E4 Stepping in Athlon 64's?

ElementalDragon

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Ok..... i'm kinda wondering...... What the hell is this "E4 Stepping" that's featured on the Athlon 64's with CG in the model number? is it one helluva performance boost over the ones without E4 stepping? is it a relatively noticable boost? is it something you'd only notice if you were a ______? really stumped as to what the difference is, if any.
 
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.
 
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Why the talk about E4 when E6 has been out since May? lol :p
 
i'm just wondering if it's that noticable of an improvement over the ones that seem to NOT have E4 Stepping? i mean.... it's only $1 more on Newegg for the apparently E4 Stepping one...... but wtf is affected by it? is it for like...... better handling of memory/memory bandwidth? better speed for gaming?
 
Umm, yeah. I bought a Venice in October and it's an E6. Probably hard not to find one. Don't expect any significant improvement from earlier steps though. They are just tweaks.
 
Just improved stability and the process is smaller and a few other changes, nothing dramatic.
 

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Also Hi EP and people. I found this place again while looking through a oooollllllldddd backup. I have filled over 10TB and was looking at my collection of antiques. Any bids on the 500Mhz Win 95 fix?
Any of the SP crew still out there?
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Just did some crude math and I apparently joined almost 18yrs ago, how is that possible???
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