Currently, there are two 64 bit options, the Athlon 64 and the Athlon FX. For the vast majority of users, the Athlon FX is out of the question, thanks to the $700+ price tag. Among Athlon 64s there are also two options. When Athlon 64 came out there was only one core, Clawhammer. However with the 3000+ comes the new Newcastle core. The sole difference is in cache amount. A Clawhammer CPU, what the 3200+ and 3400+ are, includes 1MB of L2 cache. The Newcastle powered 3000+ contains 512k of L2 cache. Performance wise, most testing has shown that halving the cache does not translate to less performance. As a matter of fact the 3000+ does a great job of keeping up with this big-cache brethren. What the lower cache does lower is the price. A $200 price tag puts the 3000+ in the reach of even the stingier budget system buyers. So today we will be taking a lok at just how much better the 3000+ is than the last generation of AMD CPUs, and whether or not now is the time to hop on the 64-bit bandwagon.