A New Athlon in Town

AMD Athlon XP 3000+ Barton Processor Review

This content was originally featured on Amdmb.com and has been converted to PC Perspective’s website. Some color changes and flaws may appear.

The hype around this version of the Athlon XP processor has been building since even before the Thoroughbred processors were released. Back in April of 2001 we reported that the Barton may indeed have the upgraded cache that we are seeing today. Doing a quick search of our news database shows that the rumors and debates have been coming in a steady stream since then.

At the Quakecon 2002 convention, in August of 2002, I was the first to post on the rumor that the Barton core processors were going to be running on a 400 MHz FSB. This did not come to pass on the initial launch of the Barton processors, but I am still hearing from chipset manufacturers and motherboard manufacturers that they are being told to make sure their motherboards are able to meet a 400 MHz bus. So, I think we will still be seeing that 400 MHz FSB Barton sometime in the future.

Another reason this new Barton core is going to be so crucial to AMD is that they are depending much more on the Athlon in the foreseeable future than originally expected. Now that the Athlon 64 has been pushed back until September, AMD has to put all of their desktop hopes into one basket – enter the Barton core Athlon XP.

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