AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (08/14/2005)

Review: Introducing, American Micro Devices finest piece of processing technology since EVER, and that was be for I took it out of the box. (Keep in mind that this is coming from a guy who, up until this process, has never gone 64 bit or dual core) So, let me start with the chronological list of events exactly as they happened.
1. The Order
a. Got on to NewEgg.com
b. Forked out $296.00 (Free Shipping)
c. Cried just a little
2. The Retrieval
a. February 20th, 2006th -- A day unlike any previous
b. Upon hearing a clatter, I dashed to the door to see what was a matter (I actually knew exactly what it was… I had been tracking the shipment for three days at FedEX.com… I had known that the postman arrived at my apartment before he himself had known)
c. I swung open the door and spoke to the clean-cut lad, “I hear a clatter, what’s the matter?”
d. He replied with, “Are you Josh? Sign here. Here’s your crap. Goodbye.”
3. The Examination
a. I called my mother
b. Cried just a little more
c. Opened Box #1… The box that I like to refer to as the “Component Box”, or the “Big Box”
d. I fought the fear of choking on the blue/pink Styrofoam pellets and dove head first into the over-sized box of technologically enhanced silicone patties until at the very bottom of the of the environmental disaster I found the brain of the futuristic computing machine… That’s right, it was an AMD Athlon 64 Bit, Dual Core, 2.0 GHz, Manchester Core, Socket 939 bit-munching mechanism that we in the computing word refer to as a processor.
4. The Installation
a. (After assembling all previously required computing components) Carefully, I wrap my all of my limps in an anti-static, fire retardant, water resistant, bullet proof material so as to not destroy the functionality of this essential component. (All right… I made that part up, but I did touch the power supply in an attempt to release any built up static electricity that may have been driving through my veins)
b. I gently inserted the chip into the perfectly shaped socket that was conveniently empty until then. Mission accomplished… I was now ready to rumble
5. The Test (After the O.S. load etc…)
a. I pushed the slightly shaded power button on the front or the machine.
b. The computer beeped single high-pitched beep… Not a dangerous, uncontrollable beep, but it was the sound of glory, the sound of success, the sound of my artificial brain thinking on it’s own for the very first time.
O.k.… Now let me share with you what I learned about this processor as the previously mentioned events took place. As mentioned in every chat forum that mentions this processor, it’s fast as hell… Faster than the speeding bullet, faster than a ray of light, faster than a cow running from the leather factory. I can now efficiently run notepad without the fear of running out of Page File / Swap space and losing all that I’ve spent the last two hours creating!!! It’s a wonderful feeling. It really is great. Installation was simple, as with most recent models and use of it is both fun and educational. To think… (Memory Allowing) I can now open as many as 128 Internet Explorer windows with 128 separate tabs in each window, and check out videos of Girls Gone Wild in every one of them all at the same time. And if you think that’s impressive, you should check out the swift speeds of the Microsoft Windows 98 SE Calculator with the use of this device.
In closing… Ladies and gentlemen… Welcome to the year 2007 (almost 2008). While you’re here, please check out this AWESOME processing utility, and at the sale price that you can now get this processor, please buy one for yourself so that I can have the glory of telling you, “I told you so!”

Review: Great cpu. I have ran many benchmarks and have got similar results as the fx-60. The 3800+ is alot cheaper than the 4800+ and can out proform it in gaming and other tasks by some stable overclocking. This is a great cpu which has fantasic proformance as standard and better proformance than the x2 4800+ and the Fx-60 when overclocked.

Review: I'm loving this processor. I can go from photoshop, to dreamweaver, to flash, to world of warcraft and not have any slowdown. Im loving how fast windows are popping up and how smoothe everything runs now.

I would definitely recommend this product. I can't imagine how fast the higher end versions of it runs.

I haven't notices any heat issues as of yet, though I don't overclock.

My Specs: Of course the Athlon 64x2, Geforce 7800 GT, 1 gb Corsair XMS, Asus A8N SLI Premium.

Review: I had used an Intel celeron 2.5 GHz CPU for about a year and it seemed to run pretty well, especially being a celeron. However when I upgraded to this CPU with the ASUS A8N-SLI premium motherboard, I couldnt believe the speeds. It used to take me about 5 minutes to load up windows, now it takes me less than 30 seconds. I currently have 640 MB of ram and a GeForce 5200 128 MB pci video card. However, even with that I have been playing Call of Duty 2 at medium settings with no noticeable lag, My old system had the same ram and video card but would occasionally lag quite a bit with the original call of duty. I also noticed that my ram seems to perform better, because I tend to use about 100 MB less than I used to. As far as the heat, I have a friend who has the Intel Pentium 4 HT 3.2 GHz and a 180mm CPU fan which runs idle at about 40-50 degrees celcius, I am still using the stock fan and it tends to idle about 35 - 40 degrees celcius and runs much faster than the pentium. I am now planing on getting 2 GB of dual channel ram and an sli setup, then i'll be done upgrading for a long time. I can't imagine any processor performing too much better than this one, and though i've never used the higher models of the x2, I would reccomend saving yourself a few hundred dollars and getting this one.

Review: I upgraded to this processor from the single-core Athlon 64 3200+ Venice, which has the same clock speed and is also made from a 90nm process. Basically, all I did was swap out the cpu, and there was a noticeable difference in responsiveness when I ran DivX encoder in the background, as I frequently do. When I let DivX encoder run on both cpu's instead of setting the affinity to cpu0, it actually ran about 50% faster, but the best part is now I can actually use my computer while it's encoding dvr-ms files into DivX mpeg4. One complaint about the processor is it does have a tendency to get hot. I'm using the stock cooler, which had cooled the 3200+ to around 39C degrees. With this processor, the temperature hovers around 44C degrees. The ambient temperature is 72F now, but in the summer, it gets to 80F+, so I'm not sure about the processor overheating and whatnot. Still, it runs cooler than a Pentium D 840 and it's more of a true dual core in that the cores share a HT link and memory controller and communicate over a special bridge. Overall, it's a good processor but it looks like I might need a new heatsink for the summer months.