AMD's Athlon XP 2200+ Processor
The "Thoroughbreds" at .13 Debut!

By, Marco Chiappetta
June 10, 2002

We feel it is necessary to explain exactly how we configure each test system before running any benchmarks, because we have seen significant variations in scores from one site to the next. The first thing we did was enter the system BIOS and set the board to it's "High Performance Default" settings. Then we set the memory clock speed to 166MHz. with a CAS Latency of 2, with a 1T Command Rate.  We then connected the hard drive, formatted it, and installed Windows XP Professional. After Windows XP was completely installed, we hit the Windows Update site and downloaded all of the available updates, with the exception of the ones dealing with Windows Messenger. Then we disabled and removed Windows Messenger from the system, disabled Auto-Updating, disabled System Restore and set a 768MB permanent swap file. At this point we installed all of the necessary drivers for our hardware.  Lastly we set the Visual Effects to "best performance", installed all of the benchmarking software, defragged the hard drive and ran all of the tests at the CPU's default and overclocked speeds.

HotHardware Test Systems KT333 with a 1/2 GB of PC2700!

CPUs:

AMD Athlon XP 2200+ (1800MHz.)

Pentium 4 2.2GHz.

Pentium 4 2.53GHz.

Common Hardware:
NVIDIA GeForce 4 Ti 4600

On-Board Sound

IBM DTLA307030 30GB. ATA/100 7200 RPM Hard Drive
Creative 52X ATAPI CD-ROM

Standard 3.5" Floppy

320W Power Supply

Other Hardware:

Gigabyte GA-7VRX KT333 Motherboard

Abit IT7 i845e Motherboard (2.2GHz.)
i850E Intel Motherboard - D850EMV2 (2.53GHz.)
512MB of PC2700 DDR RAM @ CAS 2 (2200+ and 2.2GHz.)

512MB of Samsung PC800 RDRAM (2.53GHz.)

Software:

Windows XP Professional
Direct X 8.1
NVIDIA Detonator 4 reference drivers, version 28.32

VIA 4-in1's v.4.38

Intel INFs v4.00

 

Benchmarks & Comparisons With SiSoft Sandra Our Girl Doing Her Sweet Thang!

SANDRA 2002 (the System ANalyzer, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is a system information and diagnostic utility put out by the folks at SiSoftware. Not only is this tool good for benchmarking, it provides a host of other information about both your hardware and software.  We began our testing with three of the built-in sub-system tests, that are part of SANDRA 2002's benchmarking suite (CPU, Memory and Multimedia), running at the CPU's default clockspeed of 1800MHz. (13.5x133) and an overclocked speed of 1917MHz. (13.5x142).

The AMD Athlon XP 2200+, whether it is overclocked or not, put up some serious numbers in SANDRA's CPU tests, besting all of the reference systems by a sizable margin.  The Memory tests are also fairly impressive.  With the Front Side Bus (FSB) overclocked to 142MHz., only the i850 / RDRAM system had higher performance.  Here's where we wish AMD decided to up the default FSB on the "Thoroughbred" Athlon XPs to 166MHz.  The performance delta, in the memory bandwidth test, between the AMD / KT333 system we used and a P4 / i850 system, would have been much smaller.  In the Multimedia test, which seems to favor AMD CPUs, absolutely nothing comes close to the 2200+.
 

Benchmarks & Comparisons With The Winstones "Real World" Application Performance

For the remainder of the benchmarks, we compared the performance of our AMD Athlon XP 2200+, coupled with 512MB of PC2700 DDR RAM, to a 2.2GHz. Pentium 4 / i845 combo using the same 512MB of RAM and a 2.53GHz. Pentium 4 / i850e system with 512MB of PC800 RDRAM.  So it's AMD's Flagship versus Intel Flagship, and AMD 2200+ versus Intel 2200.  Fair enough, right?

The first "Real World" results we have for you, are from ZD Labs' Business Winstone 2001 benchmark. We'll directly quote ZD's eTestingLabs website for an explanation as to what this test is comprised of:

"Business Winstone is a system-level, application-based benchmark that measures a PC's overall performance when running today's top-selling Windows-based 32-bit applications on Windows 98 SE, Windows NT 4.0 (SP6 or later), Windows 2000, Windows Me, or Windows XP. Business Winstone doesn't mimic what these packages do; it runs real applications through a series of scripted activities and uses the time a PC takes to complete those activities to produce its performance scores."

The application used in the Business Winstone tests include:

• Five Microsoft Office 2000 applications (Access, Excel, FrontPage, PowerPoint, and Word)

• Microsoft Project 98

• Lotus Notes R5

• NicoMak WinZip

• Norton Antivirus

• Netscape Communicator

We have to admit, we were a bit disappointed with the Athlon XP 2200+'s performance in the Business Winstone test.  The scores were good, handily beating the 2.2GHz P4 and nipping at the heals of the 2.53GHz P4, but we have seen better numbers out of a 2100+ when using a different motherboard.  Unfortunately, the Gigabyte GA-7VRX was the only motherboard in the lab at the time with proper support for the new 2200+, so we had to make due.

Next is ZD's Content Creation Winstone 2002. This benchmark runs a similar series of scripted activities to Business Winstone 2001, but the tests are comprised of more "bandwidth hungry" applications. The applications used in the Content Creation Winstone 2002 tests include:

• Adobe Photoshop 6.0.1

• Adobe Premiere 6.0

• Macromedia Director 8.5

• Macromedia Dreamweaver UltraDev 4

• Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 7.01.00.3055

• Netscape Navigator 6/6.01

• Sonic Foundry Sound Forge 5.0c (build 184)

The Content Creation Winstone test was also a bit of a disappointment.  This was another test where we have seen slightly better scores posted by lower clocked AMD systems when coupled with a different motherboard.  Regardless, the 2.2GHz P4 couldn't keep up with the Athlon XP 2200+.  The 2.53GHz P4 / RDRAM combo ran away with this test though.  It may not be cheap, but Intel's latest is undoubtedly a performer.

MPEG Encoding & PC Mark 2002