NEW AMD performance rating for single core Athlon 64 based on the tests done in the 2 topics: battle of the platforms socket 754 and battle of the platforms socket 939.
Athlon 64 2800 socket 754 represents the baseline and all other models ratings are based on it.

AMD rating – NEW PR rating
1. Athlon 64 4000 socket 939 – Athlon 64 3800 socket 939
2. Athlon 64 3700 socket 754 – Athlon 64 3600 = Athlon 68 3800 socket 939/Athlon 64 3700 – Athlon 64 3600
3. Athlon 64 3400 socket 754 = Athlon 64 3500 socket 939 – Athlon 64 3400
4. Athlon 64 3200 socket 754 = Athlon 64 3200 socket 939
5. Athlon 64 3000 socket 754 = Athlon 64 3000 socket 939
6. Athlon 64 2800 socket 754

Chapter 2: an investigation into dual core processors and PCI-express platforms for socket 939.

Part 1: while in the first chapter I used both AGP and PCI-express chipsets for socket 939, for dual cores only PCI-express chipsets will be featured.
But you can have a dual core in Abit AV8 with an AGP card for example!
Yes, you can, however the performance will be exactly the same as with a single core with the same frequency and L2 cache. You can not play the vast majority games released after 2004 at max settings with an AGP card so it makes no sense to test an Athlon 64 X2 with an radeon X1950 pro for example.
I found no game from 2004 and earlier that can take advantage of a dual core; most games from 2005 are single threaded only - there are some rare exceptions. And no, radeon 3850 can not play 2005 games at max details, so AGP is dropped. Also in order to take advantage of Athlon 64 X2 a strong video card is required, far better than anything available on AGP.

In Chapter 2 I'm hoping to see Command Rate 1T working with 3GB DDR400 RAM and GTX 280. Ideally a 2.2Ghz CPU, 1MB L2 cache not essential as there are many CPUs out there with 512KB L2.

When I tried GTX 285 in s754 the performance uplift was minimal, like 1fps, the system is heavily CPU bottlenecked. These more powerful GPUs are a good fit for s939 X2.

GTX 570/660 should also work well, but require the latest driver due to regressions in period correct drivers for dx8 in Windows XP. They are super cheap, nobody wants them.

Unfortunately my GTX 280, even after changing the memory pads and putting fresh MX4 refuses to run under 80C under load and turns the whole system turns into a furnace! I can not even touch the card after shutting down the system - I do not remember anyone complaining of temperature problems with this card! Geforce 200 series is the last series that can use forceware 197.77 - any later driver messes up with the games!
I am now trying to investigate the command rate with 4 1gb corsair 3500LL pro memory modules but first I must overcome the video card problem.

nd22 wrote on 2026-08-14, 08:47:

Unfortunately my GTX 280, even after changing the memory pads and putting fresh MX4 refuses to run under 80C under load and turns the whole system turns into a furnace! I can not even touch the card after shutting down the system - I do not remember anyone complaining of temperature problems with this card! Geforce 200 series is the last series that can use forceware 197.77 - any later driver messes up with the games!
I am now trying to investigate the command rate with 4 1gb corsair 3500LL pro memory modules but first I must overcome the video card problem.

Post the feedback here definitely; I was planning to put 4x 512MB BH5 UTT on my rig.

197.77 shouldn't be strictly required, as I said you should be able to use newer GPUs as long as you use one of the last drivers for Windows XP. Early 2xx drivers were broken for early Windows XP games and not fixed for a very long time. So instead of GTX 280 you should be able to use super cheap GTX 660.

If GTX 280 overheats even with 100% fan and repasting then there is something wrong with the card. Some GTX 260 came with 2 fan design, the heatsink may fit on GTX 280.

I seriously doubt 4x 1gb corsair 3500LL will work at Command Rate 1T. You will probably need to do binning for your 1GB and 512MB sticks for frequency/timings on another board so that you don't risk your precious Abit board, similarly to what I did with Qimonda. It's pretty simple - find one good stick then do a quick test which other stick works with the same frequency/timings/1T (just boot/quick 10 minutes memtest). Always default voltage. Then the best sticks may work. You will use them at DDR400 in Abit.

In part 2 I will evaluate the performance rating of Athlon 64 X2 as I got all the models.

For now let's concentrate on Part 1: comparison of different PCI-express platforms for socket 939 using Athlon 64 X2.
While there are many boards with different chipsets available for socket 939 the most important player is NVIDIA.

VIA has 2 chipsets supporting PCI-express: K8T890 and K8T900. K8T890 is the swan song of VIA chipsets. It appears on numerous boards and is the only PCI-express chipset from VIA to be manufactured in large quantities. K8T900 is not implemented in any boards, nobody was interested in VIA anymore by this point.

A new player appeared - ATI - which looks promising, however they experience severe problems with USB and SATA implementation - so severe that ATI used south-bridges from ULI to overcome this problem.

ULI made 2 chipsets supporting PCI-express: M1695 and M1697. These are the final chipsets manufactured by ULI before the company was purchased by NVIDIA. M1695 supports natively both AGP and PCi-express and the one and only model is ASROCK 939Dual-SATA2/VSTA - a collector's item because of its ability to run both AGP and PCI-express concurrently. M1697 makes an appearance on Epox and ASROCK boards, however by this time no enthusiasm remains for ULI.

SIS is still barely hanging in there - there are boards with SIS 761GX for socket 754 and AM2 (!!) but they are all low end, cheap models that one should not look for when building a socket 939 with an Athlon X2. SIS 756 has been used by Asus and again ASROCK in 1 model by each manufacturer. This also marked the end for SIS chipsets for AMD CPU's.

Unlike earlier AGP platforms when we have so many chipsets, the transition to PCI-express during the socket 939 years was accompanied by a drastic reduction in chipset manufacturers. Only 2 survived this tumultuous era: NVIDIA and ATI which ended up being purchased by AMD.