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Power
Performer or Budget Solution?
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Author
: Martyn Date : 12th November 2001
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3DVelocity would like to thank AMD
and especially Theresa Zimmer for their help and courtesy in
providing this processor for review.
Part One: Which Corner Of The Market?
When we looked at what the 1.33GHz Athlon
could offer us, the market positioning was somewhat easier to
determine. At the 'mainstream' or budget end of AMD's CPU model
was the Duron CPU. This was heading speedily toward 1GHz and
represented just about the best value solution available. At
the top end of the market, AMD's primary attack to Intel was
the high performing but low costing Athlon. 1.33 and a tad later,
1.4. This made the choice for the cost conscious user who still
wanted high perfomance an easy one. With Intel essentially pricing
themselves out of many people's range with the Pentium 4, AMD
found themselves in an even better position. Indeed many online
resources and dealers even started to speculate that a 1.5 and
1.6 GHZ chip was on the way from AMD. It was easy to see why
such rumours started to appear. The Athlon was representing
not only the 'gamers choice' but also the 'value buyers' choice.
Why would AMD release the much anticipated 'Palomino'based chips
just yet, when the Athlons were still doing so well?
However, the classic B and C type athlons (200fsb / 266fsb)
did stop at 1400MHz. AMD produced a true Intel beater, officially
released on the 9th October, the XP and MP range of Athlons
have produced as much, if not more, of a storm than the original
Athlon did. With a fresh focus, directed at breaking the public's
perceptions of using MHz as a valid form of speed comparison,
AMD bettered the Athlon and faced up with true confidence to
Intel's Pentium 4 series. The XP range of chips are great performers
and still represent great value for money but where does that
leave our old speed king, the 1.4GHz. It seems to have been
replaced by the XP chips but it is very hard to overlook what
a great CPU this is. Could the 1.4GHz become the bargain chip
of the year? With the new Duron core (Morgan) costing a little
more than the old Duron, it will certainly be interesting to
see just what price retailers will expect for the Athlon 1.4GHz
solution.
Part Two: The Specs'
Most of us have seen Athlon comparisons
for quite some time now. It certainly is a great performer on
paper at least...
Here we can see a direct comparison between
the Athlon technology and the competing Intel based solutions.
-- AMD Athlon vs. Intel's
P3 & P4 --
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Feature
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AMD
Athlon Processor
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PentiumŪ
III
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PentiumŪ
4
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Operations
per clock cycle
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9
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5
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6
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Integer
pipelines
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3
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2
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4
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Floating
point pipelines
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3
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1
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2
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Full
x86 decoders
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3
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1
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1
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L1
cache size
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128KB
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32KB
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12k
+ 8KB Data Cache
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L2
cache size
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256KB
on-chip
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256KB
on-chip
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256KB
on-chip
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Total
on-chip full-speed cache
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384KB
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288KB
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264KB
+ 12k
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Total
effective on-chip full-speed cache
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384KB
(exclusive)
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256KB
(inclusive)
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256KB
- 12k
(inclusive)
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System
bus speed
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200
MHz to 266MHz
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100MHz
or 133MHz
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400MHz
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3D
enhancement instructions
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Enhanced
3DNow!
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SSE
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SSE2
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Single-precision
FP SIMD
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Yes
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Yes
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Yes
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4
FP operations per clock
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Yes
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Yes
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Yes
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Cache/prefetch
controls
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Yes
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Yes
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Yes
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Streaming
controls
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Yes
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Yes
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Yes
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DSP/comm
extensions
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Yes
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No
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Yes
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The Athlon certainly has the competitive
edge in this comparison, quoted from AMD's website
Page Two: Specs
cont....
>>>
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