!>http://www.xbitlabs.com/images/cpu/athlon64-venice/icon.gif! X-bit labs – Articles – AMD Athlon 64 3800+ CPU: E3 Processor Core aka Venice at the Door. _The new Venice chips are now shipping, these are formally called the AMD Athlon 64 3500+ and 3800+ with E3 stepping, now that is a mouthful the short word, is that they are worth the wait if you like to overclock, otherwise, the current Winchesters are just as fast_
The 90nm K8 Winchester core is now widely used in Socket 939 Athlon 64 processors with the 3000+, 3200+ and 3500+ performance ratings, and in Socket 745 Sempron processor family.
Even though it boasts much lower power consumption and heat dissipation than its 130nm predecessor, the maximum actual working frequency of the processor based on Winchester is only 2.2GHz. That is why the top Athlon 64 models as well as Athlon 64 FX-55 with 2.4GHz and 2.6GHz core clock rate are still based on the old Newcastle and ClawHammer cores manufactured with 0.13 micron technology.
In the near future AMD is expected to announce new Athlon 64 4200+ and Athlon 64 FX-57 processors based on Venice and San Diego cores respectively (San Diego is an analog of Venice but with larger L2 cache). These cores use a new semiconductor technology, Dual Stress Liner, that improves transistor speed by 24%.
Here is the new lineup (in red) and the old one, a good summary thanks to xbitlabs. For overclockers, the most relevant models are the ADA32000DAA4BP which is the 3200+ with Venice E3 stepping replacing the Newcastle D0 stepping. This by the way is going to need BIOS updates from most boards with the most common problem being that Cool’n’Quiet doesn’t work.
!http://www.xbitlabs.com/images/cpu/athlon64-venice/models.gif!
The main advantage isn’t raw performance though, Venice is about 1% faster, it is that it can overclock more. Newcastle should overclock to about 2.4GHz (my own Newcastle goes from 1.8 to 2.2GHz before dying). A good Winchester chip can overclock to 2.6GHz, but the Venice chip should overclock to closer to 2.8GHz, so that is something.
In their tests, they got a 2.4GHz Venice to get to 2.88GHz and it ran pretty well. That’s amazingly high. They ramped the voltage to 1.58V, but that is about it.

I’m Rich & Co.

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