After doing some reading up on it prior to buying my A64, I bought one of these, which use the Venice core.
Basically, among other things, it includes the following:
- SSE3 (Prior versions of the Athlon 64 only included SSE and SSE2, Venice includes 11 of the 13 SSE3 instructions or something to that effect. The two it doesn't include relate to hyperthreading, and don't apply as the core in question isn't dual proc...)
- An improved memory controller (the third revision to this); which gives some benefits over Winchester and Newcastle, such as greater memory compatibility, compatibility for mis-matched DIMMs, I think was one listing, and the like)
- Also features improvements to the efficency of the memory controller (aka more efficient use of the BW available for memory access). The end result being that with greater compatibility, and less stringent memory timings, the overall performance was still a bit better due to enhancements to it's efficiency.
I'd have to pull an article again to get the exact listing as it was presented; albeit from some indications AMD was in some ways playing down the improvements with this core; quietly releasing it. I looked over this stuff prior to deciding which A64 to get back in October.