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Affordable Dual Core from AMD: Athlon 64 X2 3800+

 by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 1, 2005 9:36 AM EST
109 Comments | Add A Comment
109 Comments

New Pricing, but Higher Cost per Core?

One thing that we noticed in our first review of the Athlon 64 X2 processor was that AMD was surely getting their money's worth out of each X2 sale, especially compared to Intel. Dating back to the launch of the Pentium D, Intel's entry-level Pentium D 820 only came with an $80 premium over its identical single core counterpart. Back then, AMD's cheapest core, the X2 4200+ commanded a $265 premium for its second core.

With the introduction of the Manchester core in the Athlon 64 X2 3800+, AMD introduces a much more reasonably priced dual-core CPU, where the cost of the second core has finally dropped to $160. It's still not as low as Intel's lowest, but it is fairly competitive with Intel's closest priced dual core competitor - the 3.0GHz Pentium D 830.

It is interesting to note that although AMD has cut both their single core and dual core prices since the X2's launch, the cost per core of the older dual core CPUs has actually gone up a little in some cases. While both of the 512KB L2 parts have decreased their cost per second core relative to today's single core prices, the 1MB parts have gone up. Overall, prices have still gone down; it's just that the gap between buying a single core CPU and a dual core has changed.

So, what AMD has done is effectively released a price competitor to the Pentium D 830. While it isn't the Pentium D 820 competitor that we were hoping for at a sub-$300 price point, the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ will have to do.

Unfortunately, while AMD announced availability starting today, we have only seen limited availability in the retail channel with only Monarch and Directron listing the chip shipping on 8/12/2005.

Power Comparison: Manchester vs. Toledo AMD’s Efficiency Advantage?
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  • dougSF30 - Monday, August 1, 2005 - link

    No, in that Toledo die can have 1/2-cache disabled, and run as 512K L2 x 2

    However this page is silly for other reasons-- they probably had a Manchester 4200+, not Toledo, and more importantly, it just shouldn't make any difference, as the 89W TDP is given to both Toledo and Manchester 4200+s. They are both Rev E parts, and with equal frequency and enabled cache size, should on average be almost identical, as not much changed from E4 to E6.

  • dougSF30 - Monday, August 1, 2005 - link

    This whole page should go.

    (1) Your 4200+ was probably a Manchester part, not a Toledo

    (2) Toledo vs. Manchester doesn't really matter in terms of power. Rev E4 and E6 are basically the same. AMD is simply able to choose a lower official TDP for the lower-rated parts (4200+ and 3800+), whether they are made from the Manchester die OR the Toledo die. (Both 4200+ "BV" and 4200+ "CD" receive an 89W TDP from AMD, along with the new 3800+ "BV")

  • Doormat - Monday, August 1, 2005 - link

    If I had the money. Surely though, this is a great value and I can see people getting this chip (and subsequently OCing it to 2+GHz). Mainstream performance is about to get a kick in the pants.

  • dougSF30 - Monday, August 1, 2005 - link

    All the updates fixing the '4200+/4600+ were already manchester' issue just vanished...

  • Houdani - Monday, August 1, 2005 - link

    Page 5. Third table.

    This table shows AMD with higher numbers in 3 out of 4 benches, yet AMD is given the win in all 4. Did Intel get shafted by the math here? Perhaps the D830 managed to eke out 2 wins overall?

    Yes, yes. Nitpick. Just keeping you honest.

    Also (page 1) was AMD really late to the desktop dual core scene? While Intel did announce earlier, availability-wise weren't both companies on par?

  • SDA - Monday, August 1, 2005 - link

    Higher numbers do not equal higher performance in all of these tests. To quote the review (what, didn't you see the caption?): "The iTunes scores are Encoding Times in Minutes, lower numbers are better."

    And no, Intel's dual-cores were definitely available before AMD's. I distinctly remember hearing a lot of complaints about this. The gap doesn't seem that big in retrospect, but trust me, it was there.

  • Houdani - Monday, August 1, 2005 - link

    captions = good

    Agreed -- sometimes higher is better (frames) and sometimes lower is better (time). So in that regard, wouldn't all the encode tests (and 3dsmax) be measured in time? If so, then AMD would have lost 3 of the 4, rather than the other way around. Gah!

    What am I missing here .. are the Windows Media Encoder HD and the Divx 6 Encode measured in some other way besides time?

  • SDA - Monday, August 1, 2005 - link

    No, not all are measured in time. If that were the case, it would have been stated, I'd think.

    Video encoding can also be measured in frames encoded per second. It usually IS measured that way, because that way higher == better (as our minds tend to think).

  • dougSF30 - Monday, August 1, 2005 - link

    Or at least, I noticed it back on July 12 on AMD's quick reference guide. Both BV and CD.



  • coomar - Monday, August 1, 2005 - link

    the intel memory was rated at 3-3-3@533, thats pretty good, i think the lowest you can go on ddr2 is 3-2-2@533, but that would be a lot more than 2-2-2@200 ddr ram, isn't the intel board still 50 bucks more than the amd 939 boards, then the x2 3800 would be a compeititor with the 2.8 p-d but only for a month or two until they get the prices down on the new intel chipsets

    though ddr2 seems to have an easier time with larger ram modules, 1gb modules in particular

    i'll be interested in the overclocking of this chip
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