|
|
Date: |
December 11th,
2002 |
| Type: |
Review |
| Supplier: |
AMD |
| Author: |
mayhem |
| RRP: |
$685
AUS (inc GST) |
Quake
3 Arena Demo
Quake 3 Arena, although
an old game, still gives a good reference benchmark that can be compared
to many other reviews. As you can see from the above benchmarks the system
performs with older games, giving many more Frames Per Second than you
could notice.
Unreal Tournament
2003 Demo
Above are the test
results from running Unreal Tournament 2003 Demo Benchmark for a number
of screen resolutions. As you can see, even at 1600x1200 in the Botmatch,
the test system is able to average 60 frames per second at stock clock
and up to almost 64 frames per second when overclocked using 142 front
side bus. This gives you and idea of the extra power the XP 2600+ has,
as the Botmatch test relies a fair bit on CPU power.
As a general rule
for stability and simply as a burn in test for the XP 2600+ we ran Folding@Home
overnight between testing of the system to make sure that it was running
fine for normal usage and at the full overclock speed. Unless the system
ran perfectly stable with an overnight full load after benchmarking then
we didn't consider it worthy of receiving that rating. Most people will
be happy to know that at 145 MHz FSB we were able to run the system without
any major problems, although 3D Mark didn't like it at all.
Results
From first boot the system was extremely quick, it put the older XP 1800+
@ 1.61 GHz to shame unfortunately. When first powering on the system without
any RAID usage the post screens and BIOS information would be completely
missed and the first thing to appear would be the Windows XP loading screen,
now that's quick.
Another great improvement, which was a long time coming, is the operating
temperature of the XP's. The new XP 2600+ @ 2400 MHz ran 49 degrees at
idle and only increased to 53 degrees at full load, compares to my XP
1800+ @ 1610 MHz which runs 49 degrees at idle and 57 degrees, this makes
people feel a lot easier about overclocking the XP and also allows for
a more reliable system. We noticed the XP 2600+ running standard FSB of
133 MHz would sit around 37 degrees quite constantly, this is really good
to see as alot of people didn't like the heat caused by the older AMD
chips.
Both normal usage
and gaming performance have increased considerably with this new processor.
The XP 2600+ combined with a decent video card provide more than enough
power for today's games.
Future
With the next step for the Athlon, core codenamed "Barton",
there will be an on-die cache increase to 512K. This extra on-die
cache should give the Athlon a bit of a speed boost, it will be good if
we can see these chips out before then end of the year, but its looking
more like a 2003 release.
Another
interesting improvement for the Athlon will be the increase from 266 MHz
overall FSB to 333 MHz with most boards with KT400 supporting it and a
large selection of KT333 boards being flashable to support it.
Overall
the Athlon XP chips have a list of improvements ahead all will be needed
to retain they're reputation for an affordable and powerful CPU for today's
PC systems.
All
this is reason enough for yet another naming convention to be introduced
by AMD. The original "P-rating" system that was introduced
with the Palomino core which increased the CPU naming by 100 for every
66 MHz in clock speed. This was to counter Intel's "real" megahertz
figures, but lets face it, we all know by now that a processor performance
cannot be analysed solely in terms of pure clock rates. The new "P-Rating"
system seems to increase the CPU naming by 100 for every 133 MHz in clock
speed, which leads to the following table for estimated future CPU releases:
| Processor (Thoroughbred "B") |
Clock
frequency |
Model
Number |
| AMD
Athlon XP 2400+ |
2000
MHz |
2400 |
| AMD
Athlon XP 2600+ |
2133
MHz |
2600 |
| AMD
Athlon XP 2800+ |
2266
MHz |
2800 |
| AMD
Athlon XP 3000+ |
2400
MHz |
3000 |
| AMD
Athlon XP 3200+ |
2533
MHz |
3200 |
| AMD
Athlon XP 3400+ |
2666
MHz |
3400 |
| AMD
Athlon XP 3600+ |
2800
MHz |
3600 |
* table courteously
of Toms
Hardware
Conclusion
From the results it is easy to see that the XP 2600+ is a real muscle
power processor and now that it is available here in Australia it should
be extremely popular for all those enthusiasts. Based on current
pricing the XP 2600+ ($685 AUS inc GST) looks like a sure winner compared
to Intel rival (P4 2.66 GHz ~ $705 AUS inc GST).
Pros
- Higher Clock Speed
- Cooler Operating
Temperature
- Overclockability
Cons
- Price (as with
any top of the line CPU)
Score: 9.5 / 10
All points taken into consideration
we have no hesitation in calling the AMD Athlon XP 2600+ the best CPU
for gamers because of its cost vs. performance results and the level of
overclockability. It also takes out the Editors Choice awards:
Big thanks to all the people at Hosworth
PR (especially Elizabeth Dawson and Skye Eggleton) and AMD for supplying
this review kit, we hope to see much more AMD products in the future.
More Reviews
You
can find some more AMD Athlon XP 2600+ reviews at the following sites:
www.hexus.net
www.hothardware.com
www.tomshardware.com
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