Athlon XP 2800+, AMD Hit 333!

Author : Wayne Date : 1st October 2002

...Product	AthlonXP 2800+
...Manufacturer	AMD
...Supplier	AMD
...Price	Not Known

 

 

 

UPDATE :

Having re-tested under slightly less hurried circumstances we actually found most of the scores remained the smae. Of significant importance is the increase in 3DMark score from around 14,700 to just over 15,100.

Introduction :

Yesterday I prayed......I prayed and the Gods answered. I prayed for health, for wealth, for world peace and for an Athlon with a 333MHz FSB. Well, one out of four ain't that bad!

Today AMD have announced what users worldwide have held their breath and hoped to see with every recent processor announcement, a fully fledged AthlonXP running off a 333MHz front side bus (clock doubled 166MHz). Two speeds were actually announced by AMD, a 2.17GHz XP2700+ and a 2.25GHz XP2800+. Both processors spring from AMD's Fab 30 wafer fabrication facility in Dresden, Germany and feature the now standard 0.13micron copper process housing some 37.6 million transistors on an 84mm2 die. I was surprised to see that voltage remains at 1.65v with a typical thermal power of 64.0 W (62.0 W for the 2700+) and a maximum of 74.3 W (68.3 W).

As you can see from the image below things look fairly familiar, no twin chromed exhaust pipes, go-faster stripes or furry dice, in fact we're still not seeing the switch to a green package that we've all assumed was being introduced across the range. I think that little hand scribbled asterisk bottom left is to make sure I don't switch it for a slower model before it goes back. Like I would!! ;-)

 

The CPU that AMD were kind enough to wing our way was a week31 2002 model 2800+ AXDA. In actual fact multipliers were well and truly locked.......damn!

And those bridges look teasingly intact though I'm sure they're just trying to lull me into a false sense of anticipation.

Here's how the two new arrivals fit in to the AMD family :

CPU Speed	FSB	Core Speed	Multiplier	Core Voltage
Athlon XP 2800+	333	2.25 GHz	13.5x	1.65v
Athlon XP 2700+	333	2.17 GHz	13x	1.65v
Athlon XP 2600+	266	2.13 GHz	16x	1.65v
Athlon XP 2400+	266	2.00 GHz	15x	1.65v
Athlon XP 2200+	266	1.80 GHz	13.5x	1.65V
Athlon XP 2100+	266	1.73 GHz	13.0x	1.60V
Athlon XP 2000+	266	1.67 GHz	12.5x	1.60V
Athlon XP 1900+	266	1.60 GHz	12.0x	1.50V
Athlon XP 1800+	266	1.53 GHz	11.5x	1.50V
Athlon XP 1700+	266	1.47 GHz	11.0x	1.50V

And a quick reminder of what the AthlonXP is all about before we move on to take a look at the performance :

Feature	Athlon XP	Intel Pentium 4
QuantiSpeed™ Architecture	Yes	No
Operations per clock cycle	9	6
Integer pipelines	3	4
Floating point pipelines	3	2
Full x86 decoders	3	1
L1 Cache Size	128K	12k µop (Trace Cache) + 8KB (Data Cache)
L2 Cache Size	256KB (on-chip)	256KB (on-chip
Total on-chip full-speed cache	384KB	64KB + 12k µop
Total effective on-chip full-speed cache	384KB (exclusive)	256KB - 12k µop (inclusive)
System bus speed	266MHz	400MHz
3D Enhancement instructions	3DNow!™ Professional	SSE2
Cache/prefetch controls	Yes	Yes
Streaming controls	Yes	Yes
DSP/comm extensions	Yes	Yes

CPU Features :

QuantiSpeed™ architecture allows the AMD Athlon™ XP processor to accomplish more instructions per clock cycle (IPC).

Improved IPC is a result of the following technological advances: -
Nine-issue, superscalar, fully pipelined microarchitecture:
Provides more pathways to feed application instructions into the execution engines of the core, allowing the processor to complete more work in a given clock cycle (high IPC). The delicate balance between the depth of the pathways and clock speed of the processor produces high levels of performance.

Superscalar, fully pipelined Floating Point Unit (FPU):
Completes more floating point operations per clock cycle than competitive x86 processors and permits high operating frequencies. The end result is a processor with the computing power to tackle the most computation-intensive software applications.

Hardware data prefetch:
Prefetches data from system memory to the processor's Level 1 cache, which reduces the time it takes to feed the processor critical data, increasing work throughput and therefore overall performance.

Exclusive and speculative Translation Look-aside Buffers (TLBs):
Keep the maps to critical data close to the processor, which helps prevent the processor from stalling or waiting when future data is requested. These TLB structures are now larger, exclusive between caches, and speculative. Larger TLB's give the AMD Athlon XP processor access to additional data maps. Exclusivity removes the duplication of information, freeing up more space in the Level 2 cache for other useful data to be used by the processor. And the speculative nature of these structures allows the processor to generate future maps of critical data quickly.
These four key advances allow QuantiSpeed architecture to perform more calculations per second, boosting overall productivity and enabling an ultimate computing experience.

QuantiSpeed has helped the XP models keep within range of Intel's P4 and thus its importance should not be understated. If you would like more information on these technologies you can download the full .PDF White Paper from AMD here. (Adobe Acrobat required)

With that out of the way let's examine what's on offer.

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