The AMD Athlon XP 2800+

Doesn't time fly when you're enjoying yourself. It's difficult to believe that a whole year has passed since we did our review of the Athlon XP 2000+. Time does move quickly though and so does PC technology. Last year when we reviewed our Athlon XP 2000+, the best AMD CPU you could purchase was the XP 2100+. At the time of writing the top AMD processor is the XP 3200+ and the 64bit Athlons are only a short while away. Anyway as you've probably gathered this review will concentrate on the AMD Athlon XP2800+ and the performance this great CPU will give.

This is the first part of our review and in this first part we will throw the same games at our XP 2800+ system that we benchmarked on our XP2000+ system. Our PC specification is more or less identical, with the exception of the Audigy 2 sound card and the Epox motherboard which we had to change because our Abit KX7-333 didn't support the new CPU, so it should give you a decent idea of how much performance has increased. We are still using the same Gainward GeForce4 Ti4200 graphics card so the improvement will show the increased power of the CPU. Hopefully we will be able to acquire a modern graphics card for part two of our review. We must make it clear and say that we've noticed that our current graphics card appears to be the bottleneck in our current system and that we don't feel the XP 2800+ is showing it's true performance as a result. All being well, we'll be able to prove this in part two of the review with a more complimentary graphics card that won't bottleneck the system. Still most people can't afford to upgrade everything in one go and this review will show you what difference a XP 2800+ on it's own, can make in your existing system.

The Athlon XP 2800+
You probably already know that Athlon XP 2800+ is one of the 'Barton' CPUs from AMD. In addition to running on a FSB of 333Mhz (the XP 3200+ runs on a FSB of 400MHz) the Barton CPUs have 512k of Level 2 cache memory for increased performance. The previous Athlon XPs had 256k of Level 2 cache memory so as you can see these 'Barton' CPUs offer a significant memory increase. The XP 2800+ has a clock speed of 2.09GHz. However in actual real terms it's performance is similar to that of a Pentium 4 2.8GHz. The AMD Athlon XP architecture is far superior to an Intel Pentium 4 in that it gives far more performance per MHz and as a result the XP CPUs are PR rated to give the consumer, in as clear terms as possible, an idea of the performance of a CPU.

Nvidia nForce 2
The XP 2800+, as we mentioned earlier required a different motherboard and our choice was a board based on the Nvidia nForce 2 Ultra 400 chipset. We have to be honest here and admit that we have had problems. The first two motherboards we had gave us problems with various devices not functioning properly. The board we are using to do this review is the Epox 8RDA+ motherboard, which as I'm sure you'll know is a first generation nForce 2 motherboard. From the 3D Mark 2001SE benchmarks we have run it's obvious that the nForce 2 Ultra 400 motherboards offer superior performance. However because of our problems we've had to do the review on an Epox 8RDA+ so bare this in mind. Anyway let's go on with it.

Test System
AMD Athlon XP 2800+
Gainward GeForce 4 Ti4200 (detonators 43.45)
512MB PC2700 Crucial RAM
Seagate 60GB 7200rpm HDD
Audigy 2 sound card
Epox 8RDA+ motherboard
Microsoft Windows XP Professional Edition SP1

Games Benchmarked
Unreal Tournament 2003
No One Lives Forever 2 - A Spy in Harm's Way
Mafia
Age of Mythology
Morrowind
Warcraft III
Championship Manager 01/02

DirectX 9.0 was used for all of the benchmarks. We decided to solely benchmark at the 1024x768 screen resolution, in 32bit colour, because this is probably the most common resolution. Assuming we can get hold of a better graphics card for part two we'll throw all the resolutions at the CPU to give you a more accurate picture of its performance.

The Benchmarks

This is the interesting part where we see what the CPU can really do. We've included the results from the XP 2000+ benchmarks so you can see the difference that the CPU has made.

Unreal Tournament 2003 - Antalus

What we see here is the first of many examples of how the performance of the graphics card can strangle the performance of the CPU. The XP 2800+ is literally being stopped in it's tracks as the Ti4200 can't do anymore.

Unreal Tournament 2003 - Serpentine

Again we have virtually no improvement at all because of the limitations of the Ti4200.

Mafia

Mafia shows that a difference can be made even if the graphics card is causing a performance bottleneck. That said though the increase in the maximum framerate is seriously hindered by the graphics card.

No One Lives Forever 2 - A Spy in H.A.R.M.'S Way

What an excellent game NOLF 2 is, surely one of the best FPS games of all time. Unfortunately the Ti4200 is putting the blocks on performance here once again.

Age of Mythology

Same story once again. It's becoming crystal clear that a strong graphics card is essential in order to let the XP 2800+ stretch it's wings.

Morrowind - Outdoors (Pixel Shaders enabled)

Morrowind is a very different beast and will consume all the CPU power you throw at it. We see at least a 100% improvement in every category. At last the Ti4200 doesn't appear to be putting the brakes on the XP 2800+.

Morrowind - Indoors (Pixel Shaders enabled)

Sensational! There's no other word to describe it. Bear in mind that this is inside a huge hall and not inside a small house (where in fact the fps rose to an incredible 250fps).

Warcraft III

We're back to being bottlenecked once again. Nothing more to say really.

Championship Manager 01/02 (game creation)

OK it's an old game but it's an excellent way to test the number crunching capabilities of the XP 2800+. Just look at the speed of the CPU! Just 44 seconds to create a game with 5 leagues. Only 1 minute and 38 seconds to create a game with 10 leagues! The performance can be summed up in one world, stellar.

The 5 league test used England, Italy, Germany, Spain and France. The 10 league test used England, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Scotland, Holland, Brazil and Russia, France and Spain. Of course every league was used for the 26 league game creation. All leagues had their minor leagues included where applicable.

Conclusion (for part 1)

It's obvious that if 3D games are your thing then for the most part you'll need a strong graphics card to let the XP 2800+ realise it's potential. You might think that this review isn't putting the Athlon XP 2800+ in a good light well all we can say is that it is just part one and it shows that 3D gaming is a team effort with a good CPU requiring the appropriate graphics card to fully compliment it. Wayne Tritton at Gainward has assured us we'll have such a card for part two of the review so then we'll be able to see what the Athlon XP 2800+ really has to offer.

3D gaming aside though (as we obviously haven't given a fair picture in this review) the Athlon XP 2800+ is an excellent chip. Just look at the benchmarks for Championship Manager 01/02 and indeed for Morrowind (which relies more on the power of the CPU and not so heavily on the graphics card), which shows an enormous improvement over an Athlon XP 2000+. In case you're interested the PC Mark 2002 CPU rating for the XP 2800+ was 6387 (around 1,000 points greater than for an XP 2000+). The PC Mark 2002 score for a Pentium 4 2.8GHz CPU was only slightly better at 6752. Not bad at all when you consider the XP 2800+ can be bought for a little over £110 and the 2.8GHz Pentium 4 is exactly double that. Part two of the review will appear as soon as we have the newer graphics card (we don't know which one it will be yet) from Gainward.

A special thanks to AMD (especially to Linda Peacock at AMD) for providing the Athlon XP 2800+ processor and to Gainward for providing the GeForce4 Ti4200 graphics card.