AMD, one of the top CPU manufacturers, was founded back in 1969. Since then, AMD has shipped more than 300 million PC processors worldwide. Especially during the last few years, with the AMD 64-bit architecture, it seems that this is the only manufacturer that can shake the domination of Intel in CPU sales.

In this review, we will be testing the AMD Athlon64 4000+ processor. This is the high-end processor from the AMD Athlon64 family line. Of course, there are even more powerful processors, like the AMD Athlon FX or some new dual core processors. However, as new CPUs are released onto the market, older ones such as the AMD64 4000+ become cheaper. This is why the AMD64 4000+ has become very popular among PC enthusiasts. And after all, the processing power of a dual core processor is not needed by a regular PC user, at least not yet.

So let's have a closer look....

The AMD Athlon64 4000+ is based on the 939 socket, as are all the processors of this product series. The main difference between this processor and all other Athlon64 processors is the L2 cache. As you can see in the table below, only the 4000+ and the 3700+ CPUs have the luxury of a 1MB L2 cache, offering enhanced processing performance with large workloads.

- Features

There are a lot of new features introduced with the AMD 64 series. But other than the larger L2 cache, the 4000+ has nothing more to offer over all the other 64-bit processors.

• Enhanced Virus Protection with Windows^® XP Service Pack 2
  The AMD Athlon 64 processor features Enhanced Virus Protection, when supported by the operating system, and can help protect against viruses, worms, and other malicious attacks
• Cool'n'Quiet™ technology
  Reduce power consumption and system noise
• 64-bit ready
  • AMD64 technology provides full-speed support for x86 code base for uncompromising 32-bit performance, ready for 64-bit applications
  • 40-bit physical addresses, 48-bit virtual addresses
  • Eight new (sixteen total) 64-bit integer registers
  • Eight (sixteen total) 128-bit SSE/SSE2/SSE3 registers
  • Including support for 3DNow!™ Professional technology and SSE3
• HyperTransport™ technology for high speed I/O communication
  • One 16-bit link up to 2000MHz
  • Up to 8 GB/s HyperTransport™ I/O bandwidth
  • Up to 14.4 GB/s total delivered processor-to-system bandwidth
• High-bandwidth, low-latency integrated DDR memory controller
  • Supports PC3200, PC2700, PC2100 or PC1600 DDR SDRAM
  • Unbuffered DIMMs
  • 72-bit DDR SDRAM memory (64-bit interface + 8-bit ECC)
  • Up to 6.4 GB/s memory bandwidth
  • ECC protection enables increased system reliability

- Specifications