Winchester, Newcastle, Clawhammer - Socket 939 Athlon 64 3500+, whatis the difference in the chips?

Okay, I'm getting around to building a new system as my current one
(though it served me well for 5 years) has become hopelessly dated.
I'm considering building an Athlon 64 based system, with the 939 socket
as it looks to be the one with a future, going ahead and going PCI-E,
and probably an Nforce4 ultra chipset as I had good luck with the
Nforce2 chipset machines I built for others & very bad experiences with
Via chipsets outside of the 600 series.

I hope my luck with Nforce chipsets continues, but if there is any real
negative to the Nforce4 I don't know about let me know, eh? Although
the DDR sockets are a bit close together for my liking, I'm probably
going to go with the MSI K8N-NEO4. I don't think the memory spacing
will be much of an issue as I'll probably only put 2 512MB sticks in it.
I can't see myself needing more than 1GB any time soon.

Now the confusion. I'm looking at processors to put in it. There are
some obvious differences in the cores and performance in the 754
versions of the Athlon 64, but they have become much less obvious in the
socket 939 versions, and I'm having a great deal of difficulty finding
accurate information.

What exactly is the difference between the:

Athlon 64 3500+ Socket 939 64x64KB L1 512KB L2 Newcastle Core
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...103-460&depa=1

Athlon 64 3500+ Socket 939 64x64KB L1 512KB L2 Winchester Core
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...103-494&depa=1

Athlon 64 3500+ Socket 939 64x64KB L1 512KB L2 Clawhammer Core
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...103-514&depa=1

They all have the same .13 process, same cache, I assume they all have
dual channel memory controllers as this was supposed to be a feature of
the 939 socket. The only difference I see is the lower voltage of the
Winchester (which I'm told is a slightly better overclocker than the
Newcastle).

Shopping around a bit I can get the Newcastle & Clawhammer for the same
price (ZipZoomFly has the Newcastle with heatsink for the same price as
Newegg has the Clawhammer). The Winchester is always a bit higher, so I
assume it has to have some advantage over these two? If I have to pick
between the Clawhammer & Newcastle for budget reasons, what is my best
bet for performance?

Going to AMD for information proved fruitless for me. Anyone know of
any benchmarks comparing them or a chart of the differences between them?


Any help sincerely appreciated,

-Timbertea

I just asked almost this same question a couple of hours ago. I know
nothing
about the clawhammer, but the Winchester is 90nm as opposed to the 130nm
Newcastle. The links below were the two I was given: bottom line is that
the 90nm runs cooler and when overclocked seems to run SLIGHTLY
quicker, thus higher demand, thus high prices.


http://www.bleedinedge.com/reviews/p...4/ap64_01.html

http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardwar...le.php/3453401


Timbertea wrote:
Okay, I'm getting around to building a new system as my current one
(though it served me well for 5 years) has become hopelessly dated.
I'm considering building an Athlon 64 based system, with the 939
socket as it looks to be the one with a future, going ahead and going
PCI-E, and probably an Nforce4 ultra chipset as I had good luck with
the Nforce2 chipset machines I built for others & very bad
experiences with Via chipsets outside of the 600 series.

I hope my luck with Nforce chipsets continues, but if there is any
real negative to the Nforce4 I don't know about let me know, eh? Although
the DDR sockets are a bit close together for my liking, I'm
probably going to go with the MSI K8N-NEO4. I don't think the memory
spacing will be much of an issue as I'll probably only put 2 512MB
sticks in it. I can't see myself needing more than 1GB any time soon.

Now the confusion. I'm looking at processors to put in it. There are
some obvious differences in the cores and performance in the 754
versions of the Athlon 64, but they have become much less obvious in
the socket 939 versions, and I'm having a great deal of difficulty
finding accurate information.

What exactly is the difference between the:

Athlon 64 3500+ Socket 939 64x64KB L1 512KB L2 Newcastle Core
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...103-460&depa=1

Athlon 64 3500+ Socket 939 64x64KB L1 512KB L2 Winchester Core
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...103-494&depa=1

Athlon 64 3500+ Socket 939 64x64KB L1 512KB L2 Clawhammer Core
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...103-514&depa=1

They all have the same .13 process, same cache, I assume they all have
dual channel memory controllers as this was supposed to be a feature
of the 939 socket. The only difference I see is the lower voltage of
the Winchester (which I'm told is a slightly better overclocker than
the Newcastle).

Shopping around a bit I can get the Newcastle & Clawhammer for the
same price (ZipZoomFly has the Newcastle with heatsink for the same
price as Newegg has the Clawhammer). The Winchester is always a bit
higher, so I assume it has to have some advantage over these two? If I
have to pick between the Clawhammer & Newcastle for budget
reasons, what is my best bet for performance?

Going to AMD for information proved fruitless for me. Anyone know of
any benchmarks comparing them or a chart of the differences between
them?

Any help sincerely appreciated,

-Timbertea