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Introduction
AMD's
Athlon XP has been doing very well since they
entered the market. The primary weapon of the
XP is the very good price-performance ratio. AMD
is nearing the release of their next core for
the Athlon XP CPU and Intel also has its own chips
coming soon. It's been a very interesting battle
between CPU's and users have benefited very much
from it. Various chipsets are available and a
wide selection of motherboards are also present
so users can very much make the system that they
like and will enjoy very much.
The
Athlon XP 1600+
Previously
reviewed Athlon XP CPU's here are the Athlon
XP 1700+ and the Athlon
XP 1900+. Athlon XP's are meant to be high-end
CPU's but this time around, the lower-speed Athlon
XP's may find themselves in the budget boxes of
most people. For starters, the Athlon XP 1600+
isn't too expensive right now and with a very
impressive price, one could easily consider it
as a primary option for a low-cost, high-performing
system.
It
is a fact to everyone that the Athlon XP's are
named not by their clock speed but by their model
numbers. Those who don't know much might confuse
the Athlon XP 1600+ to be running at 1.6GHz and
might start complaining to their retailers when
they find out that the CPU is just running at
1.4GHz. It would've been easier if AMD just sticked
to the clock speed naming like Intel does but,
it is all part of their marketing and that's why
they had to use model numbers.
The
Athlon XP 1600+ runs at 1.4GHz, with a multiplier
of 10.5 and a front side bus speed of 133MHz DDR
(266). 1.4GHz incidentally is also the fastest
Thunderbird-based Athlon so putting the XP 1600+
against a Thunderbird at 1.4GHz would be very
interesting.
Important
points
Like
all other Athlon XP's the 1600+ variant also has
added SSE instructions in them, runs much cooler
than the Thuderbirds and can run at higher clock
speeds. They no longer come in their old ceramic
packaging but now come in a brown and organic
packaging. Existing Socket A heatsinks will still
work fine on them so there's nothing to worry
about.
With
regards to compatibility, the Athlon XP's work
fine with any of the current DDR motherboards.
Some later KT133A boards are able to run them
but to be sure, better check for BIOS updates
if necessary. The Athlon XP runs on a 133MHz DDR
fsb and could definitely get a speed boost if
the front side bus speed was raised. As it is
right now, AMD is still using the 133MHz DDR fsb
on their CPU's even if the current boards available
for the Athlon XP now support DDR333.
Test
System |
