With AMD's 0.13 micron core Thoroughbred-based Athlon XP's we should see a some nice healthy boosts in speeds over the next one or two quarters. Stock speed performance is where you would expect it, and is quite good. Overclockers will tend to find the T-Bred a little less friendly however.

Thermally, the new AthlonXP T-Breds produce almost as much heat as their 0.18 micron Palomino counter parts, and with a smaller contact area proper cooling becomes even more of a concern.

Performance of the processor is excellent (as we've become accustomed to seeing from the Athlon) but it is still not quite enough to beat a highly clocked Pentium.

Of course as Intel clock speeds near the 3.0GHz mark, AMD has shifted their focus towards the value role where AMD based computers trounce out Intel in just about every case.

As a performance enthusiast I'll be honest here; I was caught up in the hype before the T-Bred release about how well it might overclock. After the initial wave of reviews, my enthusiasm settled down a bit but I felt confident I could still push the AthlonXP T-Bred higher then the other guys. The XP2000+ T-Bred we tested was able to overclock to 1.9 GHz, but then again so could a XP2100+ on the Palomino core. While overclocking only counts for part of the equation in how well a new processor is received, we can always hope that AMD engineers will lay things down in the future with an eye towards the performance users, and the mainstream public evenly.

The T-Bred is a good processor compared to the more expensive Intel offerings, and would probably be a better choice for a gamers system. AMD still has a lot of work to do ramping up the high end speed of the AthlonXP T-Bred so that they can equally compete with the latest chips from Intel on the Northwood core. Hopefully some further optimization with the 0.13micron process will allow AMD engineers to squeeze even more performance from the T-bred core. For the moment, the T-Bred Athlon XP offers users a small increase in performance over the equivalent Palomino core, but the true colour is really only visible when overclocked... the Barton will be the real test of 0.13micron, but that is still a ways away. Most significantly, the AthlonXP 2000+/2100+ offers a pretty good value for consumers, but that may be tempered with the louder cooling solutions it will require.