Introduction

Since launching the AM2 platform in May, AMD has quietly launched a slew of new Athlon 64 X2 CPUs for the desktop market, starting with the X2 5200+ in early September, 65-nm Brisbane parts on December 5th, and the 5400+ and 5600+ on December 13th.

All of these processors were stealth launches with little or no fanfare from AMD. Additionally, on launch day they were all primarily focused on the OEM market, with droves of X2 5200+ processors going into HP’s dc5750 business PC in particular. In fact, the 5400+ and 5600+ launch was so low key that AMD didn’t even issue a press release on the day the CPUs became available!

Fortunately for AMD enthusiasts, these processors are now readily available at the retail and e-tail levels, and we should also add that today’s Athlon 64 X2 6000+ launch isn’t a repeat of past recent events, in fact some e-tailers began selling the X2 6000+ prematurely a few weeks ago.

Like AMD’s other recent high-end CPU launches, today’s Athlon 64 X2 6000+ processors are based on AMD’s 90-nm Windsor core, if you recall AMD’s Quad FX processors are also built at 90-nm. From a business perspective, it makes sense for AMD to focus most of their 65-nm production on less expensive CPUs first as these processors tend to carry lower profit margins anyway. Once their 65-nm process is more mature, AMD can then introduce faster 65-nm parts at higher clock speeds.

The X2 6000+ runs at 3.0GHz and features 2MB of onboard L2 cache total (1MB of L2 cache per core). With these specs, the X2 6000+ is actually faster than the FX-62, making it the fastest processor for AMD’s AM2 socket. On that note, we should also mention that AMD has basically replaced the FX-62 with the X2 5600+, which ships at the same 2.8GHz clock frequency and 1MB of L2 cache per core, only it consumes less power – 89W max power consumption in the 5600+ versus 125W in the FX-62 (of course, you do lose the unlocked clock multiplier in the process).

Let’s take a look at the X2 6000+ specs:

Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Specifications
Clock Speed	3.0GHz
Manufacturing Process	Fab 30 and 36, 90-nm DSL SOI
Packaging	Socket AM2
Hypertransport Technology	Supports single HT link - up to 8.0GB/sec
Memory controller	Shared integrated 128-bit wide
CPU-to-Memory controller	3.0GHz
Supported memory speeds	DDR2 Memory up to and including DDR2-800 unbuffered
HyperTransport links	1
HyperTransport spec	2.0GHz (2x1000MHz/DDR)
Memory bandwidth	Up to 20.8GB/sec (8.0GB/sec Hypertransport+12.8GB/sec dual-channel memory)
L1 cache size	64K instruction + 64K data
L2 cache size	1MB L2 cache per core (1MB total)
Approximate transistor count	227.4 million
Approximate die size	218mm2
Nominal voltage	1.35-1.40V
Max thermal power	125W
Max ambient case temp	55 Celsius-63 degrees Celsius
Min power state (with CnC)	1.0GHz
Distributor Pricing (in quantities of 1,000)	$459

Overclocking the 6000+

With most Windsor-based Athlon 64 X2 CPUs topping out around 3.1-3.2GHz, our OC’ing efforts with the X2 6000+ were about in line with what we expected:

As you can see, we were able to hit speeds just north of 3.2GHz with the X2 6000+ on an ASUS M2N32-SLI Premium motherboard and Zalman CNPS9500 cooler. Unfortunately we needed over 1.55V to hit those speeds, but our temps weren’t too bad, around 50 degrees Celsius under load. We’ve included performance results at the end of this article at 3.225GHz.