Benchmarks/Info on different Athlon64 versions?

[JediNight]

I'm helping a girl at work upgrade her computer system, but I'm having trouble deciding which processor I should get out of all the revisions. For example, the Athlon64 3000+ has Socket 754 and 939 versions, Venice and Winchester cores, a Revision E chip, etc. Is there info somewhere that cuts thru the BS on whats best to get currently?

I was planning on getting her an Nvidia nForce 6150 chipset board FYI, since her son wants to play some games on it as well, and that should be adequate for now and has the PCI-E x 16 slot for future expansion.

 

[Pyrokinetic]

Socket 754 is older, socket 939 is current.

Winchester is a 130nm process core, Venice and San Diego are 90nm cores. The smaller the process, the better. So always go for the 90nm cores, as they are more current.

Revision E added a new memory controller and more memory dividers. Anandtech has a good explaination of Revision E: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2469

Here is an inexpensive suggestion: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103535

This chip is the 3200+ (2.0Ghz) and is one dollar cheaper than the 3000+ (1.8Ghz) on Newegg.

Since your co-worker probably won't do any overclocking, a Nvidia 6150 chipset should be fine (such as the ASUS A8N-VM: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131570).

 

[JediNight]

Yes thats one of the boards I was looking at, but I read some bad things in the reviews about it, so I was leaning towards the MSI board.

I was going to order from Zipzoomfly though if I went with the MSI board, because Newegg is currently out of stock on it. For the 3200+ they list an E4 and E6 stepping, and I assume the E6 is the more recent revision.