Final Verdict

AMD Athlon 64 FX-60

FiringSquad says:

First things first—the Athlon 64 FX-60 is a fast processor. Performance in content creation software is superb and the one game patched with multi-threaded support really does help showcase what the technology can do.

Is it the “Ultimate Processor for PC Enthusiasts” as AMD’s press presentation claims? In the cases illustrated above, yes. In just as many others, no. You see, there are really two schools of thought here. On one hand, let’s say you like to think ahead. A planner will buy the FX-60 without a second thought because as new games and programs come out, there’s a better chance that an FX-60 will demonstrate better performance at the hands of multi-threading. Never mind the 200 MHz loss today—a little overclocking should take care of that nicely.

On the other hand, if you’re living for today’s games (a majority of which are not threaded), then the extra stock frequency is preferred. The threaded game infrastructure just isn’t there yet and this has been marketed as a gaming CPU since its inception. You’ll probably have a better chance at hitting 3 GHz with the FX-57, anyway.

In either case, you have a new socket interface coming down the pipe in just a few months, which usually warrants a holding pattern no matter how exciting existing hardware may or may not be. And since there’s no clear-cut winner between AMD’s two top offerings here, you’d probably be best off waiting for Socket AM2 and hoping for a more defined leader.

Of course, it’s admirable that AMD is keeping both chips alive and giving enthusiasts a much-desired choice. Both the Athlon 64 FX-57 and Athlon 64 FX-60 continue to dominate the game tests, easily muscling past Intel’s most advanced effort. Given the last two high-end processor launches, it’s pretty clear that Intel will need its re-architected Conroe core before it will be able to hang with AMD at the high-end.