Here ya go..
<A HREF="http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040601/index.html" target="_new">http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040601/index.html</A>
According to this article amd is shrinking the cache on the 939 a64s so they don't overthrow the fx-53 and also because/as a result of shrinking the die it will be cheaper to make. The dual channel athlon 64 3500+ socket 939 narrowly beats the single channel 64 3400+ socket 754 in many of the gaming benchmarks. It doesn't seem to be that great of a margin though. The a64 3400+ used in that benchmark actually has the same core clock and more cache than the 3500+ socket 939.
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The 3500+ coupled with the 939 platform dual channel and increased hyper transport seems to "trump" the higher l2 cache of the 3400+ in most of the benchmarks.(there may be other reasons/benefits of 939 as well-again I am just going from the article)
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From reading Tom's I gather that the athlon 64s will all shift to 939, 754 will eventually become the xp platform and 940 will be for opteron server/workstation processors only.
A further wrinkle I have found is that they make/made the 3200+ in two cores now:
2000mhz 1024 cache clawhammer and
2200mhz 512 cache newcastle.
The newcastle is what they are making now so perhaps they have even discontinued the 1024 version. From asking people who have overclocked the 512 version with faster core clock is faster stock but the 1024 version is more desirable for ocing (makes sense when I think about it, he he). Another wrinkle is that *apparently* now the 3400+ is being made with reduced cache as well?, which I frankly don't understand because from that chart on Tom's the way they were stepped the 3400+ had both the higher clock of the 3200+ newcastle and the higher 1024 l2 cache of the 3200+ clawhammer---I presume they made a newcastle core and raised the clock. Zipzoomfly sent me an email back and said as far as they knew the 3700+ is the only socket 754 currently being made with 1024kb l2 cache.
This chart shows how they stepped the processors staggering core clock and increased cache. I *believe* the 3200+ 1024 clawhammer came first and they stepped "down" to 3000 and 2800 with the newcastle core-now they are converting 3200 to newcastle as well <A HREF="http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040601/socket_939-06.html#amd" target="_new">http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040601/socket_939-06.html#amd</A>
Anyway, I understand the economics of shrinking the cache on the new 939 platform and also not wanting to throw the fx-53 off the top of the heap, but I am getting discouraged with amd now.
I have been researching this for weeks and when I finally was about to settle on the athlon 64 3200+/msi k8n neo plat mobo/far cry offer it looks like they pulled a bait and switch. I think I am going to go p4 if I can't find the core I want. 939 sounds nice but too pricey at this point.
Then again, I wonder how much difference any of this makes as far as visible performance?
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