Yikes, it seems like only a short time ago that we reviewed AMD's Athlon 64 3200+, one of the the fastest AMD processors available in mid-July 2003. That processor already went mainstream and thus is relatively cheap to get, in the meanwhile things have changed for sure. Athlon 64 is the keyword here and back in June 2004 the first Socket 939 processors, the Athlon 64 FX-53, 3800+ and 3500+, were released.

My prognosis and semi-conclusion in that 3200+ review was that I stated we'd be seeing 64-bit desktop CPU's quite soon and that did surely happen. We are still at the threshold of actual 64-bit computing though. This year it's all going to happen. Since this site is targeted at the enthusiast gamers among you we just had to equip ourselves with an AMD Athlon 64 platform. And after presenting Guru3D.com to AMD with my very fine communications skills (pleaaaaaase AMD get me a CPU...) they provided us site with an AMD Athlon 64 4000+, which of course is the processor we'll be testing today.