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AMD Athlon X2
The Athlon brand is getting decidedly long in the tooth, but the current crop of dual-core, 64-bit, 65nm processors is anything but behind the times.
Yet, the Athlon's history is clearly visible in the current line-up. Most lower and mid-range parts are based on the G1 and G2 Brisbane revisions of the chip, with a thermal design power of 65W. But a few parts haven't been updated. If you see an Athlon 64 X2 3800+ or 4600+ at retail, be warned: these models still use the older 90nm core. Some variants of these old models also have a larger L2 cache - 1MB as opposed to the current standard of 512KB - but overall performance is no better than a modern Athlon. We've excluded these outdated parts from our tests.
The most powerful Athlons use an older stepping, too. The 5600+, 6000+ and 6400+ are based on the 90nm F3 Windsor core, with a comparatively high TDP of 89-125W. For now, though, these are AMD's most powerful offerings, with the top-end parts beating even the Phenoms in our benchmarks, and we don't see them going anywhere soon, so they're still well worth a look.
The situation is further complicated by a newer range of Athlons. AMD has recently dumped the 64 designation (since all Athlons are now 64-bit) and moved away from the old numbering scheme. Its new system, though, is no less arbitrary: the three latest models to be released are named the BE-2300, BE-2350 and BE-2400. They're direct equivalents of the Athlon 64 X2 3600+, 4000+ and 4400+ respectively, but they have a low TDP of just 45W, as opposed to the 65W of the older parts. In use, we've found them slightly slower than their full-power counterparts, despite being based on the same Brisbane core, and for now they're also more expensive. At present, therefore, they're only a smart choice if saving 20W is a big deal to you.
Finally,
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