Processors Toolkit

AMD's Athlon XP delivers on everyday performance

Graeme Wearden ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 09 Oct 2001 12:26 BST

New tests in ZDNet's labs have shown that a system built around AMD's latest chip -- the Athlon XP 1800+ -- running at 1.53GHz can outperform a 2GHz Intel P4 system when running mainstream and high-end productivity applications.

AMD launched the chip on Tuesday.

AMD released the XP series, its latest range of processors, on Tuesday. Changes to the internal architecture mean an XP processor delivers a performance boost compared to the company's earlier Thunderbird chip. AMD has brought in a new rating system to reflect the fact that the XP processor can do more work per clock cycle than earlier models -- an idea that has been tried before, notably by Cyrix. Although the XP1800+ actually runs at 1.53GHz, its performance is equal to that of a Thunderbird running at 1.8GHz.

XP systems will benefit from a 20 percent reduction in power consumption, which will mean quieter, less powerful, fans can be installed on the motherboard.

ZDNet's reviews team compared an Athlon XP 1800+ system to a computer based on Intel's Pentium 4 processor running at 2GHz.

Read the full review here.

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