Advanced Micro Devices has launched its single-core AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 central processing unit that is aimed at gamers and enthusiasts. The new chip raises the performance bar set by its predecessor Athlon 64 FX-55 microprocessor, which was considered to be the most powerful gaming CPU on the planet. Although the chip is available from AMD for $1031, which is the highest price for an AMD Athlon 64-series product, the interest for details of the newest 搆ing of the hill?is as big as ever.
揂MD is increasing the speed of their highest performing CPU today. The Athlon FX-57 is a 200MHz bump from the current FX-55, brining the clock speed of the highest performing single core CPU on the market to 2.8GHz. This modest 7.7% increase is not the be all, end all of speed bumps, but AMD is still in a much better position than Intel for extracting performance by tacking on an extra 200MHz. Intel's successive 200MHz increases on Prescott since it's existence have increased performance by smaller and smaller amounts 2.8 GHz to 3.8 GHz is a 35.7% increase in clock speed, which should be an overestimate of performance barring cache size increases. If we look at AMD's performance improvements from 1.8 GHz to 2.8 GHz, the upper bound on our performance increase is greater than 55%, plus any improvement for doubling cache size,?writes AnandTech.
揟he San Diego core brings with it some very important things. Primarily, it has what AMD terms as a 搈ore flexible memory controller.?We at HardOCP would prefer to call it a 揻ixed memory controller.?揊ixed?as in the older one was broken. The older memory controller had substantial issues with low latency RAM and certain configurations over 2GB. Given the nature of this high end CPU, it settles better with us now that it is able to support high-end memory configurations correctly. This is not a moment too soon as we are starting to see games that might very well benefit from memory configurations up to 2GB,?writes HardOCP.
揟he Athlon 64 FX-57 has performed most expectedly in all our tests, yielding predictable performance, overclocking, and power consumption results. And we guess you won't be surprised if we call the tested Athlon 64 FX-57 the best gaming processor for today. It also performs well in many other applications, by the way. In fact, this CPU is not the leader in two cases only. It is worse than dual-core processors in multi-threading applications and than CPUs of Intel's NetBurst architecture at encoding audio and video content,?concludes Ilya Gavrichenkov, hardware editor.
- 3D Velocity: AMD Athlon64 FX 57 Review.
- AMD: AMD Unveils World's Ultimate PC Processor For 3D Games: The AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 Processor.
- AnandTech: AMD Athlon 64 FX-57: The Fastest Single Core.
- bit-tech: AMD Athlon 64 FX-57.
- ExtremeTech: Athlon 64 FX-57 Review.
- FiringSquad: AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 Review.
- GDHardware.com: AMD Athlon FX-57: The Ultimate Gaming CPU.
- HardOCP: AMD Athlon 64 FX-57.
- Hexus.net: AMD Athlon 64 FX-57.
- T-break: AMD Athlon FX-57.
- Tech Report: AMD's Athlon 64 FX-57 Processor.
- Trusted Reviews: AMD Athlon FX-57.
- : AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 Processor Review.
