AMD Athlon XP 2600+ vs. Intel Pentium 4 2.8 GHz
Source: Digit-Life
The today's comparison holds on to the typical tests of this kind carried out in our lab. A top processor of one manufacturer is compared with that of another, and they are coupled with the fastest for them chipsets. Apart from the new processors the chipsets are also of great interest.
Although the lately released Athlon XP 2200+ and the latest Athlon XP 2400+/2600+ are based on a bit different Thoroughbred cores. The previous core revision used in the 2200+ had the Stepping 0, and turned to be a little raw, that is why the frequency couldn't be lifted over 1800 MHz. Therefore, the redesigning of the Thoroughbred which brought us the stepping 1 is a forced step made to reach just the planned capabilities instead of new summits. This case reminds me of the VIA Apollo KT266A, whose elder brother KT266 came with a memory controller that couldn't provide the potential stated in the specs.
The core of the new stepping has a greater surface (did they try to eliminate problems of heat removal from a small surface?), a greater number of transistors (by 400,000) and the maximum consumed power. AMD has changed a policy of ratings. The 2400+ had actually to be clocked at 1800+2*66=1933 MHz ( 2000 MHz in fact), and the 2600+ at 1933+2*66=2066 MHz (2133 MHz in fact). But it's known that at the fixed FSB frequency the performance gain gets smaller as the multiplier (i.e. the core's frequency) grows up. AMD proves that it takes very seriously its rating as an indicator of processor's performance, and is not going to turn it into a meaningless figure.
