Review: AMD Athlon XP 2400+

AMD's latest set of go faster stripes

Product	Athlon XP 2400+
Company	AMD
Web	www.amd.com
Price	£175
We like	More speed, relatively cool, price
We don't like	Still uses 133 FSB
Rating	9/10
Requirements

AMD has been caught on the hop by Intel's recent 2.53 GHz Pentium IV release and has had to bring forward the release of their XP 2400+ and XP 2600+ CPUs that were not due until the end of the year. However, this is good news for anyone looking to buy a new Athlon based PC or are looking to upgrade their existing Athlon.

More Than Just a Number

A while back, AMD stopped describing their processor speeds in terms of the actual MHz but in terms of the speed of an equivalent Pentium CPU. This rating system has been adjusted again slightly with these two new processors that actually perform better than their ratings would suggest.

The XP 2400+ is also the first AMD CPU to break the 2GHz barrier - internally the CPU runs at 2GHz even though it is rated at 2400 or 2.4Ghz. This apparent rating discrepancy is because Athlons run more efficiently that Pentium IVs at any given clock speed. AMD decided for marketing reasons to rate their CPUs in terms of Pentium IV equivalence rather than their true speed which would have made them appear slower.

For the tech-heads out there, this is the first CPU to use the revision B Thoroughbred core and has a new stepping of 1 compared to 0 for the previous iteration. For the rest of us, this means it has been optimised in various ways compared to its predecessors. As a result it only uses slightly more power than the XP 2200+, less than the increase in speed would normally require. That said, you must now use a copper-bottomed heat sink if you want to avoid the CPU overheating.

Pricing

The £175 XP 2400+ is much cheaper than its Pentium IV equivalent (The 2.4GHz model) which retails at around £345 but you can be sure Intel will respond to the release of these new CPUs with price cuts and an even faster CPUs in order to try to keep the lead. The XP 2600+ is less of a bargain at £235 but if you want the fastest.

Fitting & Testing

The CPU was tested using a Gigabyte 7VTXH+ motherboard using the latest BIOS that has been updated to recognise the new CPU. The installation went smoothly and on rebooting the machine was subjected to a variety of tests to stress it as much as possible. When under load the CPU temperature rarely strayed above 41 degrees C which was good. In performance terms it did very well. Some tasks were slightly faster with the Athlon with others favouring the Pentium IV. This CPU should be considered the peer of the Pentium IV 2.4Ghz and in some cases superior.

Whilst not everyone needs such raw processing power, those who do video editing or rip a lot of CDs to MP3 will appreciate the extra grunt. If you are limited to running Word and browsing the web you will gain very little from a CPU this fast.

Overclocking

For those who are keen on overclocking, the improved core of the XP 2400+ would appear to allow more room to manoeuvre than the more recent AMD chips which will no doubt interest the hardcore Quake nuts out there as well as those that want the absolute fastest machine no matter what the cost. Already people have managed to get these CPUs running at 2.5GHz which equates to an XP 3000+ in performance terms! 2.3GHz seems fairly easy to get which is a huge improvement over the XP 2200+ which would barely budge from its designed speed.

Conclusion

The AMD XP 2400+ is excellent value for money and along with the XP 2600+ represents the fastest CPUs you can get for a socket-A motherboard right now. It's a pity that they still rely on 133MHz memory (266MHZ DDR) although it is rumoured the next releases will change this to 166MHz (333MHz DDR) which will help speed things up even more. In terms of speed/£ the XP 2400 + is better than the XP 2600+ so is probably the one to go for right now.

 

Iain Laskey
See Iain's site at www.pcbookreview.com