Digital Home Thoughts: Crunching Data With An AthlonFX-53

"Today AMD is launching the second CPU in the Athlon FX series. With the roll out of the FX-53, clocked at 2.4GHz, the FX-51, clocked at 2.2GHz will be retired from service. While there will certainly be some overlap of the two CPUs in the market place, don't expect much. Few FX-53s have been seen in the wild as of yet and from what we have been told, there are very few on the way to retailers in PIB (Processor In a Box) form. With that said, do not expect the release of the FX-53 to force any big price dips in the FX-51 part. The AthlonFX will remain the flagship CPU with flagship prices to match. If you are looking for the full run down on the AthlonFX processors, please check out our leading article on the subject. Today we are going to focus solely on the performance of the CPU with as little verbiage as possible..."

Next to gaming, crunching digital media (whether it be a 10 GB video file or a 6 MP image) is one of the most power-hungry tasks you can do on your computer. The Athlon FX CPU is neck in neck with the Pentium 4 3.4 Ghz Extreme Edition CPU from Intel, despite running a full 1200 Mhz slower. Unfortunately, it bears the same ungodly price tag as the P4EE, so only pick one up if your desire for performance exceeds your desire to save money.