AMD Athlon XP 2100+ Review March 15, 2002 Brandon Bell

Introduction

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Athlon XP: A wolf in sheep’s clothing

Just a little over two months ago AMD rung in 2002 by launching the Athlon XP 2000+. Running at 1.67GHz and utilizing AMD’s Palomino core, the XP 2000+ was AMD’s counterpunch to the “Northwood” variant of the Intel Pentium 4. Built on a 0.13-micron manufacturing process and containing 512KB of level two cache we expected the Athlon XP 2000+ to fall behind the Northwood Pentium 4 in terms of performance, but instead the XP 2000+ frequently outperformed Northwood. Despite its 300MHz+ clock speed disadvantage the Athlon XP 2000+ demonstrated excellent performance in our tests with Serious Sam and Return to Castle Wolfenstein, but Quake 3 continued to favor the Pentium 4. In short, the Athlon XP 2000+ proved that paper spec comparisons can be very misleading when it comes to real world performance. To spice up the competition between its rival a bit more, yesterday AMD released its Athlon XP 2100+.


So what differentiates the Athlon XP 2100+ from its predecessor? With the exception of its new clock multiplier (13.0x), nothing has changed internally. At 1733MHz, the Athlon XP 2100+ is 67MHz faster than its predecessor, just as the Athlon XP 2000+ was 67MHz faster than its sibling. While the 67MHz clock speed increases are getting a bit boring (especially in light of Intel’s recent 200MHz jumps), as we found when overclocking the XP 2100+, the current iterations of the Palomino core appear to be approaching the ceiling of what clock speeds they can achieve. However, we’ll talk about this aspect of the XP 2100+ a bit later in this article.

The Athlon XP 2100+ is the first XP launch processor to utilize AMD’s green substrate; previous XP processors were brown. AMD will be transitioning all of its XP chips to this green packaging, although brown 2100+ processors are also in circulation. Other than the new color, the organic packaging of the XP 2100+ remains unchanged. Don’t expect any difference in performance between a brown XP processor or a green one unless you’re into coordinating the color of your processor to your motherboard, neither chip has an advantage over the other.

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Pricing/compatibility/overclocking

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Processor pricing

Here are the prices AMD is officially charging its distributors in quantities of 1,000:

Athlon XP Prices (US dollars)
XP 2100+	420
XP 2000+	339
XP 1900+	231
XP 1800+	188
XP 1700+	157
XP 1600+	130

As you can see, Athlon XP prices remain unchanged from the price cuts earlier this year. Instead, AMD has merely added the XP 2100+ to the top of their lineup and added a 19% price premium. Considering the 4% boost in clock speed, the XP 2100+ isn’t likely to win over many consumers looking for the best value, the 1900+ and 1800+ look considerably more attractive. Of course, if you frequent Price Watch you already know that AMD’s official processor pricing is considerably higher than street prices, with the Athlon XP 1800+ currently available as low as $124 and the Athlon XP 1900+ at $161. Meanwhile, the XP 2100+ can currently be found as low as $297. As supplies increase prices will drop, we also wouldn’t be surprised to see a price cut in the near future.

Compatibility

As the Athlon XP 2100+ is practically unchanged from the 2000+, motherboard compatibility problems should be kept to a minimum. The biggest issue would likely be the proper identification of the processor, rather than reporting the XP 2100 as an “XP 2100+”, the BIOS would instead report it as an “Athlon XP 1733MHz” when booting up the system. A simple BIOS upgrade will fix this issue.

For example, we tested the Athlon XP 2100+ with MSI’s K7T266 Pro2-RU. For the tests, we used MSI’s 3.4 BIOS, dated 1/30/02. Once we manually set the multiplier to 13.0x and the front-side bus to 133MHz, the K7T266 Pro2-RU properly identified our CPU as an Athlon XP 2100+ upon boot up.

In terms of cooling the Athlon XP 2100+, heatsinks that worked with the Athlon XP 2000+ will also work fine with the 2100+. Therefore, end users should be able to upgrade to the Athlon XP 2100+ with few hassles.

Overclocking

Our overclocking experience with the Athlon XP 2100+ was uneventful at best. While we were able to boot into Windows XP and run many applications at clock speeds as high as 1820MHz, stability wasn’t 100%. To achieve complete stability, we had to settle for 1781MHz (13.0x137), hardly anything to write home about when it comes to overclocking.





SIDEBAR: AMD’s list of officially validated products for the Athlon XP.

