AMD Athlon 64 4000+ CPU Review

AMD launched this exclusive model of Athlon64 with Sledgehammer core, used in the Athlon64 FX family, so it´s in fact the same as an Athlon64 FX-53. This is the last product of the Athlon64 family manufactured using the 0,13µm process, with 2,4GHz and 89W at 1,5V. Therefore, AMD´s high-end processor is now the Athlon64 FX-55, at 2,6GHz and up to 100W. So it seems that AMD choose a good moment to jump to the 0,09µm manufacturing process, where we observe an important drop on the power dissipation to 67W at 1,4V. This processor implementing the 939 platform, brings an effective 128bit memory system, coming closer to the official theoretical max. for an impressive 6.400 MB/s bandwidth, much better than the solution implemented in its 32bit “little brother”, almost unnoticeable.

AMD decided to factory-unlock Athlon64´s lower multipliers, so we can easily reach a high FSB with the result of a noticaeable performance gain. This processors easily reach a high FSB but we have to watch out the temperature and use a good cooling system or we would come closer to the max. recommended temperature.

The performance in games and rendering, coupled with a high-end GPU (a Clud3D X800pro, for example) is impressive, running games like Far Cry or the new Doom3 smoothly, although this GPU seems to haven´t reach its full potential yet. The performance difference between the system running at its nominals and the system overclocked is big when using calculation programs and software that makes an intensive use of the processor/memory sub-system.

Pros
Performance and stability.
Performance of the 128bit memory controller.
1 MB L2 cache, Sledgehammer core.
Same processor as an Athlon64 FX-53.
Frequency of the HyperTransport bus up to 1ghz DDR (2Ghz effective).
Factory unlocked.
Cons
Price

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Athlon 64 4000+ CPU Review @ TodoReviews