AMD Athlon XP 3200+ 400Mhz FSB Barton Review

So how will the 3200+ hold up to Intel’s latest offering, with both chipsets tested supporting Dual Channel DDR 400, and both CPU’s running their latest bus speeds? Let’s take a look…

Introduction

It was just over three months ago
when AMD announced their new Barton CPU, the AMD
Athlon XP 3000+ running on the 333Mhz FSB and using
a 512kb l2 cache. This new Athlon lined up almost
precisely to its Pentium 4 3.06Ghz competitor,
with the Pentium 4 taking more memory bandwidth
benchmarks while the Barton beat the Intel chip
in most of our gaming tests.

Fast forward to present day and AMD
has just announced their "last" incarnation
of their socket 462 Athlon processor, the AMD Athlon
XP 3200+. Today’s Athlon XP differentiates itself
from past processors by being the first AMD CPU
to run on a 400Mhz front side bus (FSB). The jump
to the 400Mhz FSB was one that most knew was coming
as NVIDIA let slip that their nForce 2 chipset was
running AMD’s 400 Mhz FSB CPU’s a few months ago.

The launch of the 3200+ has of course
dropped prices of slower chips to more affordable
levels, but this time around the 3200+ faces competition
from a CPU running a FSB double that of its own,
the 3.0C Pentium 4 which yields a formidable 800
Mhz FSB along with a chipset that is breaking every
memory bandwidth record in existence, the 875p or
"Canterwood".

So how will the 3200+ hold up to Intel’s
latest offering, with both chipsets tested supporting
Dual Channel DDR 400, and both CPU’s running their
latest bus speeds? Let’s take a look…

Model number	Athlon XP 3200+
L2 Cache Size	512KB
FSB	400Mhz
CPU Frequency	2.20Ghz
Process Technology	.13 micron
Die Size	101mm2
Nominal Voltage	1.65v
Max Die Temp:	85 degrees C
Transistor count	54.3 million
Socket	462 (Socket A)