Advantages: great performance/price ratio
Disadvantages: slow cache at 0.4x for 800 megahertz

...of an Athlon is usually about 10% or more cheaper than the Intel chip as the same clock speed. Amount of cache The AMD Athlon comes with at least 64 kilobytes of level 1 cache (if not 128) which is at least double of what the pentium 3 offers. Level one cache is faster then the level 2 variety and will offer a large boost in business applications. Weaknesses: Lack of on-die cache Currently, none of the AMD Athlons thus far released for sale come with on-die cache. Cache helps with the repetitive execution of computer instructions and is very important for many software applications such as spreadsheets. The speed of the processor cache has a dramatic effect on the overall cpu performance. As the cache is not currently on-die for the athlon as opposed to the Intel celerons and the coopermine, the speed of the cache in current AMD... Read review

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Advantages: Fast, Excellent MHz/£ ratio, Highly Overclockable
Disadvantages: Hotter than Intel P4s, Die is more fragile.

...seated onto the die, it is easy for, if the cooler is not place squarley ontop of the processor to "knock" in the corners of the die, sometimes causing substancial damage to the precious core of the processor. Basically meaning you've just broken a £68 (if you got an Athlon 3200 £160!) chip and AMD or your local PC shop will NOT re-imburse you! So your monkeyed and have to get a new one. Luckily the next generation AMD64 processor come with a more heavily "armoured" system where your processor is much safer. Ill let you know about the AMD 64-bit processors the day I can afford one :) In conclusion: -------------------- YES! and Endorama this is the END! (from "Endorama" by Kreator and Lacrimosa) So as my dreadfully long words of jargon sum up, in their own special way :), I believe the AthlonXP 2600+ is the way to go, for now... Read review

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Advantages: Decent performance, cheap, you can tell you're mates "I got one too!"
Disadvantages: Not as fast as Pentium 4 rated at same speed, not future proof

...When I go to a few of my mate's home's, I sit down and have a few beers, play a few Playstation 2 games and have a kebab. But then I will always spy their PC sitting in the corner of the room hiding under a desk. I would ask them 'what processor you got in your rig?' and they would reply 'ah you know, AMD Athlon XP'. AMD Athlon XP processors are cheap and fast. All my mates have them and that's because it runs the games, but doesn't take your bank into financial meltdown. Sure it's not the fastest processor in the world but for the asking price its amazing value for money. You ever wondered why AMD added 'XP' to the end of their Athlon processors? I always thought it was because they wanted to boost sales using Windows XP, with them having the same suffix and all. But in fact it stands for Xtra Performance, unlike Window's XP which... Read review

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Advantages: HDTV output, supports AMDs Cool 'n' Quiet
Disadvantages: Only one lan

...The ASUS M2NPV-VM Motherboard for AMD single-core Athlon 64/ Sempron and Dual-core Athlon 64 X2/ Athlon FX processors using socket AM2 is very user friendly, I went with AMDs 64 x2 3800+ processor in the beginning then moved up to 4200+ 2Gb Ram without any hassle, very easy to setup and fits easily in a standard ATX case. A possible downside to the board is that it has a limited number of slots due to being a micro ATX sized board. That's not a big deal for me as the only two cards I'll be buying in the future is Graphics and a extra Lan card. Board Layout `````````````````` >In the upper right hand corner of the motherboard are the ATX 24 pin power connector, Floppy disk connector, Game/Midi port connector and four DDR2 slots. These DDR2 slots support a maximum memory capacity of 8GB and the frequencies supported is DDR2-800MHz/667... Read review

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Advantages: 64-bit future proofed, speedy, excellent value for money
Disadvantages: Dual core AMD 64 CPUS are faster... but hey it would make this CPU cheaper so it's not all bad!

