Review: AMD Athlon XP 2600+ Processor

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Seems in a bid to match Intel in the Mhz race they have pushed out their latest speed grade, the Athlon XP 2600. Amdmb.com and Hothardware got their hands on one and ran it through its paces. Check out some of the scoop on this new speed demon below.

It has only been two months since the release of the very first Athlon XP processor based on the Thoroughbred core, the Athlon XP 2200+. The 2200+ ran at a 1.8 GHz frequency, only 67 MHz faster than its predecessor, the 2100+ at 1.73 GHz. Over the last two years, we have seen from AMD constant releases and updates of the Athlon cores including the Thunderbird, Palomino and Thoroughbred, but all processor releases came in 67 MHz jumps and weren't very exciting for the end user. Because AMD was at the top of the desktop market, they didn't need to make leaps and bounds in development in the 32-bit processing arena – they were, after all, preoccupied with the upcoming release of the Hammer technology based processors.

This all changed this year as Intel's Pentium 4 processors based on the Northwood core and an upgrade cache to 512 Kb finally was able to topple the AMD Athlon processor as the king of the benchmarks. Intel was quickly releasing faster and faster processors; now currently up to 2.53 GHz in speed. The fastest Athlon running a 1.8 GHz was a close competitor, but was falling behind quicker than most would have thought possible....

News source: Amdmb.com | Hothardware.com