Socket 939 Athlon 64 3500+, Newcastle, Winchester, Clawhammer. Whatis the difference between them?

[Timbertea]

Okay, I'm getting around to building a new system as my current one
(though it served me well for 5 years) has become hopelessly dated.
I'm considering building an Athlon 64 based system, with the 939 socket
as it looks to be the one with a future, going ahead and going PCI-E,
and probably an Nforce4 ultra chipset as I had good luck with the
Nforce2 chipset machines I built for others & very bad experiences with
Via chipsets outside of the 600 series.

I hope my luck with Nforce chipsets continues, but if there is any real
negative to the Nforce4 I don't know about let me know, eh? Although
the DDR sockets are a bit close together for my liking, I'm probably
going to go with the MSI K8N-NEO4. I don't think the memory spacing
will be much of an issue as I'll probably only put 2 512MB sticks in it.
I can't see myself needing more than 1GB any time soon.

Now the confusion. I'm looking at processors to put in it. There are
some obvious differences in the cores and performance in the 754
versions of the Athlon 64, but they have become much less obvious in the
socket 939 versions, and I'm having a great deal of difficulty finding
accurate information.

What exactly is the difference between the:

Athlon 64 3500+ Socket 939 64x64KB L1 512KB L2 Newcastle Core
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=19-103-460&depa=1

Athlon 64 3500+ Socket 939 64x64KB L1 512KB L2 Winchester Core
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=19-103-494&depa=1

Athlon 64 3500+ Socket 939 64x64KB L1 512KB L2 Clawhammer Core
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=19-103-514&depa=1

They all have the same .13 process, same cache, I assume they all have
dual channel memory controllers as this was supposed to be a feature of
the 939 socket. The only difference I see is the lower voltage of the
Winchester (which I'm told is a slightly better overclocker than the
Newcastle).

Shopping around a bit I can get the Newcastle & Clawhammer for the same
price (ZipZoomFly has the Newcastle with heatsink for the same price as
Newegg has the Clawhammer). The Winchester is always a bit higher, so I
assume it has to have some advantage over these two? If I have to pick
between the Clawhammer & Newcastle for budget reasons, what is my best
bet for performance?

Going to AMD for information proved fruitless for me. Anyone know of
any benchmarks comparing them or a chart of the differences between them?

Any help appreciated,

-Tim

 

[Paul Murphy]

Okay, I'm getting around to building a new system as my current one
(though it served me well for 5 years) has become hopelessly dated. I'm
considering building an Athlon 64 based system, with the 939 socket as it
looks to be the one with a future, going ahead and going PCI-E, and
probably an Nforce4 ultra chipset as I had good luck with the Nforce2
chipset machines I built for others & very bad experiences with Via
chipsets outside of the 600 series.

I hope my luck with Nforce chipsets continues, but if there is any real
negative to the Nforce4 I don't know about let me know, eh? Although the
DDR sockets are a bit close together for my liking, I'm probably going to
go with the MSI K8N-NEO4. I don't think the memory spacing will be much
of an issue as I'll probably only put 2 512MB sticks in it. I can't see
myself needing more than 1GB any time soon.

Now the confusion. I'm looking at processors to put in it. There are
some obvious differences in the cores and performance in the 754 versions
of the Athlon 64, but they have become much less obvious in the socket 939
versions, and I'm having a great deal of difficulty finding accurate
information.

What exactly is the difference between the:

Athlon 64 3500+ Socket 939 64x64KB L1 512KB L2 Newcastle Core
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=19-103-460&depa=1

Athlon 64 3500+ Socket 939 64x64KB L1 512KB L2 Winchester Core
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=19-103-494&depa=1

Athlon 64 3500+ Socket 939 64x64KB L1 512KB L2 Clawhammer Core
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=19-103-514&depa=1

They all have the same .13 process, same cache, I assume they all have
dual channel memory controllers as this was supposed to be a feature of
the 939 socket. The only difference I see is the lower voltage of the
Winchester (which I'm told is a slightly better overclocker than the
Newcastle).

Shopping around a bit I can get the Newcastle & Clawhammer for the same
price (ZipZoomFly has the Newcastle with heatsink for the same price as
Newegg has the Clawhammer). The Winchester is always a bit higher, so I
assume it has to have some advantage over these two? If I have to pick
between the Clawhammer & Newcastle for budget reasons, what is my best bet
for performance?

Going to AMD for information proved fruitless for me. Anyone know of any
benchmarks comparing them or a chart of the differences between them?

Any help appreciated,

-Tim

I'm not sure if you're aware but these days with the S939 Athlon 64s, its
not just the nforce or via chipsets available - ATI now make chipsets which
are used by many motherboard makers for example the MSI RX480M2. I recently
emailed AMD with similar questions relating to core differences and
performane and received a reply with lots of useful weblinks - unforunately
that email is on another machine thats down wating for a PSU RMA though -
I'd be surprised if you wouldn't get a helpful reply from an email to AMD.

