Shipments start today on new Venice coreX-bit Labs has an interesting preview up, chock full of detailed technical information and benchmarks, of AMD's new Venice core. The Venice is aimed to become to next main-stream Athlon 64 core, replacing the Winchester. Featuring an improved memory controller, better data prefetching, and SSE3 support, this is a healthy upgrade to an already very impressive architecture.
The transition of the enthusiasts' favorite Athlon 64 processors to the new cores manufactured with 90nm production technology started over half a year ago. The 90nm K8 Winchester core is now widely used in Socket 939 Athlon 64 processors with the 3000+, 3200+ and 3500+ performance ratings, and in Socket 745 Sempron processor family. However, Winchester didn't manage to completely oust the 130nm cores from the previous generation Athlon 64 processors.
If anyone hears anything about pricing of the new Venice cores, it'd be much appreciated if you left a small comment. I know a few people who are interested in a Socket 939 system, and I wouldn't mind selling my 3000+ Winchester and picking up one of these new cores.
Article Link: AMD Athlon 64 3800+ CPU: E3 Processor Core aka Venice at the Door
