I know what you’re thinkin’,"Could it be? Is it true? Would you ever believe that the Athlon XP 2600+ is faster than the the 2200+! Oh, the humanity."Well it is true, and what’s more, this "release" puts AMD more or less back in thepaperprice/performance pole position, even if possibly only for a few days (the 2.8 GHz P4 will be released Monday, whichmayaffect Intel prices dramatically). In all reality though, this is more of a smooth PR move than an actual release for AMD. These XPs, which are the result of a revision to the Thoroughbred core, are only samples. The 2600+ (and the 2400+, for that matter) are not in mass production yet, so this "victory" may deflect a lightning bolt or two from Intel, but it doesn’t stop the storm. You can watch the 2600+ go neck-and-neck atAce’s Hardware,HardOCP,Anand’s Shack of Love,Tech Report, andHotHardware(among others–keep an eye onthe mailbagfor updates as they come in).
The new 2600+ runs at 2.133GHz, 333MHz faster than the previous top-o-the-line 2200+, but it still sits atop a 266MHz FSB. While the move to a 333MHz DDR FSB might not shake the earth, it could at least help AMD compete more forcefully in memory intensive situations, such as good ‘ole Q3 or video encoding. Of course, the $300 price tag might quickly make you forget about the small percentage difference once the product hits the streets (few of you are building systems with RDRAM anyway). And 2600+ isn’t the end of the line for this core revision, either.Ace’s, for example, overclocked their unit to 2.4GHz using nothing but air cooling. There’s more where this came from, in other words.
