  
By Adam Fisher, Lori Grunin, and Bill O'Brien
(6/10/02)
When Intel switched its CPU manufacturing process from .18 microns (Willamette) to .13 microns (Northwood), significant technological changes that accompanied the move made it a noteworthy event. Now it's AMD's turn; in this case, however, switching the Athlon XP from a .18-micron process (Palomino) to .13 microns (Thoroughbred) proves more of a footnote than a headline.
Truthfully, we didn't expect great things from what's really a simple manufacturing change on AMD's part. Intel used its update as an opportunity to increase the cache size on its chip to 512K, which takes a lot of the credit for the P4's significant performance increase. The Athlon XP still makes do with 256K of L2 cache, which keeps the new CPU's price low--but also makes it a less compelling product. For instance, the souped-up ABS Awesome 3300 (with the new 1.8GHz Athlon XP 2200+) barely noses ahead of the 1.74GHz Athlon XP 2100-based ABS Bengal. And the mainstream Micron Millennia XP+ somehow manages to underperform the Compaq Presario 6000Z with its lower-clock-speed, Palomino-based CPU. The relatively minor performance gains that Thoroughbred offers aren't enough to catch up with the fastest Pentium 4-based PCs, which already outpace Palomino-based system by a healthy margin. Even AMD's future plans for the Athlon XP seem to limit the Thoroughbred's thrill. The company will up the L2 cache to 512K with its Barton core, scheduled for release sometime in the second half of this year. A little while after that, AMD will debut its 64-bit, .13-micron silicon-on insulator (SOI) Athlon, code-named Hammer. Given the incremental performance difference between the old and new models and the inevitable, more significant changes to come, it doesn't make sense now to pay extra for a Thoroughbred.
Adam Fisher is an assistant editor for Computer Shopper, Lori Grunin is a senior editor for CNET Reviews, and Bill O'Brien is a frequent contributor to CNET Hardware.
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