Paul

 

[Timbertea]

I'm not sure if you're aware but these days with the S939 Athlon 64s, its
not just the nforce or via chipsets available - ATI now make chipsets which
are used by many motherboard makers for example the MSI RX480M2. I recently
emailed AMD with similar questions relating to core differences and
performane and received a reply with lots of useful weblinks - unforunately
that email is on another machine thats down wating for a PSU RMA though -
I'd be surprised if you wouldn't get a helpful reply from an email to AMD.

Paul

I am aware of the ATI boards with onboard graphics, I plan on using the
PCIE slot for something a lot hotter than the onboard the ATI chipset
comes with.

I did notice one difference I overlooked, which was a smaller
manufacturing process on the Winchester, it's 90nm not 130nm. Would
explain the OC potential difference, but I'm not going to overclock it.
I prefer to get speed out of good memory, and the real bottleneck - fast
hard drives.

I'll try emailing AMD. I spent a couple hours digging on their site in
pure frustration.

-Tim

 

[Paul Murphy]

I am aware of the ATI boards with onboard graphics, I plan on using the
PCIE slot for something a lot hotter than the onboard the ATI chipset
comes with.

There are also versions without onboard graphics and the ones with onboard
graphics have PCI - Express 16x slots as well - have a look at the links
below.
http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/mbd/pro_mbd_detail.php?UID=640
without onboard vga
http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/mbd/pro_mbd_detail.php?UID=639
with onboard vga as well as a PCI-Express 16x slot

I did notice one difference I overlooked, which was a smaller
manufacturing process on the Winchester, it's 90nm not 130nm. Would
explain the OC potential difference, but I'm not going to overclock it. I
prefer to get speed out of good memory, and the real bottleneck - fast
hard drives.

I'll try emailing AMD. I spent a couple hours digging on their site in
pure frustration.

-Tim

Email them again - the reply I got was very helpful.

Paul

 

[John]

I did notice one difference I overlooked, which was a smaller
manufacturing process on the Winchester, it's 90nm not 130nm. Would
explain the OC potential difference, but I'm not going to overclock it.
I prefer to get speed out of good memory, and the real bottleneck - fast
hard drives.

The clawhammer was the older version of the chip --- I think it came
out in 754 and 940 socket versions. The 940 was their expensive line
and had dual channel and required registered/ECC memory and more
expensive motherboards - or thats what the line was in all the
articles. The 754 was their "budget" line. The clawhammer also has I
think 1 meg cache while the newcastle has 512 and I think the
winchesters do too. The 939 was supposed to bring the dual channel
feature at a lower price , since it didnt use the more expensive
memory and motherboards - something about the layers of PCB or
something.


The popular chip is the 939 --- the three factors it has going for it
which most people claim are dual channel mem (compared to the 754
socket systems), longer lifespan (754 is supposed to be phased out in
the foreseeable future) and it can OC well.

Everyones already buzzing about a new version of the 939 socket chips
"venice core" and "san diego" (Im not kidding) though I havent read
much about it

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20050310212502.html

The buzz is wait for the venice cores since theyll be able to OC a lot
better. In the past Ive seen a few posts about how the OCeability of
the 939s werent as great as believed "because of the memory
controllers" some problems with them when Ocing . I have no knowledge
of this though , Ive just seen the claim. The "venice" cores are
supposed to come with "better memory controllers" and who knows what
else so I assume thats a factor in its better OCeability.

Some have posted some sudden price drops in the 939 Winchesters and
speculated its because the venice cores are about to come out - $119
was the price mentioned for an OEM , pretty low. I bought a retail
version for $150 or so.

 

[Timbertea]

The clawhammer was the older version of the chip --- I think it came
out in 754 and 940 socket versions. The 940 was their expensive line
and had dual channel and required registered/ECC memory and more
expensive motherboards - or thats what the line was in all the
articles. The 754 was their "budget" line. The clawhammer also has I
think 1 meg cache while the newcastle has 512 and I think the
winchesters do too. The 939 was supposed to bring the dual channel
feature at a lower price , since it didnt use the more expensive
memory and motherboards - something about the layers of PCB or
something.


The popular chip is the 939 --- the three factors it has going for it
which most people claim are dual channel mem (compared to the 754
socket systems), longer lifespan (754 is supposed to be phased out in
the foreseeable future) and it can OC well.

Everyones already buzzing about a new version of the 939 socket chips
"venice core" and "san diego" (Im not kidding) though I havent read
much about it

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20050310212502.html

The buzz is wait for the venice cores since theyll be able to OC a lot
better. In the past Ive seen a few posts about how the OCeability of
the 939s werent as great as believed "because of the memory
controllers" some problems with them when Ocing . I have no knowledge
of this though , Ive just seen the claim. The "venice" cores are
supposed to come with "better memory controllers" and who knows what
else so I assume thats a factor in its better OCeability.

Some have posted some sudden price drops in the 939 Winchesters and
speculated its because the venice cores are about to come out - $119
was the price mentioned for an OEM , pretty low. I bought a retail
version for $150 or so.

Well, hopefully they get them out on time and the price on the older one
drops suddenly. If I can get my new toy a bit cheaper, bully for me!
I hate playing the waiting game though. No matter what it's always
cheaper 3 weeks after I bought it. heh

--Timbertea