AMD's Athlon XP 1900+ (1.6GHz): Still #1

Internet Content Creation Performance Internet Content Creation SYSMark 2001 AMD Athlon XP 1.60GHz (1900+) AMD Athlon XP 1.53GHz (1800+) Intel Pentium 4 2.0GHz AMD Athlon XP 1.47GHz (1700+) Intel Pentium 4 1.9GHz AMD Athlon XP 1.40GHz (1600+) Intel Pentium 4 1.8GHz AMD Athlon XP 1.33GHz (1500+) Intel Pentium 4 1.7GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.6GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.5GHz AMD Athlon-C 1.4GHz 215 213 213 205 202 198 198 194 187 181 171 163 | 0 | 43 | 86 | 129 | 172 | 215 | 258

With properly enabled SSE support the Athlon XP 1800+ was already able to offer performance on-par with the 2GHz Pentium 4. Now at 1.6GHz, the Athlon XP is able to claim a small but unnoticeable lead of 0.9%.

Office Productivity Performance Office Productivity SYSMark 2001 AMD Athlon XP 1.60GHz (1900+) AMD Athlon XP 1.53GHz (1800+) AMD Athlon XP 1.47GHz (1700+) AMD Athlon XP 1.40GHz (1600+) AMD Athlon-C 1.4GHz Intel Pentium 4 2.0GHz AMD Athlon XP 1.33GHz (1500+) Intel Pentium 4 1.9GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.8GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.7GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.6GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.5GHz 190 184 181 173 173 171 169 164 161 152 145 140 | 0 | 38 | 76 | 114 | 152 | 190 | 228

The performance increase over the 1.53GHz model 1800+ is slightly more tangible in the Office Productivity suite of SYSMark 2001, but 3.2% is nothing significant. For a user looking to upgrade, the performance difference between the 1800+ and the 1900+ again wouldn't be noticeable.

Overall Performance SYSMark 2001 AMD Athlon XP 1.60GHz (1900+) AMD Athlon XP 1.53GHz (1800+) AMD Athlon XP 1.47GHz (1700+) Intel Pentium 4 2.0GHz AMD Athlon XP 1.40GHz (1600+) Intel Pentium 4 1.9GHz AMD Athlon XP 1.33GHz (1500+) Intel Pentium 4 1.8GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.7GHz AMD Athlon-C 1.4GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.6GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.5GHz 202 198 193 191 185 182 181 179 169 168 162 155 | 0 | 40 | 81 | 121 | 162 | 202 | 242

Because of the processor's very large L1 cache, short pipeline and high hit-rate L2, the Athlon XP performs very well in the Office Productivity suite of SYSMark 2001. This gave AMD the advantage necessary to outperform the Pentium 4 2GHz with the 1.47GHz model 1700+ when looking at the big picture using SYSMark 2001. The introduction of the 1900+ is seemingly unnecessary from a performance standpoint; the Athlon XP already took the gold and with Northwood still not appearing anywhere AMD won't have much to worry about until next year. The current situation seems to place Northwood in the hands of OEMs early next year although it is still supposedly scheduled to be shown off before the end of this year.