The second thing is the processor bus frequency. Keeping in mind that there are two data packs transferred along the Athlon XP bus per clock, its bandwidth will grow up to 3.2GB/sec. to use 400MHz processor bus you will have to set FSB 200MHz on your mainboard. This way, DDR400 SDRAM will be the most optimal memory to be used with the new Athlon XP 3200+: this particular memory will work synchronously with the FSB ensuring minimal latencies and highest performance. This transition of Athlon XP platforms to DDR400 SDRAM is absolutely justified, because this memory type has been approved by both: core logic developers and memory suppliers. Even Intel supports the same memory type in its last chipset families aka i875 and i865.

Using dual-channel DDR400 SDRAM with NVIDIA nForce2 chipset
will ensure 6.4GB/sec memory bandwidth.

By using the so-called processor rating for CPUs marking AMD has made its life much simpler now. Without raising the CPU frequency, but just by increasing the L2 cache size or speeding up the processor bus, the company keeps competing with Intel quite successfully, as the latter still marks its CPUs with frequency values. Thus the newest Pentium 4 3.03GHz processor with 800MHz bus is in reality much faster than Pentium 4 3.06GHz CPU with 533MHz bus. Therefore, the comparison of Athlon XP 3000+ withy the new Pentium 4 3.0GHz and the old Pentium 4 3.06GHz may end up with a different conclusion. To make the situation somewhat clearer, let us compose a table showing the correspondence between the clock frequency, cache size, bus frequency and the AMD processor rating:

As we see, the working frequency of Athlon XP processors hasn’t been growing that much for quite a while now. It once again proves that Athlon architecture has already reached the top of its frequency potential. And if AMD wants to stay in high-performance desktop processors market, they have to think of something else. And this something will be the new Athlon 64 processor due this fall.

And in the meanwhile let’s return to our today’s hero: Athlon XP 3200+.

Athlon XP 3200+ on the left, Athlon XP 3000+ on the right.

It is very easy to tell the new Athlon from the predecessors. The CPU has got a slightly different packaging (the AMD logo and the “Assembled in Malaysia” stamp have been moved to a slightly different location). Also, the processor marking ends with “E” instead of “D”, which indicates that it is intended to work with 400MHz bus.