratcheting up the Athlon 64 speeds.

    Proves it's always better to wait just one more week. I should have known that there would be major cuts in the 64-bit world soon after the processor debut.

    Hope all this is useful to anyone considering building a system. Keep in mind that 1gb of dual-channel DDR400 RAM is gonna run at least $150.

    All prices are PriceWatch.com and the Athlon 64 CPU price is from a link on AnandTech. I know PriceWatch prices are hard to get and you have to deal with shipping and all that.

    --
    # Erik