

You just couldn’t beat the Athlon XP for price-performance. Here’s the big news: the 2.53GHz version will drop deep into the sweet spot at $243, almost fifty bucks below the Athlon XP 2600+.Įxpect prices on slower Pentium 4s to fall in line below that.Īlthough the performance lead has ping-ponged back and forth between AMD and Intel for some time now, AMD has long led the market in value.

The P4 2.8GHz will cost a heathly $508, while the 2.66GHz version will list at $408. To see what difference the bus speed increase makes, go read this article. We didn’t even test a system with a 400MHz bus today, because there’s no good reason to buy a 400MHz-bus Pentium 4 unless you’re upgrading an existing system. The P4 2.66GHz will ride on a 533MHz bus, while 2.5 and 2.6GHz variants will be available for systems with a 400MHz bus. Intel is introducing a few other Pentium 4 speed grades today, as well. I expect the availability picture on pre-built PCs available from manufacturers using these processors will be similar. As we go to press, I see only one 2600+ listed on Pricewatch, and there are already quite a few listings for the Pentium 4 2.8GHz. The thing is, it looks like the Pentium 4 2.8GHz hit the market in volume before the Athlon XP 2600+. Intel has the lead again, but for a brief time, AMD could claim performance leadership. AMD’s timing couldn’t have been better, because they managed to get their 2600+ chip launched in time to capture a share of the performance lead away from the Pentium 4 2.53GHz. We were kind of expecting Intel to bury AMD with the 2.8GHz launch, but AMD surprised us with its 2600+. Truth be told, the Pentium 4 2.8GHz chip arrived in Damage Labs well before AMD’s Athlon XP 2600+ did. Yes, the Athlon XP was fastest in a few tests, but overall, the result is clear: the Pentium 4 2.8GHz is the new performance king. With that said, here are the results of our overclocked tests.Īfter a brief stint with a divided title, the Pentium 4 recaptures the undisputed heavyweight title once again. However, I had to crank it down a notch to 2.4GHz on a 300MHz bus to get the processor to finish a POV-Ray render. With this cooling config, the Athlon XP hit 2.43GHz on a 304MHz bus with 1.9V of juice, and I was able to run 3DMark at that speed.

That’s a little more oomph than the 30CFM fan on the P4 cooler, so factor that in to your impressions. I have a feeling that with the right motherboard and a little more coaxing, this chip would run well above 3.2GHz.įor the Athlon XP, I used a TaiSol cooler, but I replaced its wimpy fan with a more powerful 40CFM Antec unit. So I just stuck with the Asus board, which is a tad faster anyway thanks to its RDRAM. The BG7 would hit 3150MHz at the P4’s default voltage, but it wouldn’t stay stable at much over 3.2GHz, even with higher voltages. So I whipped out another P4 board, the Intel 845G-based Abit BG7. Even with some extra voltage, the system couldn’t complete a benchmark run at 3150MHz on the SR7-8X. I hoped the P4 would go even higher on our Abit SR7-8X board, but it wouldn’t even hit 3150MHz at stock voltage on that board. To keep the system stable, I set the RDRAM to run at PC800 speeds before I overclocked the bus, which worked like a charm. I used only air cooling in the form of a Thermaltake Volcano P4 coolernothing special. That’s 3150MHz on a 600MHz quad-pumped bus. The P4 2.8GHz utterly defeated our Asus P4T533-C motherboard it ran stable at its default voltage up to the Asus’s limit of a 150MHz front-side bus. Now comes the part where we turn up the juice and see what these chips can really do. If you have questions about our methods, hit our forums to talk with us about them. ZD Media Content Creation Winstone 2002 1.0.1Īll the tests and methods we employed are publicly available and reproducible.Compiled binary of C Linpack port from Ace’s Hardware.We used the following versions of our test applications: Vertical refresh sync (vsync) was disabled for all tests.
Pentium 2 processor windows#
The test systems’ Windows desktops were set at 1024×768 in 32-bit color at an 85Hz screen refresh rate. Using it makes life easier for us as we’re dealing with brand-new chipsets and pre-production motherboards, because we don’t have to worry so much about stability and compatibility. If you’re looking to tweak out your system to the max and maybe overclock it a little, Corsair’s RAM is definitely worth considering. I want to give a big thanks to Corsair for providing us with DDR333 memory for our testing.
Pentium 2 processor plus#
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus D740X 7200RPM ATA/100 hard drive NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600 128MB (Detonator XP 30.82 video drivers)
