Introduction

AMD Athlon XP 2100+ 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.

It has been more than two months since the release of the Athlon XP 2000+ processor back on January 7th of 2002. The XP 2100+ is just a speed bump of that same Palomino core processor and not any kind of Thoroughbred core that many people have been looking foward to.

The Athlon XP 2100+ processor runs at 1.73 GHz and has bascially the same physical statistics and specifications as the previous Athlon XP processors. You can probably see that AMD has changed the color of the organic packaging on the processors, but this is merely for asthetics and has nothing to do with any kind of performance gains or losses. Because the processor is merely a 3.5% jump in clock speed, the performance gains from the 2000+ to the 2100+ are going to be less than stellar. However, with the current state of the AMD vs Intel war, the release of a higher clocked processor was necessary to further push AMD against the newer Intel Northwood processors.

For those interested, the Thoroughbred core is still on time for its release closer to the middle of the year, according to what AMD has told me. Their viewpoint is that the Palomino core still has life in it and they are not yet ready to simply put it out the pasture. The Thoroughbred will offer the benefits of 0.13 micron process technology, but other than that, it has the same features as the Palomino. And, as you have seen in the past several weeks, AMD has a lot going on in the way of developing the Hammer technology that will be out around towards the end of this year.

Without any more delay, here is the system setup for the Athlon XP 2100+ processor review. I think last time I told you I would have liked to include some P4 benchmarks. I did get a processor and board, but it was too late to include them in this article. So, be looking for Intel and AMD comparisons coming soon. For this system setup, I used the new MSI KT3 Ultra motherboard using the KT333 chipset. So, you are also getting a sneak peek at that motherboard as well! 🙂

Test System Setup
CPU 1 x 1.73 GHz AMD Athlon XP 2100+ Processor
1 x 1.67 GHz AMD Athlon XP 2000+ Processor
Motherboard MSI KT3 Ultra KT333
Memory 1 x 256MB Corsair Micro PC2700 DDR DRAM
Hard Drive 20.5GB 7200 RPM IBM EIDE
Video Card GeForce 3
Video Drivers Detonator 24.20
Operating System Windows XP

Tests:

Quake III: Arena
3DMark 2001
SiSoft Sandra Memory Bench
SiSoft Sandra CPU Bench
Content Creation Winstone 2001
Business Winstone 2001
4 different SPEC view perf tests
Cachemem
ScienceMark
Sysmark 2001

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