Athlon XP 2800+ Performance Preview October 22, 2002 Chris Angelini

Introduction

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Late in August, AMD announced the Athlon XP 2600+ and 2400+ processors, running at 2.13 and 2.0GHz, respectively. We say announced because the 2400+ only recently became available for public consumption, and the 2600+ is still nearly impossible to find. Nevertheless, roughly one month later, both the Athlon XP 2700+ and Athlon XP 2800+ are ready for public consumption.

Now, it may seem silly for AMD to continue announcing processors, considering the current plight of the Athlon XP 2600+. The debut of the 2700+ and 2800+ represents more than just another frequency increase, though. Mainly, both chips support a 333MHz front side bus – a first from AMD. The new bus requires platform support, of course, and NVIDIA’s nForce2 is hitting the scene just in time to support the new processors.

Neither the 2700+ running at 2.17GHz nor the 2800+ running at 2.25GHz are currently accessible to enthusiasts looking to upgrade. However, AMD claims that the 2700+ should be available in OEM systems in November and available to enthusiasts later in the fourth quarter. Athlon XP 2800+ processors will begin surfacing in systems from Falcon Northwest and the like in December, with wider availability expected at the beginning of next year. Keep that in mind when you draft your Christmas lists.

Not Your Everyday Greyhound

The Athlon processor first debuted on a front side bus effectively operating at 200MHz, drawing “oohs” and “ahhs” from those who were accustomed to Intel’s 133MHz P6 bus. Over time, the transition to 266MHz has been made along with the addition of DDR memory support. Now that memory technology has advanced to DDR333 and DDR400 speeds, it makes sense for AMD to increase the Athlon’s FSB speed to match. Only a few chipsets have been designed with the necessary bus support in mind, though. NVIDIA’s nForce2 is the premier platform promoted by AMD, but VIA’s KT400 and KT333 chipsets also offer the 333MHz setting. For the purposes of this preview we’ll be using a pre-production nForce2 motherboard from ASUS. The nForce2 chipset is just entering mass production, so retail hardware is still a ways off, but expect a final update from us once final hardware becomes available.

Overclocking and System Setup

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Overclocking

When the Thoroughbred core debuted at 1.8GHz, enthusiasts had little luck overclocking the processor. Then, as AMD transitioned to a revised version of the core, overclocking took a positive turn. The Athlon XP 2400+ and 2600+ engineering samples proved stable at speeds of up to 2.3 and 2.4GHz.

Unfortunately, the nForce2 board didn’t want to cooperate with our overclocking efforts, so we employed the ASUS A7V8X KT400 board. Indeed, our own Athlon XP 2800+ sample would run at 2.4GHz (178MHz front side bus * 13.5x multiplier) using traditional air-cooling. That is to say, armed with nothing more than a Thermalright SLK-800, Vantec Tornado 80mm High Output and the voltage modifications on the A7V8X test bed, we ran a stable 2.4GHz and DDR400 memory speeds. The processor’s Vcore was adjusted to 1.8V and the DRAM voltage was increased to 2.85V in order to maintain stability in the demanding 3D Mark 2001 SE tests.

Test Bed

AMD Athlon XP 2800+ (2.25GHz)
AMD Athlon XP 2400+ (2.00GHz)

Preproduction ASUS A7N8X nForce2 Motherboard

512MB Corsair XMS3200 CAS2 Memory

NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600 128MB
Detonator Driver 40.71

30GB IBM Deskstar DTLA 307030 ATA-100 Hard Drive

Windows XP Professional

DirectX 8.1

Desktop resolution 1024x768, 32-bit color, 75Hz refresh

All power saving options were turned off, as were the Automatic Update and System Restore services. Graphics options under the ‘Performance’ tab were all disabled for maximum performance.

