Athlon 64 3000+ EOL'ed, New 3200+ and 3500+ E4 Stepping

For those of you who watch the Athlon 64 market very closely, you may have noticed the sudden dry up of lower clocked E3 Venice CPUs. According to industry insiders, AMD appears to have discontinued shipping the Athlon 64 3000+ to major retailers, although AMD roadmaps predicted this far in advanced. However, sources have now indicated that AMD has also stopped shipping the Athlon 64 E3 Venice 3200+ and 3500+ Socket 939 processors too. Higher clocked Athlon 64 chips, like the 3800+, are in allocation.

The halted shipments of the Athlon 64 3200+ and 3500+ are a bit of a surprise to most merchants we've talked to. AMD is already phasing in new "E4" chips, and pre-orders are already cropping up at various merchants. The E4 stepping has generally been reserved for San Diego, Venus, and Troy cores in the past, but the new stepping may steal some of the limelight away from AMD's exceptional Opteron 939 Venus since only the cache sizes are different now. Our price engine has already picked up the Athlon 64 3200+ and the Athlon 64 3500+ E4:

AMD Athlon 64 (939) 3200+ 512KB Venice
AMD Athlon 64 (939) 3500+ 512KB Venice

The new E4 chips carry the "CG" code name in the SKU. For example, the new 3200+ retail kit is labeled as ADA3200CGBOX. Don't let this confuse you with the "CG" stepping of older Hammer SKUs; those were labeled as "AR" and "AS" in the OPN (SKU).