Today marks the launch of – what would seem to be - a whole new line of processors from AMD, namely the Athlon XP. More specifically the launch includes four processors - the Athlon XP 1500+ (1.33 GHz), XP 1600+ (1.4 GHz), XP 1700+ (1.467 GHz) and XP 1800+ (1.533 GHz).
Why XP 1800+ and not Palomino 1.53 GHz ? As you may have noticed the launch also include new naming, and more specifically a new naming strategy. The model name is no longer a match of the actual clock rate of the CPU. The Athlon XP 1800+ is actually a 1.53 GHz Palomino, and the Athlon XP 1500+ is a 1.33 GHz Palomino. The new naming is intended to steer people away from concentrating too much on the actual MHz and GHz figures – and focus more on actual performance.
The reasons for this move are twofold (at least):
1) Most people believe that the higher clocked Pentium 4 processors will always be faster than a lower clocked Athlon processor, as the P4 has x MHz extra! As most of you reading this article know, the AMD Athlon 1.4 GHz has actually been faster in many of the current applications, games and benchmarks than the Intel 2 GHz Pentium 4. The reason for this is that the Pentium 4 contains a new core, and is built on a new architecture that relies more on SSE and SSE2 optimizations, rather than raw FPU power like the Athlon and PIII. A problem for Intel is just that when applications aren’t optimized for SSE2, the FPU power is seriously lacking in the Pentium 4, and the AMD therefore beats it by brute force! The problem for AMD is that this will only be obvious to people who investigate things more closely, by reading online or magazine reviews. And as that doesn’t make up the majority of the market (I dare say), AMD has decided on a new strategy. It can seem like a strange move at first, and I'm far from sure everyone will like it. I do believe however that it can do them some good, although it also adds to the confusion in this market. Only time will tell what the result will be of course...
2) With the XP name, they probably hope to sell a few extra processors, relying on the success (?) of Windows XP.
Why 1800+ - not 2200+ ? You may wonder why the 1.53 GHz Palomino core processor has the XP 1800+ name/figure and not say XP 2200+. The fact is that it is intended to give the notion that it can match a Pentium 4 at the same clock rate (XP 1800+ is supposed to be a match for a P4 1.8 GHz). As the current Athlon 1.4 GHz with a Thunderbird core actually beats the Pentium 4 at 2 GHz in some applications, I believe that the XP 1800+ might even match a Pentium 4 1.8 GHz with SSE2 optimized software. This is however only my best guess, and has not been confirmed by any source. And of course Intel will deny that this is the case, no matter what.
To sum it up: The Athlon XP, named similarly to Microsoft's Windows XP which also launches in October 2001 (October 25th), will feature performance ratings that compare to Intel's Pentium 4 processor.