Benchmarks

Unreal Tournament 2003 Demo
3D Mark 2001 Second Edition Build 330 – 32-bit color
Quake III: Arena version 1.31 – ‘four’ demo
Serious Sam: The Second Encounter – Beyond3D Maximum quality script, 32-bit color, Grand Cathedral demo
Jedi Knight II ‘jk2ffa’ demo
Comanche 4
SiSoft Sandra 2002 Memory Benchmark test



SIDEBAR: Thermalright’s SLK-800 weighs half a kilogram and is constructed of copper. We also used a Vantec Tornado 80mm capable of 84cfm output. How’s that for air cooling?

3D Mark 2001

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3DMark 2001 - DirectX 8

Notes

The 2.25GHz Athlon XP 2800+ demonstrates an impressive gain over the 2.0GHz 2400+ in 3D Mark 2001 SE, especially at 800x600 where processing power is stressed more than graphics capabilities. Keep in mind the A7N8X test-bed houses a pre-production board, so performance may improve once retail hardware becomes available. NVIDIA claims that the best performance is achieved using a synchronous memory bus, so while the chipset itself supports DDR400 memory, our benchmarks reflect performance at 333/333MHz.

Even at the slower memory speed, the Athlon XP 2800+ bests the 2.8GHz Pentium 4. The tables may very well turn once Intel finalizes the dual-channel DDR Granite Bay chipset, but for the time being, AMD has successfully routed the Pentium 4. Never mind the fact that it has done so with a processor that won’t “exist” until early next year!


SIDEBAR: Spinning at 5700 rotations per minute, the Vantec Tornado is rated at 55.2 decibels. This is akin to loud conversation, so you can imagine how annoying it would be to sleep in the same room as such a loud fan.

3D Mark 2001 – Frame Rates

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3DMark 2001 - Car Chase

3DMark 2001 - Dragothic

3DMark 2001 - Lobby

3DMark 2001 - Nature

SIDEBAR: When AMD launched the Athlon XP 2800+, its objective was to highlight the Thoroughbred core’s potential. Unfortunately, the result has been a thorough lambasting due to lack of supply.

Serious Sam 2

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Serious Sam 2 - OpenGL

Notes

Compared to the other 3D benchmarks, Serious Sam SE just doesn’t seem to emphasize processor performance as much as it does graphics performance (at least in the Elephant Atrium demo). Nevertheless, at 800x600, the Athlon XP 2800+ beats the Pentium 4 by about five percent. Here we see the benefit afforded to the faster bus as well. Mainly, the difference between the 2800+ operating on a 333MHz bus and the 2400+ operating on a 266MHz bus is nearly nine percent.


SIDEBAR: In order to run the Athlon XP 2800+ at 2.4GHz, the front side bus of our ASUS A7V8X was increased to 178MHz. More than likely, the processor was the limiting factor for a higher overclock.

Quake III

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Quake III - High Quality

Notes

Quake III has long favored the Pentium 4 and its NetBurst micro-architecture, so it’s no surprise that Intel’s 2.8GHz flagship rules the benchmark. However, at low resolutions, the result is already slight and as the Ti 4600 card becomes more of a bottleneck, the scores continue to even out. Keep in mind that if your video card is slower than NVIDIA’s Ti 4600 (think Ti 4200 or RADEON 8500), the graphics bottleneck will kick in even sooner, say, 1280x1024.

SIDEBAR: Athlon XP 2400+ processors are finally seeing wide availability and the 2.13GHz 2600+ should be following suit shortly. Unfortunately, both processors still utilize a 266MHz FSB.

Comanche 4 – DirectX 8

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Comanche4

Notes

Comanche 4 appears to be processor-bound, which is why, even at 1600x1200, there is still a sizeable discrepancy between the Athlon XP 2400+ and the faster model (not to mention the 2.8GHz Pentium 4, which beats both Athlon processors). The difference between the XP 2800+ and 2.8GHz Pentium 4 isn’t major, though, so we’d imagine an overclockable nForce2 board would be able to overcome the performance gap.


