Manufacturers: AMD   Product: AMD AthlonMP 2800+ Barton Core   Availability: Now   Author:   Date: 5-6-2003   Price: $299

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Whether you are and AMD fan or not, they must be given credit for being the guys that jump back up to keep fighting no matter how many times they apparently get knocked down. Sure, Intel leads in the race for clock speed, but AMD has consistently stayed in the contest, even pulling ahead at times, with processors clocked much slower than their Intel counterparts. This issue over clock speed is even more apparent with the new Barton core for the Athlon CPU.

With the Athlon XP line of processors from AMD moving to the new Barton core, it was inevitable that the Athlon MP line would step in that direction as well. With the release of the Athlon MP 2800+, the multi-processor line pulls within a hair of the fastest Athlon XP processor available, the XP 3000+. Keep reading as we see the advantages provided by the new Barton core over the previous line of processors.

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While the front side bus (FSB) of the Athlon XP CPU jumped from 266 MHz to 333 MHz, the new Athlon MP 2800+ remains at the same 266 MHz FSB as previous models. This only makes sense as the AMD 760 chipset currently supports a maximum 266 MHz FSB. This will ensure backwards compatibility with current SMP motherboards on the market by means of a BIOS update.

With the FSB remaining the same, the natural question is, "How fast is the MP 2800+ running?" Obviously, AMD needed to clock the MP 2800+ higher given the disadvantage of a slower FSB of the MP over the Athlon XP line. Therefore, with a multiplier set at 16, the MP 2800+ comes in at a true 2133 MHz. At this speed, the MP 2800+ is clocked just 33MHz slower than the XP 3000+ (333 MHz FSB) processor with the Barton core. Look at this chart below for some interesting numbers:

The transition from the Thoroughbred B core to the Barton core has taken the transistor count from 37.6 million to 54.3 million. The die size has also gone from 84mm2 to 101mm2 due to the added cache. A quick look can easily identify the new core by its more pronounced rectangular appearance over previous generations. Outside of the aforementioned cache and clock speeds on the Barton core, the Athlon MP Architecture remains the same as the previous Thoroughbred B version.

Getting an available motherboard with support for the new Barton core proved difficult. Thankfully, Tyan released a beta BIOS that would allow us to run the new MP chips. The beta BIOS was for the Tyan Tiger MPX featuring the AMD-760 MPX chipset. After flashing the BIOS, we then installed the new chips and were up and running.

We equipped our test system with plenty of video horsepower by installing a GeForce FX 5800 Ultra. This card proved more than adequate to meet the task given to it by the MP 2800+ system. We were also fortunate enough to test the FX card with the newly released v43.45 drivers from NVIDIA. These drivers have shown much improvement in numerous areas over our previous beta drivers.