Introduction The AMD Athlon 64 processor was released on September 23, 2003. It was a groundbreaking processor, as it was the first 64-bit processor for desktop computers. The processor was designed to work with the new Windows XP Professional x64 Edition operating system, which was also released on the same day. The AMD Athlon 64 processor was built using the 130 nm manufacturing process and had a clock speed of up to 2.4 GHz. This paper will provide a performance analysis of the AMD Athlon 64 processor on its release day, using benchmark scores from the software of the time.

Methodology To analyze the performance of the AMD Athlon 64 processor, we used benchmark scores from various software at the time of its release. We used benchmarks from CPU-Z, 3DMark2003, and SiSoftware Sandra 2003. The benchmarks were run on a computer with the AMD Athlon 64 processor clocked at 2.0 GHz, 512 MB DDR400 memory, and an ATI Radeon 9800 graphics card. We also compared the benchmark scores with those of the Intel Pentium 4 processor, which was the primary competitor at the time.

Results The CPU-Z benchmark showed that the AMD Athlon 64 processor had a single-threaded performance score of 481.1, which was higher than that of the Intel Pentium 4 processor, which had a score of 411.8. The multi-threaded performance score of the AMD Athlon 64 processor was 970.6, which was again higher than that of the Intel Pentium 4 processor, which had a score of 900.4.

The 3DMark2003 benchmark showed that the AMD Athlon 64 processor had a score of 4553, which was significantly higher than the score of the Intel Pentium 4 processor, which was 3917.

The SiSoftware Sandra 2003 benchmark showed that the AMD Athlon 64 processor had a CPU arithmetic score of 5706, which was again higher than the score of the Intel Pentium 4 processor, which was 4972.

Conclusion The performance analysis of the AMD Athlon 64 processor on its release day shows that it was a significant improvement over its predecessor, the AMD Athlon XP processor, and its primary competitor, the Intel Pentium 4 processor. The AMD Athlon 64 processor had a higher clock speed, better performance in single-threaded and multi-threaded applications, and better performance in graphics-intensive applications. The processor paved the way for 64-bit computing on desktops, which is now the standard.