A Look Back At The AMD Athlon Processor Series

Final Thoughts and Conclusions

After going back five years and looking at the performance of the Athlon XP 1800+, it is amazing to see how far we have come in just five years. A good number of our readers still have Athlon XP systems in use and this article was a great opportunity to show them what they are missing out on as none of the major hardware review sites include these processor in updated performance charts any longer. To be honest, I was surprised how well the Athlon XP system did and that it made it through days of torture testing even though many of those parts have been used in nearly four years!

The new Athlon 64 X2 6400+ processor is a welcomed addition to the Athlon series of processors, but it’s sad knowing that this will likely be the last speed step for the Athlon series. I’m certain that AMD will release other parts in the future with the Athlon name, but they will be low voltage parts at clock frequencies under 3.2GHz. So, take a good look at the CPU-Z capture below as it should be the final speed bump in the AMD Athlon series that started back in 1999.

When it comes to pricing the AMD Athlon 64 6400+ Black Edition can be found for $259 and is in stock at online retailers right now. Not a bad price considering what several of the Athlon 64 X2’s at lesser clock speeds cost just a couple years ago! It’s not enough to compete head to head with Intel’s flagship dual-core processors, but it’s a step closer!

I hope you enjoyed this brief look back at these six processors and that it brought back old memories for you on processors you owned years ago. I’m sure I’m not the only one with Athlon XP stepping stories, so if this article brought back memories for you be sure to stop by the forums and share them with us! The community forums are free and an ideal place to gather with other hardware enthusiasts!

Legit Bottom Line: The AMD Athlon 64 6400+ Black Edition should be the final speed bump in the AMD Athlon series and when looking back five years at the performance levels AMD has come a long way!