AMD's Latest Is a Winner

Bigger cache boosts performance of Athlon XP 3000+ processor.

Laurianne McLaughlin

Wednesday, March 05, 2003 06:00 PM PST

AMD has won its game of "cache up" with Intel. The newest Athlon XP processors, code-named Barton, have double the Level 2 cache of previous models. Our first tests show the results: Barton-based Athlon XP 3000+ systems flew through productivity work, just topping the fastest Pentium 4 systems we've tested. AMD-based PCs also continue to triumph in the pricing contest, often selling for hundreds less than comparably configured P4 computers.

Record Breakers

We tested three high-end PCs carrying the Athlon XP 3000+: Polywell's $2155 Poly 880NF2-3000; Sys Technology's $3153 Sys Performance 3000+; and Falcon Northwest's $3275 Mach V Athlon XP 3000+. All of them had 1GB of 333-MHz DDR memory and a slew of high-end components, including ATI's Radeon 9700 Pro graphics card. The Polywell and Falcon machines ran Windows XP Home while the Sys ran Windows XP Professional (a negligible factor in our PC WorldBench 4 tests). Polywell sent a preproduction unit; the other two PCs were shipping models.