AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Venice

The AMD Athlon 3500+ based on the Venice core is a huge boon for those looking to run a large amount of memory on their system thanks to the improved memory controller. Overclockers will also be impressed with the ease that it can be overclocked with good quality matching components.

6/6/06 – It has been some time since AMD released the Athlon 64 line of processors, but the recent Venice core was highly anticipated. Previous versions of the Athlon 64 had problems running four memory sticks at one time. Even if it could run the four memory modules, they would be run at the reduced 333MHz memory bus. The new core now can properly run four memory modules at the proper 400MHz speed, but it still has the limit of 2 commands per clock rather than the 1 for best performance.

Testing of the Athlon 64 3500+ Venice was conducted using the DFI LanParty UT NF4 SLI-DR motherboard and a pair of OCZ Value VX 512MB PC3200 DDR modules. In addition, a pair of Corsair XMS3200C2 512MB PC3200 DDR was used to test four memory modules. A variety of applications and benchmarks were run across the processor.

Performance for the 3500+ processor was very strong allowing it to do well in multimedia, gaming and productivity applications. It is particularly strong processor for those looking to do gaming. The memory in dual channel configurations does very well.

Overclocking is not officially supported by the manufacturers and will void any warranties, but this doesn't stop people from getting extra performance out of their processors. During testing, the 3500+ was able to be overclocked from 2.2GHz up to a strong 2.475GHz without too much effort. The highest stable clock achieved was 2.585GHz. This makes the 3500+ attractive to those looking to overclock.