Athlon 64

Lore & Background

The Athlon 64 was originally codenamed ClawHammer by AMD, and was referred to as such internally and in press releases. The first Athlon 64 FX was based on the first Opteron core, SledgeHammer. Both cores, produced on a 130 nanometer process, were first introduced on September 23, 2003. The models first available were the FX-51, fitting Socket 940, and the 3200+, fitting Socket 754. Like the Opteron, on which it was based, the Athlon FX-51 required buffered random-access memory (RAM), increasing the final cost of an upgrade. The week of the Athlon 64's launch, Intel released the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, a CPU designed to compete with the Athlon 64 FX. The Extreme Edition was widely considered a marketing ploy to draw publicity away from AMD, and was quickly nicknamed among some circles the 'Emergency Edition'. Despite a very strong demand for the chip, AMD experienced early manufacturing difficulties that made it difficult to deliver Athlon 64s in quantity. In the early months of the Athlon 64 lifespan, AMD could only produce 100,000 chips per month. However, it was very competitive in terms of performance to the Pentium 4, with PC World calling it the 'fastest yet'. The Athlon FX-51 was also outperforming the Pentium 4 3.2C in Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament 2003 benchmark, according to Maximum PC. 'Newcastle' was released soon after ClawHammer, with half the Level 2 cache.

On June 1, 2004, AMD released new versions of both the ClawHammer and Newcastle core revisions for the newly introduced Socket 939, an altered Socket 940 without the need for buffered memory. Socket 939 offered two main improvements over Socket 754: the memory controller was altered with dual-channel architecture, doubling peak memory bandwidth, and the HyperTransport bus was increased in speed from 800 MHz to 1000 MHz. Socket 939 also was introduced in the FX series in the form of the FX-55. At the same time, AMD also began to ship the 'Winchester' core, based on a 90 nanometer process. Core revisions 'Venice' and 'San Diego' succeeded all prior revisions on April 15, 2005. Venice, the lower-end part, was produced for both Sockets 754 and 939, and included 512 kB of L2 cache. San Diego, the higher-end chip, was produced only for Socket 939 and doubled Venice's L2 cache to 1 MB. Both were produced on the 90 nm fabrication process. Both also included support for the SSE3 instruction set, a new feature that had been included in the rival Pentium 4 since the release of the Prescott core in February 2004. In addition, AMD overhauled the memory controller for this revision, resulting in performance improvements as well as support for newer DDR SDRAM.

Reader's Guide

The Athlon 64 line was succeeded by the dual-core Athlon 64 X2 and Athlon X2 lines. On April 21, 2005, less than a week after the release of Venice and San Diego, AMD announced its next addition to the Athlon 64 line, the Athlon 64 X2. Released on May 31, 2005, it also initially had two different core revisions available to the public, Manchester and Toledo, the only appreciable difference between them being the amount of L2 cache. Both were released only for Socket 939. The Athlon 64 X2 was received very well by reviewers and the general public, with a general consensus emerging that AMD's implementation of multi-core was superior to that of the competing Pentium D. Some felt initially that the X2 would cause market confusion with regard to price points since the new processor was targeted at the same 'enthusiast,' US$350 and above market already occupied by AMD's existing socket 939 Athlon 64s. AMD's official breakdown of the chips placed the Athlon X2 aimed at a segment they called the 'prosumer', along with digital media fans. The Athlon 64 was targeted at the mainstream consumer, and the Athlon FX at gamers. The Sempron budget processor was targeted at value-conscious consumers. Following the launch of the Athlon 64 X2, AMD surpassed Intel in US retail sales for a period of time, although Intel retained overall market leadership because of its exclusive relationships with direct sellers such as Dell.

The Athlon 64 had been maligned by some critics for some time because of its lack of support for DDR2 SDRAM, an at the time emerging technology that had been adopted much earlier by Intel. AMD's official position was that the CAS latency on DDR2 had not progressed to a point where it would be advantageous for the consumer to adopt it. AMD finally remedied this gap with the 'Orleans' core revision, the first Athlon 64 to fit Socket AM2, released on May 23, 2006. 'Windsor', an Athlon 64 X2 revision for Socket AM2, was released concurrently. Both Orleans and Windsor have either 512 kB or 1 MB of L2 cache per core. The Athlon 64 FX-62 was also released concurrently on the Socket AM2 platform. Socket AM2 also uses less power than prior platforms, and supports AMD-V. The Athlon architecture was further extended with the release of Athlon Neo processors on January 9, 2009. Based on the same architecture as the other Athlon 64 variants, the new processor features a small package footprint targeting Ultra-portable notebook market.

Did You Know?

• The Athlon FX-51 required buffered RAM, increasing upgrade cost.
• AMD could initially only produce 100,000 Athlon 64 chips per month.
• The Athlon 64 X2 was released on May 31, 2005, and was received very well by reviewers.