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Date: |
December 11th,
2002 |
Type: |
Review |
Supplier: |
AMD |
Author: |
mayhem |
RRP: |
$685
AUS (inc GST) |
Test System
AMD were nice enough to supply an almost complete testing solution, which
made it much easier to push the XP 2600+ (although this system is probably
what they recommend as an ideal performance system, it still gives performance
readings for system specifications that most people aim for today).
The test system we
used was the AMD supplied setup which comprised of the following high
quality components:
AMD Athlon XP 2600+
with supplied Taisol HSF
Epox EP-8KEA+ KT333 Mainboard
2 x 256MB TwinMOS PC2700 Memory (Winbond Modules)
We used the ATi Radeon
9700 Pro 128MB as our benchmark graphics card for this review as the price
keeps dropping for this card and with the upcoming release of the NV30
we wanted to see the true potential of a gaming system of today's standard.
The system was installed
with Windows XP Professional which included Service Pack 1, the latest
VIA 4 in 1 drivers (1.44v) and the latest ATi Catalyst drivers (2.4) for
compatibility and stability.
The usual array
of performance and gaming benchmarks were used and you can see the results
with and without overclocking the system here:
3DMark 2001SE
As you can see by
the above results, the system is capable out of the box of achieving close
to 14,000 3D Marks. The potential of the CPU is greatly shown by the increase
in performance given by a small overclock.
PCMark 2002
- CPU Test
PCMark 2002 Pro CPU
Test gives a bit of an indication of the "number crunching"
power of a CPU.
SiSoft Sandra
2003
The above results
show a good comparison between the AMD Athlon XP 2600+ and its closest
Intel Pentium 4 rivals. From the CPU Arithmetic Benchmarks that the ALU
(Arithmetic Logic Unit) of the AMD chip is far more powerful than even
the 2.66 GHz Northwood Pentium 4, even the FPU (Floating Point Unit) of
the AMD chips is above spec of its Intel equivalents. Overall we can see
that the XP 2600+ is a very close comparable processor to the Intel Pentium
2.66 GHz CPU, which shows just why AMD had chosen their "P-Rating"
system (eg. 2600 ~= 2660 etc).
NEXT: More
Testing and Conclusion
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