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By,
Marco Chiappetta
May 13, 2003
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Our
Test System's Major Components |
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Simply The Best! |
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We used some of the best
components available to test the Athlon XP 3200+.
Asus' nForce 2 based A7N8X Deluxe v2.0 was our motherboard
of choice. The latest version of this board uses the
C1 stepping of NVIDIA's very popular nForce 2 chipset.
The C1 stepping ensures reliable operation at FSBs exceeding
200MHz. As you all probably know, to get the best
performance out of an nForce 2, you must run the memory in
Dual-Channel mode, with aggressive timings, at the same
clock speed as your processor's FSB. To do this, we
used a pair of high quality 256MB (512MB total) TwinX
Corsair PC3200 modules. Rounding out our test system
were an ATi Radeon 9700 Pro and a 128GB Seagate Barracuda V
7200 RPM SATA hard drive.
AMD supplied us with an Ajigo
heatsink to help keep the Athlon XP 3200+ nice and cool.
At first glance this heatsink looks rather plain, but it
actually performed quite well. The thick copper base
and thin aluminum fins do a great job of pulling heat away
from the processor's core. We also liked the fact that
all 6 hold-down tabs are used to fasten this cooler to the
socket, and the fan is virtually silent. At default
clock speeds this cooler kept our Athlon XP 3200+'s
temperature around 39 - 42 degrees Celsius. When we
overclocked the system, however, things got a little
"toastier". While overclocked we saw temperatures
approaching 65 degrees Celsius.
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The
Athlon XP 3200+ Exposed |
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The
"Inner Workings" |
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WCPUID |
CACHE INFO |
STANDARD FEATURE FLAGS |
EXTENDED FEATURE FLAGS |
We fired up
WCPUID to take a closer look at the Athlon XP 3200+'s clock
speed and feature set. The screenshots above are of
WCPUID's general CPU information page, the CacheID
information page and the Standard and Extended Feature Flag
pages. The general information page shows the 3200+
running at its default clock speed of 2.20GHz (11x200MHz).
Just like the Athlon XP 3000+, and the other "Barton"
processors to come before it, the Athlon XP 3200+ is
equipped with 64K of 2-Way set associative Instruction L1
cache and 64K of 2-Way set associative data L1 cache.
This processor also has 512K of 16-Way set associative L2
cache, bringing the total amount of full-speed, on-die cache
to 640K. The Standard and Extended Feature flags are
identical to earlier versions of the Athlon XP. (WCPUID
ID Information taken from an Athlon XP 3000+ is available
here.)
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Overclocking
The
3200+ |
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They
Just Keep Getting Better... |
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THE TRACES
ATHLON XP 3200+
2520MHZ (12X210)
WCPUID
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ATHLON XP 3200+
2520MHZ (12X210)
CPU
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ATHLON XP 3200+
2520MHZ (12X210)
Memory
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ATHLON XP 3200+
2520MHZ (12X210)
Multimedia
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ATHLON XP 3200+
2520MHZ (12X210)
Cache
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The Athlon XP
3000+ we reviewed back in February was a fairly good
overclocker. At its default voltage, with stock
cooling, we were able to increase the 3000+'s clock speed by
13%. Well, it seems that with each new batch of
processors, AMD further refines their .13 micron, copper
manufacturing process. We were able to take the Athlon
XP 3200+ all the way up to 2520MHz! A full 320MHz, or
14.5% higher than its default speed! Getting to this
speed was a bit trickier than just raising the FSB, however.
It's already a stretch finding RAM that's going to run
reliably in Dual-Channel mode with aggressive timings at
200MHz. Sure, you can relax the memory timings and
take the FSB higher, but the best performance comes by
running your memory with aggressive timings. Luckily,
the multiplier of an Athlon can be easily adjusted with a
quality motherboard. We found the "sweet spot" for our
CPU and memory was with an FSB of 210MHz and a multiplier of
12. We suspect using more advanced cooling techniques
would have allowed us to take this CPU even higher
So, How Fast is it?
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