Processor Pricing and Specs Venice, Winchester, ClawHammer

  • Thread starter Thread starter Joe
  • Start date Start date
J

Joe

Questions below NewEgg prices

Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Retail $152.00
Multimedia Instruction: MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, 3DNOW! Professional
Operating Frequency: 2.0GHz

Athlon 64 3200+ Winchester 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Retail $190.00
Multimedia Instruction: MMX, SSE, SSE2, 3DNOW! Professional
Operating Frequency: 2.0GHz

Athlon 64 3500+ Venice 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Retail $201.00
Multimedia Instruction: MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, 3DNOW! Professional
Operating Frequency: 2.2GHz

Athlon 64 3500+ ClawHammer 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Retail $227.01
Multimedia Instruction: MMX, SSE, SSE2, 3DNOW! Professional
Operating Frequency: 2.2GHz

The 3200 Venice appears to spec out the same as the 3200 Winchester except
the Winchester does not appear to have SSES3 whatever that is and The 3500
Venice appears to spec out the same as the 3500 ClawHammer except the
ClawHammer does not appear to have SSES3 either. So the Venice processors
seem to have something that neither the Winchester or ClawHammer processors
have. So why is the 3200 Winchester 38 dollars more than the 3200 Venice
and the 3500 ClawHammer 26 dollars more than the 3500 Venice.

If you buy the more expensive what is your money getting you?

What am I not understanding?

Joe
 
The "clawhammer" CPU is the oldest, with a 130nm core. (I wonder if it's the
same as a "Newcastle" CPU?)

The "Winchester" is a 90 nm core, and it consumes less power than the older
chips, and runs cooler.

The "Venice" core is also 90 nm. It's newer than Winchester, and add the
SSE3 instructions. (I'm not familiar with those, but they must be some sort
of streaming data instructions.) Athlon64 CPUs have on-chip memory
controllers, and the one on the Venice CPUs is reportedly improved over
older ones.

I'd say that the Venice chips are the ones to buy. (Or, get the San Diego
core 3700+ and 4000+, similar to the Venice chips but with 1 MB of L2 cache
rather than 512 kB.) The only potential problem that I know of is that some
mainboards require a BIOS update to work properly with the newest CPUs.
That's not a problem if you're upgrading an existing CPU, but it might be
difficult if you're building a new system.


Address scrambled. Replace nkbob with bobkn.
 
This is what I was thinking. I kinda pisses me off though as I have done a
lot of business with NewEgg (over 10 grand). Basically they seem to have
some old stock that they do not want to discount and take a loss on so they
are hoping some uninformed buyer will pay more thinking they are getting
more. Thanks for confirming my suspicions
Joe
 
Back
Top