Labs

Unlike Intel's processors, all AMD chips have a built-in memory controller. In the Socket 754 and Socket 939 chips it supports DDR memory, whereas AM2 designs support the faster DDR2.

The single-core, Socket 939 Athlon 64 range is based on AMD's Venice core. The Athlon 64 3500+ and 3800+ are

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now very cheap, and the 3800+ performed well in our audio-encoding and image-editing benchmarks.

The 3500+ has average performance for its price, with its overall score of 110 putting it ahead of the pricier Socket AM2 Sempron 3600+. Its scores were especially impressive in the single-threaded benchmarks. Scoring 107 in audio encoding and 156 in image editing means it is faster than many more expensive processors, such as the dual-core Athlon 64 X2 4200+ and Intel Core 2 Duo E6300.

Our multithreaded video-encoding test takes advantage of two processor cores, however, so the Athlon 64 3800+ fell behind here with a score of 110.

While the 3500+ looks increasingly slow, AMD's single-core Athlon 64 3800+ is cheap and ideal for single-threaded applications such as games. The dual-core Athlon 64 X2 4200+ or Pentium D 805 are better bets for video encoding, however.