Overclocking

Athlon XP 3200+ overclocking is a purely applied task. We will be able to evaluate how big the potential of the top processor model in the family is. Of course, you shouldn’t expect much from the newcomer, because AMD definitely wouldn’t miss the opportunity to launch a Barton based CPU working at higher core frequency, if this were possible. And since Athlon XP 3200+ is the last processor in this family, we expect it to be poorly overclockable.

But enough talking, let’s do something now. We overclocked our today’s hero on ABIT NF7 rev. 2.0 mainboard (see our ABIT NF7 2.0 Mainboard Review for more details). The cooling solution used was quite ordinary: Ajigo MF035-032 recommended by AMD for use with Athlon XP 3200+ processors. We overclocked our processor in the following way. Since the systems built with Athlon XP can work unstably in case the bus frequency exceeds 400MHz,  we first of all tried to set the maximum possible clock frequency multiplier (Athlon XP 3200+, just like other AMD processors, has unlocked multiplier). And only after that we attempted to speed up the bus even more.

The maximum multiplier we managed to set successfully was 12x. This is a good result keeping in mind that the nominal multiplier of Athlon XP 3200+ is 11x. In other words, since the FSB frequency for the tested processor was 200MHz, we managed to make it another 20MHz higher this way. However, it turned out that the system stability was no longer high enough, therefore, we had to regain it by raising the processor Vcore from the nominal 1.65V to 1.75V.

Then we started raising the FSB frequency. Here the results were not that impressive, and as soon as the FSB reached 204MHz, the system froze. However, at the FSB equal to 203MHz the system started up and worked quite OK. Only CPU-hungry applications appeared a problem for our system. Luckily, I managed to increase the Vcore by another bit (up to 1.8V), so that the problems were eliminated completely.

And here is the result: Athlon XP 3200+ working at the nominal 2.2GHz reached the top of 2432MHz:

In fact this result can hardly be called impressive. However, it gives us hope that just in case AMD will be able to announce one more Athlon XP working at, say, 2.3GHz.

Prices and Availability

There have never been any problems with the availability of top Athlon XP (Barton) models. These CPUs started selling immediately after the actual announcement. The same thing should happen this time also: Athlon XP 3200+ starts selling today.

The price of the new solutions is more interesting to us, in fact. If you take a look at the prices set by AMD for their Athlon XP 3200+, you will understand what the positioning of the new solution will be against the competitor’s background. The table below allows you to compare the today’s prices of the Athlon XP processors with those of Intel Pentium 4:

Well, this is a very interesting situation. After the launch of Athlon XP 3000+, AMD positioned it as an alternative to Pentium 4 3.06GHz. Now the company’s ambitions have grows much smaller. Athlon XP 3000+ now costs much less than Pentium 4 3.06GHz, and the top Athlon XP 3200+ model is just a little bit more expensive than Pentium 4 3.0GHz, yielding about $200 to the upcoming Pentium 4 3.2GHz due a little later.