|
By,
Marco Chiappetta
May 13, 2003
In mid February, AMD
introduced a group of new processors based on their
"Barton" core with 512K of on-die L2 cache,
double the amount of the previous generation.
With the introduction of the "Barton", AMD gave the Athlon
XP line of desktop CPUs a much needed "shot in the arm".
Performance versus similarly clocked "Thoroughbred" based
Athlons was superior, and the performance deltas between
AMD's and Intel's flagship processors were reduced.
For the most part though, Intel's 3.06GHz Pentium 4 with
Hyper-Threading took the led in the majority of benchmarks
when compared to the
Athlon XP 3000+. Then in April, Intel release a new
line of processors with 800MHz systems buses. They
simultaneously released new motherboard chipsets as well, the
Canterwood (i875) and Springdale (i865), that further
enhanced the performance of the Pentium 4 platform. Before April came to a close,
however, AMD did make some
noise of their own when they released their highly
anticipated 64-Bit Server Class CPU, the Opteron.
AMD is also poised to release new 64-Bit desktop CPUs
based on the same architecture as the Opteron in
September. For now though, the battle for desktop
supremacy
is still between the "Barton" based Athlons and Intel's
"Northwood-C" Pentium 4s. Today we'll be taking a
look at AMD's latest weapon in this battle, the Athlon XP 3200+.
This processor marks the first appearance of a 400MHz
system bus for the Athlon. So, does the Athlon XP
3200+'s faster system bus speed change the desktop CPU
pecking order? Read on and find out...
|
|
|
Specifications of the AMD Athlon XP 3200+
Processor |
|
Increased Core and System BUS Speeds... |
|
THE AMD ATHLON XP 3200+
UP CLOSE
CLICK ANY IMAGE FOR AN ENLARGED VIEW
|
Key
Architectural Features of the AMD Athlon? XP Processor
Include:
QuantiSpeed?
Architecture for enhanced performance
- Nine-issue
superpipelined, superscalar x86 processor
microarchitecture designed for high performance
- Multiple parallel
x86 instruction decoders
- Three out-of-order,
superscalar, fully pipelined floating point
execution units, which execute x87 (floating point),
MMX? and 3DNow!? instructions
- Three out-of-order,
superscalar, pipelined integer units
- Three out-of-order,
superscalar, pipelined address calculation units
- 72-entry instruction
control unit
- Advanced hardware
data prefetch
- Exclusive and
speculative Translation Look-aside Buffers
- Advanced dynamic
branch prediction
3DNow!?
Professional technology for leading-edge 3D operation
- 21 original 3DNow!?
instructions?the first technology enabling
superscalar SIMD
- 19 additional
instructions to enable improved integer math
calculations for speech or video encoding and
improved data movement for Internet plug-ins and
other streaming applications
- 5 DSP instructions
to improve soft modem, soft ADSL, Dolby Digital
surround sound, and MP3 applications
- 52 SSE instructions
with SIMD integer and floating point additions offer
excellent compatibility with Intel?s SSE technology
- Compatible with
Windows® XP, Windows 2000, Windows ME, and Windows
98 operating systems
400MHz
AMD Athlon? XP processor system bus enables excellent
system bandwidth for data movement-intensive
applications
- Source synchronous
clocking (clock forwarding) technology
- Peak data rate of
3.2GB/s
- Support for 64-bit
bi-directional data
The AMD Athlon?
XP processor with performance-enhancing cache memory
features 64K instruction and 64K data caches for a
total of 128K L1 cache and 512K of integrated, on-chip L2
cache for a total of 640K of full-speed, on-chip cache.
Socket A
infrastructure designs are based on high-performance
platforms and are supported by a full line of
optimized infrastructure solutions (chipsets,
motherboards, BIOS).
- Available in Pin
Grid Array (PGA) for mounting in a socketed
infrastructure
- Electrical interface
compatible with 400MHz AMD Athlon XP system buses,
based on Alpha EV6? bus protocol
Die size:
approximately 54.3 million transistors on 101mm2.
Manufactured using AMD's state-of-the-art 0.13-micron
copper process technology at AMD's Fab 30 wafer
fabrication facility in Dresden, Germany.
|
AMD didn't make any changes to
the "Barton" core with the Athlon XP 3200+. The only
difference between this processor and AMD's previous
flagship, the Athlon XP 3000+, is the FSB. By
lowering the processor's multiplier, and raising the FSB,
AMD increases system bandwidth, which in turn should
increase overall performance. As you can see in the
chart above, the Athlon XP 3200+ is clocked at 2.2GHz, a
measly 30MHz higher than the 3000+. This clock
speed is attained by using a multiplier of 11 and an Front
Side Bus speed of 200MHz (400MHz DDR). The 30MHz
increase in clock speed may not be very exciting, but keep
in mind the real performance gains will come from the 20%
faster system bus. Thermal Power and current draw
has increased incrementally as well, which is to be
expected.
More Processor Info & Overclocking
|
