AMD's Athlon XP 2100+ The Last of the Palominos

Final Words

Another day, another CPU speed bump. Who would've thought we could've done so much to talk about another 67MHz? The reason we focused on this launch so very much is because of the fact that the Athlon XP 2100+ is indeed the last 0.18-micron Palomino core of the desktop Athlon line. With a $420 price tag the Athlon XP 2100+ doesn't make much sense for most users, even those looking for the highest performance. You're much better off sticking with a 1700+, 1800+ or 1900+ and upgrading later on to a Thoroughbred core or if you can hold off, maybe even a Hammer.

According to AMD's press-release just put out today, the first 0.13-micron Thoroughbred CPUs will be shipping to OEMs by the end of this month. It'll be another few weeks after that before end users can get their hands on the first 2200+ CPUs but those will be a much better buy to look for than this 2100+, the reason being that they'll have a bit more overclocking headroom and will run cooler.

In terms of where things go after Thoroughbred, AMD may need to reevaluate their roadmap once the Pentium 4 exceeds 2.66GHz and Intel introduces the 533MHz FSB. The one route that they could take would be to introduce Barton with SOI support and add some additional L2 cache to the core in order to maintain the utmost competitiveness; another option would be to let things ride out until the release of Hammer before really turning the heat up again.

The one thing that is for sure is that we're no longer dealing with the AMD of yore. AMD no longer plays entirely by Intel's rules and they are in a position where they can control exactly how competitively they want to pursue the performance crown at any given point. While they may not be as competitive in the manufacturing world with 300mm wafers 3+ years away, AMD is definitely able to keep up with (and even exceed) Intel architecturally and on a performance level as well.