The AMD Athlon 64 X2 processor is outdated, both physically and mentally. Such devices
were presented back in 2006. These were the first multi-core solutions.
AMD company. To assess their importance today is not difficult. Their release was the first evolutionary step of this manufacturer in the field of high-tech solutions. It was he who significantly influenced the development of the computer industry. Now you will not surprise anyone with an 8-core CPU. This has already become the norm. But then, such a decision produced a kind of revolution, the fruits of which we still use.
Story
The first 2-core CPU in the niche of home PCs was the product of AMD's age-old competitor, Intel. It was a Pentium processor with an index of XE 840. It was installed in socket 775, which was then the main one for this manufacturer. The increase in the number of cores necessitated a decrease in the clock frequency. This has led to reduced performance in single-threaded applications. A similar result was obtained by the product of its constant competitor - the AMD Athlon 64 X2 processor. But due to the fact that such solutions were initially oriented towards multithreading, the effect was not as strong as that of the main competitor. With the advent of software that can fully load two physical cores, the balance of power gradually changed. And such decisions gradually replaced the CPU with the 1st core from use. Yes, similar devices are still being sold, but most of them are used for office PCs, where work in office applications and the low cost of the finished system come to the fore. And for gaming systems, it is recommended to take 4, 6 or 8 cores. In an extreme case, you can opt for 2 cores, but this will significantly affect the quality of the game not for the better. This alignment was laid more than 5 years ago, and one of its founders is the AMD Athlon 64 X2 processor.
Modifications
Initially, such CPUs were installed in socket 939, which was the most progressive of this manufacturer at that time. Immediately presented 4 processor models. The youngest of them was specifically the AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200. The rest had a similar name, but differed in index. Modifications appeared 4400, 4600, and the flagship of this line had an index of 4800. Also, a mandatory attribute of the designations of these CPUs was “+”, which was added at the end of the name. The frequency of the base model was 2200 MHz. Also among the architectural features it is worth noting the cache, the size of which the younger model was 1MB. At the same time, each of the cores accounted for only half of it. Other modifications could boast of a higher frequency and increased cache size.
Later decisions
A little later, more productive products appeared on the market. The logical development in this direction was the emergence of such CPUs under the AM2 platform. Their cache size was similar to their predecessor. But the frequencies have increased significantly and amounted, for example, for the CPU model AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000 - 2700 MHz. Also, another innovation was the support for a new memory, which was called DDR2. But, in principle, these processors, the period between the appearance of which is slightly less than 2 years, have a lot in common.
Conclusion
The AMD Athlon 64 X2 processor is one of the founders of the era of parallel computing on a single chip. If you look closely at it, you can easily find a lot in common with the new AMD solutions. And there is nothing surprising, because they are built on a similar architecture, which over the past 5 years has undergone certain changes, but also retained common features.