Manufacturer: AMD   Product: AthlonXP 3200+ 400FSB   Availability: Now   Author:   Date: 5-13-2003   Price: $465

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Last year was a tremendous year for CPU enthusiasts as we watched AMD and Intel processor speeds jump nearly 1000MHz in a year's time. Certainly, we as consumers benefited from the competition as the prices of these chips fell as fast as their clock speeds went up. However, that same rate of increase is not to be expected this year. Rather than dramatic clock increases, we will see more improvements to the current line of chips.

These improvements will come in the form of boosts in on-die cache sizes and Front Side Bus speeds. Already this year, AMD increased the on-die cache size of the Athlon XP line with the new Barton core, and Intel recently gave their 3.0GHz P4 a shot of adrenaline by jumping the FSB from 533MHz to 800MHz. So as not to be outdone, AMD is giving their Athlon XP another shot in the arm as well. Today, AMD officially debuts a new 400MHz FSB for the AthlonXP line along with a higher clocked chip carrying a Performance Rating of 3200+.

With the Athlon 64 release ready for this fall, the question is whether or not this update for the Athlon XP is enough to hold you over. Is there enough performance gained with the move to the wider bus speed to justify the purchase of one of these new processors? Follow along as we test these new processors and see what the 400MHz FSB does for the Athlon XP.

AthlonXP 3200+ w/ 400MHz FSB	AthlonXP 3000+ w/ 400MHz FSB

It was just a few weeks ago the Athlon XP 3000+ hit the streets sporting a 333MHz FSB and a Barton core. This 3000+ debut made waves as it earned its reputation as a strong performer, giving the best from Intel a strong battle for the money. Running the 3000+ requires a motherboard with support for a 333MHz FSB, which is limited to the KT400, KT400a, nForce2, and a select few boards with the KT333 chipset. The 333MHz FSB was first seen on the Athlon XP Thoroughbred B 2600+ CPU and has been incorporated into every Barton core until now.

With Intel putting the pressure on with their new 800MHz FSB, AMD has followed suit. Starting with the 3000+, the AthlonXP (Barton) will be running a 400MHz FSB. This new 3000+ will soon be the only available Athlon XP 3000+ to be found. Right now there are plenty of 3000+ (333MHz FSB) chips floating around, but you can expect once those chips are gone they will be no more. The 3200+ (400Mhz FSB) can be purchased right now, but the 3000+ (400MHz FSB) may be a little harder to find for a while until the current 3000+ (333MHz FSB) supllies are dried up. If you have a board that will support the 3000+ (333MHz FSB) and not a 400MHz FSB, you might want to buy now.

Architecturally the new Athlon XP 3200+ and 3000+ remains the same as previous Barton processors with the only difference being the FSB. The same 512kb L2 cache is present as before. With the widening of the FSB, combined with the larger L2 cache, greater performance than that seen from an increase in the clock speed alone is expected.

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Testing the new Athlon XP’s and the CPU’s they replace was done with the ABIT NF7-S (nForce2) Rev. 2.0 board. The nForce2 Revision 2 boards, are the only boards that currently support the new 400MHz FSB. Previous revisions of the nForce2 boards were not stable enough for the new 400MHz FSB.

After installing each chip, the NF7-S recognized each processor and adjusted the memory speeds accordingly. With the nForce2, each CPU runs faster with the memory timings set to run synchronously with its FSB. In our tests, the 333MHz FSB processors' memory timing are set to 333MHz and 400MHz for the 400MHz parts.