The Athlon XP - A performance boost on a budget (part 2)

This is the 2nd part in our look at what kind of performance increase can be gained in 3D games with the minimum of expenditure. Before we begin with the game benchmarks let's have a look at how much it would cost to upgrade to this configuration, something we didn't do the first time around.

Time to upgrade?
If you're running a PC that is more than 2 years old the chances are that it is probably struggling to keep up with today's 3D games. So what can you do? Well the expensive option is to head off to the nearest PC superstore and waste a lot of money on a new PC. Why do I say waste a lot of money? Well the chances are that your existing monitor, keyboard, mouse, 3½" floppy drive, hard drive etc. are all still up to the task. The price of buying a PC for gaming is probably going to cost your around £1,000 and for that you'll probably end up with a below par graphics card so you'll want to pay out for a better one if you want to enjoy your games in the best possible way. The alternate option is to replace the underperforming components from your existing PC. This is a cheaper option and you have the advantage of installing only the component that you want.

Keeping it affordable
Of course we could list the finest components that money could buy but for this article we'll keep it sensible (and affordable) and create a PC that should last you for at least 18 months of PC gaming. The components and an approximation of their latest prices are as follows.

AMD Athlon XP 2000+ - £65.00
Gainward GeForce4 Ti4200 (64MB) - £130.00
2x256MB RAM Crucial PC2700 - £103.00
Abit KX7-333 £70.00
Total Price = £368

As you can see that's a considerable difference from the £1,000 it would cost you in a PC superstore. If you did want to spend more money you could replace those components with better ones. AMD now have the Athlon XP 2700+ CPU (£280) and you could couple that with a Nvidia nForce 2 motherboard (£100) for even greater performance. The Athlon XP 2600+ and 2700+ run on a 333FSB for even greater performance. The components we have are those listed above so for the purpose of this article we'll look at the performance you could expect for that £368.

Why AMD?
If you occasionally scour the Internet you'll notice that the latest Intel processors are 3GHz and at first glance they look like the better choice, however this is not the case. That 3GHz CPU is going to set you back almost £560 alone. You might naturally think that if Intel has a processor at 3GHz and AMD has a processor that is performance rated (I'll explain that in a moment) at 2.7GHz then it would be silly to choose AMD. This assumption would be wrong too. A CPU is not solely about raw clock speed. The architecture and efficiency of the CPU must also be taken into account. The AMD Athlon XP processors are performance rated. That is to say the number is not indicative of the CPU's speed but rather it's performance and AMD where rather conservative with this rating. An AMD Athlon XP2000+ is approximately a 1.67GHz processor, yet it out performs an Intel Pentium IV 2GHz processor in almost every circumstance. The Athlon XP2000+ is around £65.00 whereas a Pentium IV 2GHz processor is around £145.00. That's a heck of a difference. Even if you're considering building a top end PC you'll be pleased to know that the Athlon XP2700+ is more than a match for the 3GHz Pentium IV and again it's about half the price. There really is only one choice. The combination of an AMD Athlon XP2700+ and an Nvidia nForce 2 motherboard is causing quite a stir with it's sensational performance so if you want the latest and greatest PC then that is definitely the way to go and should my numbers come up on the lottery then that will be the Deaf Gamer's review system :)

OK so you've currently got a PC that's not performing well in games and you're sold on upgrading to the above specification for around £370. What kind of performance can you expect? Well as we are a games website I thought it would be a good idea to throw a few games at the AMD Athlon XP2000+ system and see how it performs. Click on the link below to see the results.

Games Benchmarks >>>