Review: AMD Athlon XP 3200+

The second half of 3D benchmarks and Quake 3 up first. Intel leads 3-0 going into the second half and Quake 3 is a traditional goal scorer for them. Will he hit the target again for a shocking 4-0 lead?

Quake 3 performance

Nearly 10% over the XP3200+ and 3.0C and Canterwood is walking away with it due to raw I/O bandwidth. XP3000+ defends admirably.

AMD need to claw it back in the final minutes, the UT2003 brothers Botmatch and Flyby get substituted on to the pitch to see what they can do.

UT2003 Botmatch performance

5-0 to Intel and things are looking bleak as UT2003 Botmatch scores an own goal. It's all about the bandwidth here when we remove the graphics card from the equation. With data able to flow freely with no GPU bottleneck, the ability for the host subsystem to feed the processor with data becomes paramount. Even with slack memory timings compared to the AMD systems, the Canterwood and 3.0C combination is cruising so far.

It's all down to Flyby now.

UT2003 Flyby performance

6-0 to Intel for the same reasons, watch out for flying teacups. Raw I/O bandwidth does the trick. The 800MHz clock frequency defecit doesn't mean much when the Athlon XP's short pipeline and increased IPC are allowed to work but Canterwood just force feeds the Netburst core on the 3.0C with data and it can't help but out pace the XP3200+. The only comfort here is that the scores for the XP3200+ aren't slow by any stretch of the imagination. Just not as quick as the Intel I'm afraid.

Can non 3D benchmarks claw things back in the return leg at the Stadio De La Floating Point?