Athlon XP 2600+

Intel has stolen much of AMD’s thunder in the past few weeks with its recent releases like the 2.53 GHz P4 processor. But AMD is fighting back with the Thoroughbred Revision B. Instead of the usual increases of 33—66 MHz in the clock speed, this new core jumps ahead by taking the performance rating to 2600 (2.13 GHz). Architecturally, the new core features a new layer of interconnects, having 9 compared to 8 in Revision A and 6 in P4 Northwood. All other specifications stay the same.

We tested this processor with an Epox EP-8K3A+ board, 256 MB PC2700 DDR, Western Digital WD1200 hard drive and a GeForce2 GTS. We ran them through our usual set of benchmarks, and the numbers speak for themselves (see table). A direct comparison here is difficult since the two use different motherboards and memory modules. Nevertheless, the Athlon performed very well, and the only application in which the P4 convincingly defeated the Athlon was in DivX encoding. 

The Bottom Line: At Rs 17,820, the XP 2600+ doesn’t come cheap, but if you are a power hungry user, this is an ideal
choice

Anuj Jain at PCQ Labs