AMD's 'Newcastle' Budget Athlon64 Chips Analyzed

Edward Scissorhands writes "CNET News.com reported on Thursday that AMD had released a new "budget" Athlon64 CPU. Appearing on the AMD roadmap under the codename of "Newcastle", these chips are identical to the 754-pin Athlon64 3200+ in every way except for the size of their L2 cache (512KB vs. 1MB). CNET suggests that some of these chips may be 3200's that don't pass QA as having full 1MB caches. Newcastle chips are about half the cost of their 1MB cached counterparts, though preliminary benchmarks from Anand indicate favourable performance/price."

I'm sure

[Pingular]

the people of Newcastle [newcastle.gov.u] will appreciate this.

bad bad bad

[Anonymous Coward]

a processor named after a beer?

I'm sure...

[TwistedSquare]

the people of Newcastle [newcastle.gov.uk] (working link) will. Long has the North been associated with cheap ;-)

It's all Bush's fault

[Luscious868]

This move by AMD is clearly the result of Intel not contributing enough to Bush's reelection fund. Bush and his evil neo-con allies have it in for Intel and are using AMD as a front to destroy it. No blood for processor preformance!

Ha ha ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what's funnier ... your comment or the possibility that, given the political leanings of a lot of the people who post here, some people will think your serious and not realize it's a joke.

Re:Ha ha ...

[Luscious868]

I don't know what's funnier ... your comment or the possibility that, given the political leanings of a lot of the people who post here, some people will think your serious and not realize it's a joke.

:-) ... hehe .... I know ...

Re:bad bad bad

[UnknowingFool]

Why not? They already a version of Linux is named after a beer (Redhat 7.0=Guinness). So all they need is motherboard named after a snack, then you've got a whole party:
Yes, I've got Newcastle with Pretzels. They're running with Guinness.

Re:It's all Bush's fault

[ed__]

uhhh, maybe a little blood. i can always use a faster processor

Why Aye Man!

[turgid]

AMD processors, designed by James T. Nail and fabricated on Tyneside.

Crocodile shooooes!

Re:bad bad bad

[NanoGator]

"An excellent beer to namesake your chip with, though. Smooth, reliable, and makes you dizzy."

Crap, mine was served warm.

Re:The origin of the name Newcastle

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe it's because releasing another 64bit processor is like carrying coals to Newcastle? Or because it's new and your computer is your castle? Or because it can run software that is free as in speech and beer, hence the connection to Newcastle Brown Ale? Which is a.k.a. Nukie Brown, perhaps alluding to Duke Nukem Forever? Or because Newcastle United routinely gets hammered by other teams, hence the connection to AMD's *hammer codenames?