...clock speed frequencies i.e. 2.2GHz. This enabled it to run a lot cooler (around 45 degrees Celsius at full load), use a lot less power, and enabled feasible overclocking (that is running a CPU faster than it is intended to be run at) even with the provided heatsink and fan in the retail box. They labelled their CPUs as 3000+ even if it was a 2.2GHz processor to show that it ran at the equivalent speed of Intel's 3GHz CPU. So how does AMD manage to have their CPU's run more efficiently than Intel's even with lower clock speeds? Although a lot of things contribute to it such as cache memory, front side bus and the like, the main thing to effect it is due to the length of the CPU's pipeline. A pipeline is set in stages, and the more stages it has the longer the pipeline is. AMD's Athlon 64 CPU pipeline length is between 12 - 17, whilst... Read review

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Advantages: athlon performance chips major tuning potential no need to change it
Disadvantages: needs some time &help the get it setup well, you need some knowhow

...what is this cpu stuff all about? the basic problem we all face when buying a pc is the differance in opinion between manufactors and marketing forces paid to sell the product, we may even decide to belive the somewhat middle of the road reviewer, who, if you look closley enough may avdise you that one product is the best in a particular artical / review in one mag and completely controdicts his or herself in another mag. (i know a few involved with bench testing?)buisness! that's the way it is. dosen't help you or me much though. To the point - to ask me the question of what is better amd athlon or intel piii. i am at present using both and to give you the most honist answer, it's the amd. simple - not quite, i have found piii to be a good reliable and fast base platform over a very wide basis, by this i mean that the piii works well... Read review

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Advantages: Fast 333mhz bus speed, Easy to install, Cheaper than other brands.
Disadvantages: May not work in all motherboards

...After searching around for a new processor for my computer, and seeking recomendations from various computer shops, i was given two choices: 1/ AMD Athlon XP 2/ Intel Pentium 4 Owing to the fact that Intels Pentium 4 2.0ghz was roughly twice the price of the Athlon XP 2600 2.08Ghz, I opted for AMD`s Offering. As i opted for an OEM processor, it came with no manual or Heatsink and fan (Retail versions come with both) Installation was fairly simple: Flip open the lever on motherboard Socket, put the Athlon XP in, flip the lever back down, Add Thermal paste to CPU die (centre portion of CPU), Fit heatsink and fan unit. Once installed, i had to go into the bios setup and set the FSB to 166mhz (some boards use jumpers). After leaving the bios setup, i was greeted with a boot up screen telling me i had An AMD Athlon XP 2600... Read review

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Advantages: Low price, top performance, well proven and respected hardware that will be respected for years to come
Disadvantages: None found

...AMD do it again. A few years ago I remember planning my upgrade for my next PC and waiting for the Pentium processor to drop to an affordable price....it didn't so my supplier recommended AMD's near top of the range K6 450 as a reliable budget cpu. I could not knock it in any way and it handled almost anything thrown at it, way out performing my old pentium 266. I had to take it in for repair as the mother board developed a problem and had to be replaced under it's gaurantee and when repaired the engineer commented on it being a nice quick little machine. Three years on....upgrade time again...time to build a new one. Now that processors were running at over 1 gig I decided an upgrade was due and had a look around. I had my eye on a 1gig Athlon and saw that they were now available as 1.4gig with 266fsb....but too pricey for me... Read review

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Advantages: very good value for money
Disadvantages: not available yet in any higher than 1.5 ghz

...AMD now are on the brink of prdecessing thier main rivals Intel at the processor game. Their most recent processor the AMD Athlon 1.4 ghz has been a great success, and rivals the intel p4 chip with 600mhz more processing power Combined with a DDR (double data rate) motherboard, AMDs chip provides the ultimate solution for high end video editing and games. Compatable with a wide range of main board manufacturers including Gigabyte, Asus, msi and abit, the chip is widely available at low prices, just £90 for the 1.4 mhz chip, which has been proved to be faster than the PIV chip (on a DDR motherboard), and it costs £300 less. If you want a cheap pc with top specs then this processor is for you. With a bus speed of 133mhz and 10.5x clock multiplier, this chip will certainly top my pc upgrade list!... Read review

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Advantages: Great Value With the power you need for gaming.
Disadvantages: Overheating.

...Amd have been leading the market for cpu's for the home and office user and now they have the xp range with lots more commands for all you gamers. The xp 2000+ seems to be the most popular chip on the market at the moment. I build computers for friends and for family and i also work for a leading computer company so i use alot of these chips and i can say that this seems to be the most popular by far. The only problem i came across with this chip is that it gets hot very quickly which can be sorted out quite easily by getting a decent fan. The amd boxed retail version of this cpu comes with a fan which in my experience is rubbish and doesn't keep the cpu cool at all. I would say the best fan to purchase for this cpu is either the zalman flower or one of the other fans for the athlon range from the zalman range of fans... Read review

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