AMD Socket 939 4000+ and FX55

Review by Jason Jacobs on 10/19/04
Processor Provided by AMD

Conclusions

It's once again obvious that AMD has two winners on their hands with price points of the two processors within $100 US of each other the decision becomes difficult for the consumer.

AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 processor $827 each (PIB)
AMD Athlon 64 4000+ processor $729 each (PIB)

Is the unlocked multiplier worth the extra $100? In our opinion it would be money well spent. The 4000+ is a very capable processor replacing the 3800+ at the top end of performance rated parts with an extra 512kb L2 cache for a total of 1MB. The performance in tests was excellent proving that the cache does indeed help application performance. The FX55 came out on top in every test we ran and also presents the option to overclock it well above its rated specs. With the FX55 we gained a 200Mhz lead over the 4000+ and multiplier unlocking, which in the labs enabled us to OC to 3Ghz.

We tested against a 3.6Ghz P4 and ran SiSoft Benchmarks against a P4 4.0Ghz, neither of which stood a chance against the FX55 or 4000+. Given recent P4 performance and the cancellation of the 4Ghz Part from Intel it's this editors opinion that the AMD 64 is currently both the speed and performance winner.

With results like these it is easy to award both processors the Techwarelabs Recommended Product Award.