Athlon 64 3500+ chips

[lightweight]

I'm thinking about buying a Athlon 64 3500+ chip, and I was a little confused by neweggs listing of them. Their retail version of the chip (90nm Winchester) with the heatsink and fan is $290. I don't need the heatsink and fan, so I want the OEM version of the 90nm chip, found here. The core for this chip is not listed, is it the same?

 

[imported_michaelpatrick33]

www.pricewatch.com

Go to the CPU section and you will find the AMD64 3500+ for about 250.00 and it also differentiates between 90nm and 130nm

 

[lightweight]

wow it's been a while since I've been on pricewatch. Their format looks a lot different than I remember it being. I know that the chip was 90nm, however it did not say what type of core it was using (Winchester, Newcastle, etc).

 

[bigal40]

the 3500+ 90nm oem is $252 at monarchcomputer

 

[lightweight]

sweet, thanks!

 

[imported_michaelpatrick33]

All 90nm AMD chips are the Winchester Core.

On Pricewatch you will notice that monarchcomputer is the chip for 252. LOL

 

[lightweight]

How do they name the cores? Is the 130nm process chip the Newcastle, and the 90nm chip the Winchester?

 

[imported_michaelpatrick33]

The Newcastle core is the second revision/die shrink of the original 130nm Sledgehammer core.

Original 130nm AMD64 core = Sledgehammer
Core revision 1 of 130nm AMD64 core = Newcastle
Core revision 1a of 130nm AMD64 core = Newcastle (FX-55 now and soon all AMD64's will have Strained Silicon on both 90nm and 130nm cores)*
Core revision/die shrink 2 to 90nm AMD64 core=Winchester**

* Not an official different core revision: I am simply showing you an added core manufacturing process (Strained Silicon)
** It is basically a straight die shrink to 90nm with some memory controller tweaks as well as some L2 cache tweaks


There is another core revision coming next year that will add SSE3 and some other improvements and after that the dual core will roll out

 

[DanDrop]

Also, the OEM CPU has a very limited warranty and i believe it is only 30 days. If you buy the retail version you get 3 years warranty.

For about $20 more i would suggest buying the retail version just to get the longer warranty even if you are not going to use the provided heatsink.

My .02 cents.