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AMD's Energy Efficient Processors: 4600+ and 3800+ :: 4600+ and 3800+ Features
Athlon 64 X2 4600
The Athlon 64 X2 4600 is based upon AMD's 90 nanometer SOI process with 153.8 million transistors. Intel is on the 65 nanometer process node, but AMD has not reached this yet. The 4600+ is on AMD's new AM2 Socket, and therefore not compatible with Socket 939 motherboards. There are 940 pins on the AM2 Socket, similar to the first AMD Opteron CPUs.  940 pins  Rear One of the big pushes on the CPU front today is dual core CPUs. In AMD's case that means each CPU has two independent core processors. Each core has its own L1 and L2 cache. Intel's Core Duo 2 CPUs are also dual core but the L2 cache is shared between each core. The 4600+ has 128KB of L1 cache and two 512KB L2 caches, one for each of the cores.  4600+ AMD moved the memory controller from the chipset to being integrated on the CPU with the launch of the AMD Athlon 64 in 2003. This has the advantage of unifying performance across the platform and saves costs for the chipset manufacturer, as they don't have to waste transistors on the memory controller. The launch of the AM2 platform two months ago brought DDR2 support to the AMD platform. Memory up to PC-6400 is supported by the AMD CPUs. The big push with the Energy Efficient CPUs is the reduced thermal power that the CPU can handle. The 4600+ has a maximum thermal rating of 65W. The maximum thermal reading for the Intel CPU like the Core 2 Duo CPUs is 75W. In practice, for the CPU speed and performance you'll get from the 4600+, 65W is a good reading. There is also the regular 4600+ which has a reading of 89W. By way of comparison, a FX-62 has a rating of 125W. CPU instruction sets have come a long way since the first Intel CPU, the 8086 back in 1976. The x86 instruction set is common to all CPUs on the market today. Multimedia extensions were first introduced into the modern computer with MMX instructions along with the Pentium MMX CPU in 1997. MMX stands for MultiMedia eXtensions. AMD also introduced multimedia extensions with their K6 III CPUs and their 3D Now extensions. Intel later brought Streaming SIMD Extensions calling them SSE, SSE2, SSE3 instruction sets into the fray. AMD's 64-bit CPUs (Athlon 64, Opteron, X2, etc) support a new set of instructions called x86-64. Athlon 64 X2 3800+
All of AMD's current CPUs are based on 90 nanometer SOI process at their fabs including the 3800+. The cache of the 3800+ is the same as that of the 4600+, being 128KB for each core on the L1 cache and 512KB for each core on the L2 cache. The die size of the new CPUs is 183 square millimeters.  3800+ The AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+, on the other hand is rated for much lower power consumption and thermal power consumption. The maximum thermal power on this CPU is 35W, about half that of the 4600+ CPU and about one fourth that of the FX-62. AMD clocked the 3800+ X2 CPU at a modest 2 GHz. AMD Energy Efficient Models and Pricing for thousands of units
AMD has launched several Energy Efficient CPUs. The 4600+ I'm reviewing here has a price of $276 for orders of thousands of units. Online they are priced at $319 on Newegg. The 4200 is one of the CPUs that were not present in the kit AMD sent. Currently it's priced at $215 for orders of thousands of units. Newegg has this CPU for $181.  Front and Rear AMD's value CPU line is called the Sempron. When the Socket AM2 platform was announced, AMD decided to include Sempron CPUs in the lineup for those wanting DDR2 support but not the increased cost of the FX or X2 series CPUs. The Sempron has been included in the Energy Efficient line because they draw less power and are for the value-minded. There are three Energy Efficient Sempron models on AMD's website, the 3400+, the 3200+ and the 3000+. Contents:Discuss This Article
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