Tom's Hardware just released their CPU benchmarks for the new Athlon 64 FX-53 and the Pentium 4 3.4 GHz Extreme Edition. The P4 did its wonders in multimedia functions, but the FX-53 simply took off in the gaming and entertainment benchmarks. The FX-53 literally pulled ahead of the P4 in every single test (minus the speed-intensive multimedia apps).
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040318/index.html
Tom's Hardware also reports that the FX-53 comes factory overclockable without heating up much! The FX-51 had big-time heat issues when overclocked, but THG were able to push the FX-53 from 2.4 GHz to 2.6 GHz with little heat increase.
The chip also debuts for $730, sharply below the P4's $1000 price tag. 30% better for gaming and 30% cheaper. A good time for AMD gamers!
-Lasereth