Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/1297



All original Athlon 64s were based off the Clawhammer core; 130nm SOI with 1MB L2 cache. The recent Athlon 64 3000+ was also based on the ClawHammer core, but with half the L2 cache disabled. These Clawhammer (also known as Model 4) Athlons will undergo significant change sometime in the next few weeks. In a nutshell, Clawhammer cores will all be replaced by Newcastle cores (130nm SOI, 512KB L2 cache). The future Newcastle based Athlon 64s are also known as "Model C" Athlons.

Socket-754 Roadmap Update for 2004
Core Clock Speed Cache Size Release Date
AMD Athlon 64 3400+
Newcastle
2.4GHz
512KB
Q2 '04
AMD Athlon 64 3400+
ClawHammer
2.2GHz
1MB
Already Available
AMD Athlon 64 3200+
Newcastle
2.2GHz
512KB
Q2 '04
AMD Athlon 64 3200+
ClawHammer
2.0GHz
1MB
Already Available
AMD Athlon 64 3000+
Newcastle
2.0GHz
512KB
Q2 '04
AMD Athlon 64 3000+
ClawHammer (Half L2 Disabled)
2.0GHz
512KB
Already Available

Even though the new 3200+ and 3400+ will benifit from the 200MHz upgrade on the Newcastle core, the 50% smaller cache size has many negative implications; content creation and encoding may suffer. We did not find any mention of the Athlon 64 2800+ transitioning to the new Newcastle core, or confirmation as to whether or not the upcoming 3700+ will utilize the Newcastle core. Since the newest 3400+ receives an extra 200MHz boost in clockspeed, it is almost certain the 3700+ will debut with a 2.6GHz or higher core if it based off the 512KB L2 Newcastle core.

Here is a quick update on what the new SKU changes will look like.

Socket-754 SKU Updates for 2004
Old SKU New SKU
AMD Athlon 64 3400+
ADA3400AEP5AR
ADA3400AEP4AX
AMD Athlon 64 3200+
ADA3200AEP5AR
ADA3200AEP4AX
AMD Athlon 64 3000+
ADA3000AEP4AR
ADA3000AEP4AX

This may affect some motherboards since they may not be able to detect the new Model C Athlon 64s without a BIOS update. The CPU core ID will change from F4A to FC0 with the new processors.

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