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AMD Athlon XP 3200+ Released
SpinnerBait writes "AMD took the wraps off their next speed bump with the Barton core, the Athlon
XP 3200+. This CPU runs with a 400MHz Front Side Bus at 2.2GHz and is
targeted at competing toe to toe with Intel's latest P4. The
benchmarks and review over at HotHardware, look pretty good but Intel's
3GHz/800MHz FSB P4 variant seems to squeak past it here and there. Regardless, more of that "yin" to compete with Intel's "yang" was released today by AMD and consumers will benefit again from the competition."
Based on what I've read of the 3200+ at Tom's Hardware and Tech Report, the CPU performance is good, just slightly better than the 3000+, but still gets trumped by the P4 3.0 and 3.06 CPUs. Both call into question the validity of AMD's CPU rating system, and judging from their benchmarks, rightly so. The 3200+ is also supposed to be more expensive than the P4s, which combined with the dissapointing performance may limit it's popularity.
It will be interesting to see how the 3200+ performs when overclocked.
"For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and Long Words Bother Me"
Gigabyte makes a nice 400 FSB board, the G7VAXP has on board 10/100 LAN and awesome audio with SPDIF support. Abit makes a similar board with gigabyte ethernet, I believe.
Personally, I never buy a new chip when it first comes out. I always stay behind a generation or too, that's the sweet spot in terms of bang/$.
My journal has hot
Um, no. The Gigabyte G7VAXP may have a VIA KT400 northbridge on it, but it can not actually do 400 FSB with sync memory.
The only motherboard currently on the market that officially (as in, official support) does 400 FSB is the Asus A7N8X rev 2.0, with Nvidia's NForce2 chipset.
One game: Software rendered Doom III. :)
Well, that may not be practical, but consider this: Game interactivity could gain massive boost of any sort of fluid model was used; Watch all the windows in a building get blown out when some idiot throws a grenade. Another example would be mass-spring systems for solids. Ever want to take out a load-bearing wall in a building map? Or cause a cave-in?
What's this Submit thingy do?
I upgraded a 750mhz Duron to a XP 1700+ ; same everything, just a different jumper for the front side bus.
I could tell the difference, but mainly in things like how fast it does a seti work unit; with browsing and word processing, I agree, it's a little more difficult to tell. Big software applications open up a little faster, things compile faster, but web surfing and word processing, yes, it is hard to notice an obvious difference. It's nice to have a little extra power if you need it, though.
no, they're calling it "xp 3200+", and they're also telling you that it's running at 2.2GHz.
if the average lamer is too stupid to understand that the model name does not equal speed, don't bother to understand what they're buying, and that the clock speed alone won't tell you shit about real performance, then it's their fucking problem.
you would do a little research if you were to buy, say, a car, wouldn't you?
does the Porsche 911 have 911 hp?
So, the logic behind AMD's naming structure was that, while their cores ran slower, their names gave you an idea of what speed a comparable Intel chip would run at. That meant a 2000+, while running significantly slower, produced about the same output as a 2GHz Pentium, etc.
Now they have the 3200+ which runs... well a bit slower than the 3Ghz Pentium. It also runs at a 2.2Ghz core. So nowhere in any of its design does it really justify a 3200+ moniker. 3000+ is closer with 2950+ possibly being the most accurate, according to the benchmarks.
If the n+ meaning has nothing to do with real world speeds, core speeds, relative speeds or any other kind of speed anymore, why don't they stop worry and just get on with calling it the "Bajillion Ultra Hertz!" model (note the important exclamation marks)?
You know, I need to get myself a V8+ sticker for a Pinto.