Conclusion
It is short from amazing how fast the technology has developed. I can remember about a year and a half ago talking to a colleague at work that I'd buy a 1 GHz processor as that represented some sort of landmark. There is no way in denying it. The Athlon XP 3000+ is of course a blazingly fast processor, what did you expect anyway ? It's not beating the Pentium 4 3.06 GHz though. The difference is close, yet a lot of consumers care about that little difference and will choose Pentium 4 unless Athlon pricing remains below the competition.
As stated, despite the rating system in most circumstances the Athlon XP 3000+ will not 'beat' the Pentium 4 3.06 GHz. It's close though. The Barton based core is a very good step in the 0.13-micron process based fabrication and is something they can build on for a while. Recently I heard some rumors that people got a Barton running at 3 GHz.
However there's also something else you need to keep in the back of your head, Athlon64 is on the way .. a full 64 bit computing CPU and in a year from now a lot of us will be using it. So we might scratch our head right now and should start thinking if we are seeing the end of 32bit CPU's. Should we wait for new 64-bit CPU's or just go for the current 32-bit platform. In this context I'm going to close this review with a small statement from AMD that they gave me when I interviewed them on the CeBIT 2003 in Germany a few weeks ago.
One of the questions I often asked myself and therefore asked AMD was why is there a need to to change from 32 towards 64 bit ? Although AMD somehow did not expect that question he had a very good answer. Actually more a rhetorical question. It's simply the next step in the evolution of processors and these steps always need to go forward. He said it's not the question of IF but rather WHEN.
Ask yourself, would you prefer still to be working on a 386, 486, 8 or 16 bit computer ? Then things fall together and make sense. If you are in need of the latest and greatest right now, then by all means the Athlon XP 3000+ is so extremely fast that you will not regret it. It's fast, stable and will keep that rig of yours running like a Ferrari for a while. But please do keep an eye on the new 64-bit generation as it's the best next thing, before spending hundred dollars on a CPU.
Right now Athlon XP 3000+ is about 75 bucks cheaper than Pentium 4 3.06 GHz as it's about 325 USD plus your average mainboard that is Athlon compatible will likely also be a bit cheaper then a Pentium4 platform, not as much as we have seen in the past though. You can check out and compare the prices here. Furthermore a highly recommended CPU.
Product: Athlon XP 3000+ processor
Manufacturer: AMD
Author: Hilbert Hagedoorn
You can seek the best price on this Athlon CPU right here in our comparison pages.
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