Conclusion
By looking at the benchmarks, you’d be a fool to not see the Athlon 64 FX-53 processor as a success. It won nearly every test we threw at it, and was able to take the lead back from both the Athlon 64 3400+ and the Intel 3.2 GHz processor. The on-chip memory controller is still showing its advantages over the external ones on the Intel and older Athon XP platforms. It will be interesting to see how this changes as the DDR2 memory technologies begin to emerge and AMD is forced to stick with their DDR1 technology for some time.
The CPUs tested today
The point where the FX processor line kind of falls back is on the pricing. You should expect to see prices on this processor to be around $750 at a minimum and that is just a damn lot of money to put not too fine a point on it. When you can get the Athlon 64 3000+ processor for around $200, the $500 you save may be worth the decreased benchmark results.
The real question will be about the 939-pin Athlon 64 processors and how they will affect this scheme. With the Athlon 64 line (non-FX) to be getting a decreased cache size and dual-channel memory on a new package, it may be the best enthusiast processor yet from AMD for their new AMD64 line of CPUs. There release may not be too far away either, so be sure to keep your eye out for it. You can expect a follow-up on this issue soon.
In the end, if AMD’s goal was to release a new flagship to overtake all its competitors performance, including AMD’s own 3400+, they have succeeded. It is indeed the most powerful desktop processor we have tested to date, but with quite a price tag. But we won’t have to wait long for Intel’s response.
