Athlon vs Athlon MP vs Athlon XP

[SSJpn]

Is there a difference between these chips besides speed?

Also, I'm looking for an AMD chip that is comparable to the Intel P4 1.7GHz. Can you also tell me the best motherboard that i can buy for that processor (i want to use DDR RAM)

Thanks...

Ps - money is not an issue.

 

[Cerati]

There are slight differences between the chips. The original Athlon was based on the "thunderbird" core and the Athlon XP/MP are based on the "palamino" core.

The Palamino core adds a few features like data-prefetching, larger table lookup buffers, etc. As a rough guide (very rough...) an XP/MP is 10% faster than the equivalent Athlon.

Athlon MP's are guaranteed to work in a multi-processor configuration and XP's aren't (although most XP's tend to anyway, just to confuse the situation).

Athlon XP's/MP's have a speed rating that is supposed to compare to an equivalently clocked, same-generation processor - so in theory an Athlon XP 1700+ should be as fast as a 1.7 GHz Pentium 4. But your mileage may vary...

I'd use one of the motherboards based on the new Via KT266A chipsets, such as the Asus A7V266E or Epox 8KHA - good boards, take DDR and very fast.

If money really isn't an issue then get a Tyan Tiger motherboard which will take 2 Athlon MP's and a few gig of DDR. Whether you'd get any benefit from a dual workstation all depends on what you want to do though.

Hope that's been some help !

 

[paparazi]

The XP1600+ out performs the P4 1700 in all catagories especially when the P4 is on a DDR board.
The only reason Via is introducing a DDR platform for the P4 is because of the cost of RDram not because of performance, a P4 board with RDram will always be quicker than one with DDR but it will cost more.
Personally I would go XP on a Via KT266A board, NOTE A*
You will end up with a faster higher performing system for less money.
On the subject of cash, you will get an XP1900+ that is said will be even quicker than the yet to be released 2.2 P4 for the same money you will pay for the 1.7 P4 you have in mind. Martin

 

[cdogg]

The only thing I can to add to what Cerati said is that I "think" the Athlon MP's top speed is 1.2 GHz. I may be mistaken, but I remember reading this somewhere recently...

 

[harrison78]

No, You can now get systems with dual Athlon XP 2000+ processors in and I think they are about two speeds behind the current fastest XP chips as it takes them longer to relese the same clock speeds under the MP chip version.

 

[harrison78]

No, You can now get systems with dual Athlon MP 2000+ processors in and I think they are about two speeds behind the current fastest XP chips as it takes them longer to relese the same clock speeds under the MP chip version.