As you all may have heard by now, this is the end of an era, may we all bow our heads in a moment of silence...

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20074

This was the CPU I cut my OC teeth on, so I felt it was worthy of a lengthy Eulogy

This was the Processor that seemed to be the "Everymans" (Or woman!) CPU, they have provided many a budget gaming machine, or something for the wife and kids to surf with, but most of all..it would Overclock like crazy!

The humble beginings were from an improved version of the "ThunderBird" core. It's earliest version used the same 0.18 Micron process "Palimino" core and 1.4GHZ of top of the line Thunderbird, but was awarded a "Performance" rating of 1600+ mainly due to the added "SSE" instructions wich caused many people to think AMD had lost it's mind!

Using DDR266 (133FSB) and 256k on on die Cache, It easily out-muscled the fastest Pentium 3's of the time, and held up well against the early Pentium 4's
The lowest available speed was just 1333MHZ and earned a 1500+ rating, the final Palimino core was 1.73GHZ rated as a 2100+

The next version was the Thoroughbred "A" using the new 0.13 Micron process coming in at 1.8GHZ and rated as a 2200+, but had a few issues with heat, and did not overclock all that well... AMD fixed that rather quickly though... .

We all know the more common Thoroughbred "B" versions that came out rather quickly with some tweeks to the 0.13 Micron chips, these became the bread and butter of the Overclocking community, using lower voltage and running much cooler, and they had unlocked multipliers if you used an NForce-2 chipset...no more using a Pencil or a conductive paint pen to mod to the L-12's

The JIUHB's steppings became legendary, the DLT3C low voltage versions were commonly reaching 2.3GHZ at or near stock voltage or 2.4+GHZ with some good air or watercooling..pretty spectacular when its originally at a lowly 1.47GHZ!

Later versions of the "B" core used DDR333 (166BIOS) with the highest clocked version coming in at 2.25GHZ (The highest for any AMD XP!) and carried a 2800+ rating.
I don't think many of these CPU's ever actually made it to market because of poor yeilds, it was basically a "Paper" Launch...since the next revision of the Silicone was due out very soon....
(I would love to get my hands on one of these for "Nastolgia" purposes, keep your eyes open!)

The final step was the release of the "Barton" core, wich upped the ante to 512k of cache, and saw the first use of DDR400 on the final version, the 3200+ wich ran at a decent 2.2GHZ.
The real "Jewel" of this final version was the 2500+ rated at 1.83GHZ (166x11) later steppings easliy ran at the same 2.2GHZ (11x200) of the 3200+ at or near stock voltage!

Things got kind of grim fo the Overclocker around the time the AMD 64 "Clawhammer" came in to the picture , they had decided to start "Superlocking" the multipliers on all XP Desktop CPU's...
Just like Intel had done early on with the Pentium 4's to stop the financial bleeding. Why buy a 400$ 3200+ CPU when you can OC the 100$ 2500+ version to the same speed?

AMD's final gift to the Overclocking community came as a suprise with the release of the "Mobile" Bartons, easily the fastest Overclocking version yet! These were cream of the crop low voltage cores, with all the Multipliers unlocked!

For 100$ the Mobile 2500+ I use easily hit 2.5G+GHZ with good air cooling, and one person here at PR (Zennzzo) hit 3GHZ with Uber Watercooling on a 2600+ (Hand picked stepping code!)

The Athlon XP will live on as a low end "Sempron" in 2200-2800+ Flavors (1.5-2GHZ) for the next few years, but is realy a step backward since it only uses 256K cache and a 333FSB (166BIOS) just like the old Thoroughbreds.

Kind of a sad ending realy, I would have loved to seen them clock it up to the current max of 2.6GHZ of the FX-55 using some DDR 520 (10x260=3600+?) I think it could easily be done using recent improvements they have learned with the 130NM process.

It would nearly match the performance of some newer AMD 64's.... but we can't have that now, eh?

Attached Thumbnails

 

RIP Athlon XP.

but I'm still using one; wth?


lol


long day...


Athlon XP's were (are) some of the best price to performance CPU's of the last few years. Sorry to see them go

RIP


















Even though I'll probably still be using atleast one of my current two atleast a year from now.

Athlon XP lived like it was dying. R. I. P.




Very well done article though !!!!

guess i should start raiding the coin jar for another barton ,hope they dont all go to quick.
good history lesson and write up.

Yeah, I need to grab a Barton.

Good processor line, good good processors

Running Pally 1900+ and Thouroughbred B 1700+. Looking to get a Barty 2500M.

Tear.

What? No more AMD Athlon XP?

What has the world come to?! R.I.P AthlonXP

A sad day indeed!
Best start looking for a mobile 2500 with a quickness.

I am sad to see them,, go just when i was getting to know them, Barton actully cured me of my pentium addiction. But heres a link for all you amd fans , barton 2500+ for $73 oh save me one fellas>>Mike http://shopping.com/xPC-AMD_Athlon_X...kin_id-6061825