The lines, they are a changin’. With the introduction of the AMD Athlon 64 FX 70, the company is no longer applying the FX moniker to new Socket AM2 processors. Going forward, the FX line will include the dual-core, dual-processor kits known as 4X4, which currently use a Socket 1207 layout. The Athlon 64 X2 6000+ is the next step in AMD’s mainstream line and at 3GHz it’s the fastest AM2 processor around. That clock speed puts the 6000+ in front of the 2.8GHz Athlon 64 FX-62, as well. The 6000+ boasts 2MB of L2 cache (1MB per core) and 256KB of L1 cache (128KB per core). As with the FX-62, it supports memory at DDR2-800 speeds.

As with other X2 processors, the X2 6000+ has a locked multiplier. It wasn’t able to bump the clock speed particularly high: It topped out at 3.12GHz. The processor’s voltage starts at 1.35 to 1.4V, but It found that it couldn’t overclock very much without some extra juice. In fact, It wasn’t able to reach a stable 3.12GHz without jumping to 1.55V, one step below the top voltage that the Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe offers. Used stock cooling to test the X2 6000+ at stock and overclocked settings, so expect that better cooling systems will yield higher overclocks. Even so, it looks like overclockers aren’t going to see a huge jump from the CPU’s default settings. AMD tells me that the X2 6000+ offers better performance in many applications than the FX-62, and I agree. The 6000+ completed my Dr. DivX and WinRAR tests faster than the FX-62 in a nearly identical system. (Only the video cards differed: The X2 6000+’s system boasted a 1GB Evga Nvidia GeForce 7950 GX2, whereas the FX-62 relied on a 512MB Gigabyte Nvidia GeForce 7900 GTX.) The X2 6000+ also bested the 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 in 3DMark06 (8183 and 8031, espectively) and produced a slightly faster Dr. DivX score, but the Intel processor completed WinRAR 23 seconds faster. Overall, the X2 6000+ is a pretty solid processor and about $70 less expensive than Intel’s E6700. If you’re not ready to make the jump away from your socket AM2 motherboard, the X2 6000+ isn’t a bad upgrade.