Power Performer or Budget Solution?

Author : Martyn Date : 12th November 2001

3DVelocity would like to thank AMD and especially Theresa Zimmer for their help and courtesy in providing this processor for review.

Part Three: Specs' Continued...

(Information contained in Part Three is quoted from AMD's website. For a more detailed look please visit AMD here.)

Key architectural features of the AMD Athlon™ processor include:

''The industry's first nine-issue superpipelined, superscalar x86 processor microarchitecture designed for high clock frequencies:

Multiple parallel x86 instruction decoders
Three out-of-order, superscalar, fully pipelined floating point execution units, which execute x87 (floating point), MMX™ and 3DNow!™ instructions
Three out-of-order, superscalar, pipelined integer units
Three out-of-order, superscalar, pipelined address calculation units
72-entry instruction control unit
Advanced dynamic branch prediction

Enhanced 3DNow! technology for leading-edge 3D performance

21 original 3DNow! instructions-the first technology enabling superscalar SIMD
19 additional instructions to enable improved integer math calculations for speech or video encoding and improved data movement for Internet plug-ins and other streaming applications
5 DSP instructions to improve soft modem, soft ADSL, Dolby Digital surround sound, and MP3 applications
Compatible with Windows® 98, Windows 95, and Windows NT® 4.x without software patches

266MHz or 200MHz AMD Athlon™ processor system bus enables leading-edge system bandwidth for data movement-intensive applications

Source synchronous clocking (clock forwarding) technology
Support for 8-bit ECC for data bus integrity
Peak data rate of 1.6 to 2.1GB/s (depending on processor bus speed)
Multiprocessing support: point-to-point topology, with number of processors in SMP systems determined by chipset implementation
Support for 24 outstanding transactions per processor

The AMD Athlon processor with performance-enhancing cache memory features 128K of L1 cache and 256K of integrated, on-chip L2 cache for a total of 384K full speed, on-chip cache
Socket A infrastructure designs are based on high-performance platforms and are supported by a full line of optimized infrastructure solutions (chipsets, motherboards, BIOS)

Available in Pin Grid Array (PGA) for mounting in a socketed infrastructure
Electrical interface compatible with 266MHz and 200MHz AMD Athlon system buses, based on Alpha EV6™ bus protocol

Die size: approximately 37 million transistors on 120 mm2 die on 0.18-micron process technology
Manufactured using AMD's state-of-the-art 0.18-micron process technology at AMD's Fab 25 and Fab 30 wafer fabrication facilities ''

The Athlon has always been a strong performer even when competing against rival products of a higher clock frequency. As the 1.33GHz and XP chips have proved in the past, megahertz can sometimes be more of a hindrance than a help in trying to identify which chip will perform the best for your needs.

Another key feature of the latter Athlon chips is that they still support the 200fsb. A lot of people haven't leapt on the DDR bandwagon just yet and I'm sure they will be happy that the last Athlon speeds still support the older front side bus frequency.
AMD have also kept compatibility a key feature. With the ever changing face of Intel's sockets, business and home users alike surely must appreciate the open upgrade path AMD places before them. AMD still utilizes the same socket as earlier Athlons ensuring your upgrade today will not prove to be an expensive mistake tomorrow. With the next generation of chips still a long way off, this chip will certainly be a performer months into the future.

Enough of the specs', lets see how the increased frequency can help this great chip as the 1.4GHz version squares up to it's 1.33GHz brother.

 

Page Three: 3D Performance
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