System Setup

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AMD Athlon XP 1800+
AMD Athlon XP 2000+
AMD Athlon XP 2100+
Intel Pentium 4 2.0AGHz
Intel Pentium 4 2.2GHz

ABIT TH7II-RAID
ASUS A7V266-E

256MB Mushkin PC2100 2-2-2 DDR SDRAM
256MB PC800 RDRAM

NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 500 reference board
Driver version Detonator 23.11

30GB IBM Deskstar DTLA 307030 ATA/100 Hard Drive
AFREEY 12X DVD-ROM

Windows XP Professional

DirectX 8.1

Desktop Resolution: 1024x768x32

Benchmarks

3DMark2000 ver 1.1 – 16-bit, 16-bit textures
3DMark 2001 - 16-bit, compressed textures

Quake 3 Retail - High Quality
Serious Sam Retail - Normal (32-bit)
Castle Wolfenstein MP Test - no compressed textures, (32-bit)
SYSmark 2001



SIDEBAR: ASUS has announced that their A7N266-C (nForce 415-D board) has commenced shipping.

3Dmark 2000/2001

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3Dmark2000 – Directx 7

3DMark 2001 - DirectX 8

Notes

The added clock speed is just enough to propel the Athlon XP 2100+ over the Pentium 4 2.2GHz, although the performance improvement from XP 2000+ to 2100+ is just shy of two percentage points at 640x480x16. In 3DMark 2000 the gap between the XP 2000+ and 2100+ is slightly larger, with both chips coming out on top over the Pentium 4 2.2GHz.




SIDEBAR: Speaking of nForce, ATI recently announced their integrated chipset for the Athlon. Dubbed the IGP 320, it should be an interesting to competitor when it ships this spring.

3DMark2001 Framerates

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3DMark 2001 - Car Chase

3DMark 2001 - Dragothic

3DMark 2001 - Lobby

3DMark 2001 - Nature

SIDEBAR: We’ll be moving over to 3DMark 2001SE soon.

Serious Sam

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Serious Sam - OpenGL

Notes

Serious Sam has always run best on the AMD Athlon processor, so it’s no surprise to see the Athlon XPs reign supreme in this test. A more competitive comparison would be the Athlon XP 2100+ versus the XP 2000+; at 640x480 the margin is only a little over one percentage point.


SIDEBAR: Likewise, Serious Sam: The Second Encounter will soon be a staple in our benchmarking suite.

Quake III

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Quake III - High Quality

Notes

The Athlon XP 2100+ narrows the gap between Athlon and Pentium 4, but still falls behind the Pentium 4 2.0A by four percent and the Pentium 4 2.2GHz by ten percentage points at 640x480. Of course, if you’ve got an Athlon XP 2100+ and a GeForce3 Ti 500, you’re going to be playing Quake 3 at 1600x1200, and at that point you’re limited by the GeForce3 card.


SIDEBAR: The NCAA tournament started yesterday, no doubt Bob is closely watching to see how far Cal will go, USC has already been upset.

Wolfenstein

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Return To Castle Wolfenstein MP Test

Notes

Like Serious Sam, Return to Castle Wolfenstein runs best on the Athlon XP platform, although the margin isn’t as large in this game. In particular, it’s really surprising to see the 1.5GHz XP 1800+ keeping up with the Pentium 4 2.2GHz.



SIDEBAR: CeBIT has been taking place in Germany this week, so far SiS and VIA have both announced Pentium 4 chipsets at the convention.

SYSmark 2001

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SIDEBAR: BAPco recently debuted SYSmark 2002, we’ll be taking a look at it soon to see if it cuts the mustard for testing.

Ballistics Report

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Pros

Performance: Although it’s only 67MHz faster than the Athlon XP 2000+, the XP 2100+ is still the fastest Athlon processor on the block and that has to count for something. The Athlon XP 2100+ is able to pull away from the Pentium 4 in Serious Sam and Return to Castle Wolfenstein, although the higher clock speed isn’t enough for the chip to overtake Pentium 4 in Quake 3.

Price (in comparison to Pentium 4): Street prices for the Athlon XP 2100+ are as low as $300; in comparison the Pentium 4 2.2GHz (the XP 2100+'s nearest competitor) is currently selling for $464 (with most in the $500 range). That's a pretty significant difference, and when you factor in the lower cost of the rest of the Athlon XP platform, the XP 2100+ clearly represents a better value.

Cons

Price (in comparison to other Athlons): At an officially listed price of $420 in quantities of 1,000, the premium AMD charges over its older Athlon XP processors is a bit higher than what we’re used to seeing in the past. End users will get more bang for their buck from an Athlon XP 1800+ or 1900+.

Thoroughbred: With shipments of Thoroughbred CPUs set to commence at the end of this month, these 0.13-micron Athlons should be in the hands of consumers very soon. While the performance goodies that come with Thoroughbred have been kept quiet, consumers will always benefit from its lower operating voltage by cranking up the overclocking meter to even higher levels. Once AMD has refined their 0.13-micron manufacturing process, expect mega overclocks.

AMD’s Thunderbird core is a perfect example of what can happen with a little TLC. Just when it appeared to max out at 1.2GHz, AXIA Thunderbird chips arrived on the scene clocking in at 1.4GHz+!


SIDEBAR: The Xbox debuted in the UK the other day; I hear a lot of gamers took the day off so they could spend more time with their shiny new console.

Final Verdict

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