AMD's 0.13-micron Thoroughbred - Cool but Slipping at 2200+

Clock Speeds and Expectations

With the only tangible performance improvement offered today being the 66MHz speed bump of the Athlon XP 2200+, you shouldn't expect to see too much on the benchmark side. Remember that going from March's XP 2100+ launch to today's 2200+ release actually only spans a 3.9% increase in clock speed, meaning that you'll see an even smaller increase in performance scores.

By far the most attractive points about the Thoroughbred are its smaller core, cooler operation and increased headroom. The last point we'll address after the benchmarking section in our overclocking tests.

Motherboard Compatibility

The 0.13-micron Athlon XPs should work just fine in existing Socket-A motherboard platforms that already supported the Palomino; the main requirement for proper operation with these motherboards is BIOS support. As we're just about to publish our KT333 roundup we ran some quick compatibility tests on all of the motherboards in the roundup to point out which manufacturers need to hurry up and release BIOS updates in order to properly support Thoroughbred. Thankfully only a select few gave us any issues, so here's the info: