AMD Athlon 64

The AMD Athlon 64 is the successor to the Athlon XP. It was released in 2003 with the K8 architecture, and is notably the first 64-bit x86 processor for the general public, appearing soon after their server counterpart Opteron.

There are many variants and several generations of the Athlon 64. On Desktop, they were firstly available on the Socket 754, then 939 and finally AM2. The chips were manufactured with processes from 130 to 65 nm.

Since the Athlon 64 competed against Pentium 4s and were faster at a same frequency, AMD used estimations of the equivalent MHz for the name of the processors, so an Athlon 64 3200+ would perform similarly as a Pentium 4 3.2 GHz (while actually running at 2 GHz). The practice has been done since their 5x86 processors.

In 2005, Dual Core versions appeared with the Athlon 64 X2 brand. The Athlon 64 processors in general were suceeded in 2007 by the AMD Phenom, based on the new K10 architecture.

Operating System Support

• An Athlon 64 will by itself not prevent any x86 Windows and any x64 Windows until 8 from running. SSE2 and NX are notably available on all models.
• Windows 8.1 and 10 x64 and 11 require the CMPXCHG16b and LAHF/SAHF features, which only later Athlon 64s on Socket AM2 provide. We are not aware of any way to bypass these requirements and any such Windows running on Socket 754 or 939. If they are met, these Operating Systems can be installed and run normally, though the LabConfig manipulation needs to be done during the Windows 11 installation to bypass the TPM and Secure Boot Checks.
• Any Linux Distribution should work on an Athlon 64.