Athlon A64 Venice vs. San Diego

[madd_garde]

I was quite close to buying the Venice 3500+ CPU some days ago until i asked about this in this forum and was told I should get the San Diego cpu instead (had more cache, and just better). I been looking a bit more into it, and now i feel a bit torn between the 2! Could someone please give me some advantages/disadvantages between the 2.

Im planning to overclock in the future, and was wondering if this would be better on the San Diego? Also what is the advantage with 1mb cache, compared to the amount on the Venice.

Hope to get some response!

(Here is the links of the 2 CPU's)

AMD Venice 3500+ , Scan

AMD San Diego 3700+, Scan

[Hottentot]

Both CPUs overclock to about the same speeds 2.6-2.8 Ghz (luck of the draw). The extra cache on the 3700 will give a very small performance boost (<5%) in most applications. Is it worth the extra money?, only you can decide.

[madd_garde]

Yea, and thats my dilemma...is it worth the money

...Is it worth the extra money?, only you can decide.

[Lee H]

The San Diego is better suited to power hungry apps like video, audio etc as well as giving a bit more oomph in gaming. The extra cache according to a post on the AMD forum is the equivalent of an extra 200 Mhz hence it having the 3700+ rating.

[just_laze]

I'd go with the venice, just evaluating both CPU's in my head it seems the best value.

[kempez]

Well if your going with value: AMD 3200+ Venice: overclocks to 2.7-8GHz

I find my Venice (2.8GHz 1:1) lacks the speed in general windows and encoding...stuff like that. I have used a 4000+ Diego at the same speed and its a bit zipper in those aspects. Games doesn't make much of difference.

So its up to you: what do you do?

[Koolpc]

Venice from what i have read in different forums.

[Dark Horse]

I'd say the extra cache helps gaming when the cpu is working pretty intensively and so helps smooth out the bits when the fps drop right down. Its quite hard to show that in a synthetic benchmark like superpi or 3dmark unfortunately.

[Zad]

AMD 64 CPUs aren't that fussy about cache, certainly not to the extent that Intel chips are. The on-chip memory controller keeps memory latency very low, delivering lots of bandwidth. If you doubt this, have a look at some "fast" PC4000 memory reviews, it has virtually no benefit. If the cache<->memory bandwidth were a bottleneck it would show a huge improvement.

I would go for the Venice 3500+ for a desktop system, only preferring a 3700+ if it were a server with all sorts of services running (which would benefit from a dual core anyway).

[Koolpc]

What about the Winchester 3500? Is that a better bet than the newer Venice?

[kevpuk]

Venice over Winchester, but - personally - the San Diego is so little more money it si likely the best value....

[kempez]

What about the Winchester 3500? Is that a better bet than the newer Venice?

The Venice (and SD) core is a newer revision with lower power comsumption, better memory controller and some pretty cool other features: get a Venice or San Diego

[crepness]

I'd get the Venice but that's cos I'm cheap! I've heard that San Diegos can run pretty hot.

[Koolpc]

Cheers Kempez815

[kempez]

I'd get the Venice but that's cos I'm cheap! I've heard that San Diegos can run pretty hot.

Where have you heard that?

[crepness]

I've read it on some forums. Maybe I phrased it wrong. I meant that they may run hotter than the Venice cores.