AMD A64 S754 Faster than S939 counterpart?

[Coops07]

Hey there. If you look on newegg it seems that the Socket 754 Athlon 64's especially the 3200+ is 2.20GHZ while it's socket 939 counterpart is only 2.00GHZ. Does this mean that in some ways the S754 CPU's are faster? Also some of the prices are higher on the S754 than the S939 because of this difference in speed. Why is this?

 

[Zap]

There sometimes is no rhyme nor reason with AMD chip pricing - example: Opterons priced cheaper than slower A64.

Performance-wise, yes the socket 754 versions have a higher MHz. This makes them faster at some tasks, while not at others due to lack of dual channel. AMD seems to think that the difference between single and dual channel memmory is about 200MHz give or take, similar to the difference between different amounts of cache. Then again, the rating difference can also depend on which side of bed the guy in charge of it got out of that morning because at 2.0GHz the difference is 3000+ to 3200+ or 200MHz while at 2.2GHz the difference is 3200+ to 3500+ or 300MHz. Which is it? Also, before the Winchester versions, IIRC the older Newcastle (or was it Hammer with ½ cache disabled) socket 939 CPUs at 2.2GHz were still rated 3400+.

That's not the first time a CPU manufacturer that used a "rating" system magically decided a CPU at a given speed suddenly was worth more "ratings." I remember Cyrix/IBM doing that back in the socket 7 days.