AMD Athlon 64 4000+ CPU Review

Rating 5 out of 5 (01/14/2006)
Reviewed by: Justin Weisberg

When people think about gaming and performance, their mind goes to AMD and more specifically, their AMD 64 series, and with good reason. I've been using the Athlon 64 4000+ for about a month now, and I love it to say the least. Anyone looking to upgrade to a real processor should definitely check this CPU out. It only clocks at a 2.4 GHz and out of the box, it runs circles around a Pentium 4 3.2 GHZ in benchmarks. I have never had a heating problem with this CPU and it is overclocked to about 8% higher than its initial clocking. This chip also supports a very high front end bus and will not be left behind by anything coming out in the near future.

While running this processor alongside 1 gig of ram, I was at one time able to run a chat client, word processing, two instances of Adobe Photoshop CS2, browse the internet with Mozilla Firefox, and have Warcraft 3, and Final Fantasy XI running with no noticeable slowdown, including time periods of application switching. Whether using this processor for multitasking or hardcore gaming, this CPU is yet to let me down. I can do anything I want on this computer and never have to worry about it overheating or bogging down.

Amazingly at this point, there are honestly and truly no problems or downsides to this processor. Anyone interested in looking hard enough for a deal should be able to find this wonderful piece of hardware for a little bit over 340 dollars. While it may be slightly more expensive than an Intel chip, the price payed is well worth the difference in performance. I can give this processor a 5/5 with nothing hanging over my conscience. Although, knowing what I know now, I would be forced to recommend the San Diego core over my ClawHammer version because it is extremely similar to a dual core processor and the performance benchmarks, while similar, do point in the San Diego's favor.

Street Price: $340

More info on the entire lineup of AMD processors at AMD.

Extra follow-up by Eugene: The new Athlon chips with the “San Diego” cores are based on the 90nm process which translates into less voltage going into the CPU and thus running cooler than the slightly older 130nm “ClawHammer” cores. But don’t worry; performance is still the same no matter which core you get.