Fifth-generation Athlon Barton-core processors were released in early 2003. While not operating at higher clock rates than Thoroughbred-core processors, they featured an increased L2 cache, and later models had an increased 200 MHz (400 MT/s) front side bus.. The Thorton core, a blend of Thoroughbred and Barton, was a later variant of the Barton with half of the L2 cache disabled. The Barton was used to officially introduce a higher 400 MT/s bus clock for the Socket A platform, which was used to gain some Barton models more efficiency. By this point with the Barton, the four-year-old Athlon EV6 bus architecture had scaled to its limit and required a redesign to exceed the performance of newer Intel processors. By 2003, the Pentium 4 had become more than competitive with AMD's processors,. and Barton only saw a small performance increase over the Thoroughbred-B it derived from, insufficient to outperform the Pentium 4. The K7-derived Athlons such as Barton were replaced in September 2003 by the Athlon 64 family, which featured an on-chip memory controller and a new HyperTransport bus.
fifth-generation athlon barton-core processors were released in early 2003 while not operating at higher clock rates than thoroughbred-core processors they featured an increased l2 cache and later models had an increased 200 mhz (400 mt/s) front side bus the thorton core a blend of thoroughbred and barton was a later variant of the barton with half of the l2 cache disabled the barton was used to officially introduce a higher 400 mt/s bus clock for the socket a platform which was used to gain some barton models more efficiency by this point with the barton the four-year-old athlon ev6 bus architecture had scaled to its limit and required a redesign to exceed the performance of newer intel processors by 2003 the pentium 4 had become more than competitive with amd's processors and barton only saw a small performance increase over the thoroughbred-b it derived from insufficient to outperform the pentium 4 the k7-derived athlons such as barton were replaced in september 2003 by the athlon 64 family which featured an on-chip memory controller and a new hypertransport bus