SIDEBAR: In addition to nForce2, VIA’s KT400 and KT333 chipsets officially support the 333MHz front side bus introduced with the Athlon XP 2700+ and 2800+.

Jedi Knight II - OpenGL

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Jedi Knight II

Notes

Jedi Knight II centers on the Quake III engine. Therefore, it is a little surprising that the Athlon XP 2800+ is able to take top honors in each resolution. Even more impressive, though, is the nine percent advantage the Athlon XP 2800+ holds over the 2400+ even at 1600x1200, a resolution normally restricted by potential of a graphics card.


SIDEBAR: ASUS’ A7V8X is actually a very feature-rich KT400 board. It offers optional Gigabit LAN, Serial ATA, IEEE 1394, and Digital S/PDIF output. AGP 8x and USB 2.0 support come standard.

Unreal Tournament 2003 Demo

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Unreal Tournament 2003 demo - flyby

Unreal Tournament 2003 demo - botmatch

Notes

At 1600x1200, the Unreal Tournament Demo is clearly limited by the GeForce4 Ti 4600 graphics card. Lower resolutions are also close, and the Athlon XP and Pentium 4 exchange blows at 800x600, 1024x768 and 1280x1024. Of course, the Pentium 4 paired to an i850E chipset would likely run faster, but Intel’s gradual transition to DDR memory seems to indicate the gradual fazing out of RDRAM.


SIDEBAR: Our own Jakub wasn’t all that fond of Unreal Tournament 2003. Read his review here

SiSoft Sandra 2002

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SiSoft Sandra 2002

Notes

The 333MHz system bus is theoretically capable of transferring 2.7GB per second of information. In comparison, the prior 266MHz bus pushed, at most, 2.1GB. Even if an older platform supported DDR33 memory, a processor running on a 266MHz front side bus would hover around 2GB per second of real-world memory bandwidth because of the bottlenecked system bus. Now, the nForce2 chipset, running DDR333 memory at CAS2, in addition to a 333MHz system bus, is able to drive roughly 2.5GB per second of information. – nearly the same as Intel’s i845PE chipset equipped with identical memory.

SIDEBAR: Quail season opened on October 19th, 2002. If you missed opening day, fear not, for the season lasts until January 26th, 2003.

Conclusion

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It isn’t easy to pass judgment on a product that won’t be available to enthusiasts until after we’ve sung “Auld Lang Syne.” Additionally, Intel will already have released the 3.06GHz, HyperThreading-capable Pentium 4 before anyone is able to get their hands on an Athlon XP 2800+. No matter - AMD is content, for now, showing the world what Fab 30 in Dresden, Germany is capable of producing.

At the same time, this demonstration is a little worrisome. The Barton core, with its 512KB Level 2 cache, is expected some time after the 2800+ becomes widely available, and of course, before the K8 architecture hits the streets. So if Athlon XP 2800+ situation isn’t expected to improve until late December or early January, what then could we hypothesize about the Barton core? How about the status of the Hammer architecture? Fortunately, the Athlon XP 2700+ should be available by the end of December – just in time to serve as a last minute stocking stuffer.

AMD isn’t executing like the juggernaut that once beat Intel to the 1GHz milestone. The Athlon XP 2200+ wasn’t exactly the breakthrough .13-micron processor we had hoped for and the 2400+, 2600+, 2700+ and 2800+ have all been launched without established availability. The 2800+ may be able to outpace the 2.8GHz Pentium 4 in the majority of our gaming tests, but if it can’t be bought, AMD won’t make any money on it.

Finally, AMD’s pricing schedule looks to be highly aggressive, but remember that Intel will likely cut its own prices to compete against the Athlon XP 2800+, once it finally does become a popular processor.



SIDEBAR: Are you anticipating the Athlon XP 2800+? Are you upset that AMD announced it months before the processor would be readily available? Let your voice be heard!