Clawhammer
The Athlon 64 was delayed due to manufacturing problems. Slateted to arrive Q3 2002, the new chip finally arrived on September 23rd, 2003. If the processor had arrived on its scheduled date it would have torn apart the competition. A year after its inteneded release, the Athlon 64 was still faster than its competition. With 105.9 million transistors, new SOI (silicon-on-insulator) techonology, and a new integrated memory controller, the Athlon 64 outperformed Intel's Pentium 4 3.2C despite a clock speed 1000MHz lower. The main reason for this is a more efficient pipeline and memory controller. With a shorter pipeline the processor is able to do more work per clock than it's Intel counterpart. Featuring an integrated memory controller, the processor does not have to wait as long to recieve information, therefore reducing latency and increasing performance. The Athlon 64 was also packaged differently. Mimicking the Pentium 4, the Athlon 64 has an integrated heatspreader to protect the core from damage. Lower-end Athlon 64's have reduced 512kb of L2 Cache to reduce costs.
Athlon 64 3400+
| Release date | September 23rd, 2003 |
| Core name | Clawhammer |
| Number of transistors | ~105.9 Million |
| Manufacturing Process | .13� SOI |
| Location of L2 cache | On-die |
| Amount of L2 cache | 512kb, 1024kb |
| Package | Socket 754 |
| Official clock speeds | 1800-2200 MHz |
Update: The Newcastle core came out on June 1st, 2004. I will be adding the new information concerning this core soon.
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