AMD Pushes Ahead

Just when you thought AMD was done with the Gigahertz race, they took us by surprise with the release of the Athlon 64 FX-57 processor. Now clocked at 2.8GHz, the FX-57 is 200MHz faster than the FX-55. It's still manufactured on AMD's 90nm SOI (Silicon On Insulator) process technology and its features remain the same as all its other Socket-939 counterparts.

When compared to Intel's current speed champ, the FX-57 is still far from hitting the kind of speeds found on Intel's Prescott-based processors. However, as we all know by know, AMD does not really engage in the MHz game like Intel. AMD still believes very much in the capability of the CPU to process work and an efficient CPU at lower clock speeds can still do the same amount of work as compared to one that operates at higher clock speeds. For this reason, AMD prides itself much with the architecture of the Athlon 64 core and owes much of its success to its shorter pipeline, which allows it to do more work per clock cycle. Of course, there are other features like its integrated dual-channel memory controller and the built-in HyperTransport link that reduces the I/O latency of the processor. We've talked about these features at length and we don't think you'll want to hear them again, so we shall not bore you with the same details.

Below, let's look at the Athlon 64 FX-57's technical specifications as compared to its competitor's and its dual-core counterparts.