AMD comes back with a vengeance!
 |
| The AMD AthlonXP 3000+
Barton Core processor with 512KB L2 Cache is currently priced at
$588USD. |
Throughout the Athlon era AMD has been continually challenging Intel for the "performance
crown" and it seems they've achieved the goal of
being "Number 1" yet again thanks to the new AthlonXP 3000+. Yes I
know AMD's IPC is much higher but I still think it's pretty amazing that the
chip is so fast considering it has a real clock speed disadvantage of almost 1
GHz!
The AthlonXP 3000+ simply smashed through all the
benchmarks we threw at it - other than 3DMark03 which is mainly videocard
limited. We did experience some odd 3D results when the AthlonXP 3000+ was
teamed up with a Radeon 9700 Pro and the DFI AD77 Infinity motherboard, but
we're pretty sure that the lower than expected 3D performance is related to a
driver issue rather than a hardware conflict.
In terms of overclocking, the Barton core picks off
right where the Thoroughbred B left off and we were able to hit 2.47GHz while
maintaining 100% stability on air cooling. With a Prometeia Phase Change
cooler I'm sure 2.7GHz is easily possible!
The Barton core is basically the Thoroughbred
with an extra 256KB L2 cache to give the processor a grand total of 512KB
of L2. The extra L2 is obviously helpful and gives a nice performance
boost when you're working on programs which are very processor intensive like Photoshop, or
playing your favorite games (as long as you're not videocard limited).
I guess the only down side to the AthlonXP 3000+ is that since it is now AMD's flagship processor, it commands an
equally lofty price tag. As of this writing, an AthlonXP 3000+ will cost about
$588 USD, just $29 less than Intel's top end HyperThreading Pentium 4
3.06GHz chip. With the Athlon64 still some ways off we'd all better get use to
the Barton, it's going to be with us for quite a while but that's not a bad thing
by any means. ;-)
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