AMD AthlonXP 2700+ 333FSB CPU

(Page 1 of 2 )

The wait is finally over. The AMD 333 MHz FSB (166MHz x 2) CPU is widely available to the public, and today we're going to take a look at the 2700+. Most enthusiasts have been pushing their XP's (Palomino's, and Thoroughbred's) to the 166 MHz FSB and beyond for quite some time to enjoy the benefits of the gained overall performance in running the CPU and memory on a synchronous bus, since running the CPU and Memory bus' asynchronously increases latency, actually decreasing performance. But along with the increased FSB on the CPU usually came increased voltage, and in turn, increased heat output. The 2700+'s starting point is 166 MHz. Overclocker's rejoice...or do we??? We're going to see if we can get the 2700+ to play nice in the OCA Labs.

Here are the key features on the 2700+ from AMD:

1. Advanced 333 front-side system bus
2. QuantiSpeed™ architecture for enhanced performance
3.  Nine-issue superpipelined, superscalar x86 processor microarchitecture designed for high performance
4.  Multiple parallel x86 instruction decoders
5.  Three out-of-order, superscalar, fully pipelined floating point execution units, which execute x87 (floating point), MMX™ and 3DNow!™ instructions
6.  Three out-of-order, superscalar, pipelined integer units
7.  Three out-of-order, superscalar, pipelined address calculation units
8.  72-entry instruction control unit
9.  Advanced hardware data prefetch
10.  Exclusive and speculative Translation Look-aside Buffers
11.  Advanced dynamic branch prediction
12. High-performance, full-speed on-chip cache (384K total)
13. 3DNow!™ Professional technology (with 51 new instructions)
14. 21 original 3DNow!™ instructions—the first technology enabling superscalar SIMD
15.  19 additional instructions to enable improved integer math calculations for speech or video encoding and improved data movement for Internet plug-ins and other streaming applications
16.  5 DSP instructions to improve soft modem, soft ADSL, Dolby Digital surround sound, and MP3 applications
17.  52 SSE instructions with SIMD integer and floating point additions offer excellent compatibility with Intel’s SSE technology
18.  Compatible with Windows® XP, Windows 2000, Windows ME, and Windows 98 operating systems

     

With a wide array of current motherboards available now to support the 333 FSB, and the current trend in faster and faster memory, we should have some fun running the 2700+ through the wringer, but more on that later on in the review. The 2700+ is using the T-Bred "B" core that has the added metal layer to the core (bringing the total to 9 layers) to improve the signal strength of the CPU. With the push to the 333 FSB, the XP's are now delivering a peak data rate of 2.7 GB/s of bandwidth. Coupled with The 2700+ has approximately 37.6 million transistors on die, and is manufactured using the 0.13 micron process in the AMD FAB 30 facility in Dresden, DE. It is still running with the 128K (64K instruction and 64K data) L1, and 256K of L2 cache for a total of 384K of on die cache. We will have to wait for the Barton for the 512K cache.

The Thoroughbred 2700+ outputs 62 watts of heat, and runs a default voltage of 1.65. AMD looks like they have finally settled down the new core with the addition of the extra layer to give some more headroom in performance.

Taking a look at the first line in the stepping on the 2700+, AXDA2700DKV3D, the 'D' represents the 333 FSB chips, while a 'C' would mean the 266 FSB variety. So, now lets get on to what you're all waiting for...

Performance: Time to fire up the beast, and make some heat...Let's see just how hard we can get the pony sweating.

TEST SETUP

1. AMD XP 2700+
2. ABIT AT7 MAX2 (C5 BIOS)
3. 512 MB Kingston HyperX DDR3500
4. ATI Radeon 9700 PRO
5. Cool Max 550W PSU
6. Swiftech MCX462+

BENCHMARKS

• SYSMARK2002
• PCMARK2002
• 3DMARK2001SE (Build 330)
• SiSoft Sandra CPU Bench (2003)
• SiSoft Sandra Memory Bench (2003)
• SiSoft Sandra Multimedia Bench (2003)
• PiFast
• Quake III (Patched to v 1.32)
• [H] Unreal Tournament 2003 Benchmark (Patched to v. 2166)

SOFTWARE

• Windows XP w/ SP1 & DX9
• VIA Hyperion 4in1 v 4.45
• ATI Catalyst v 3.0

Results: While I had all intentions in benchmarking the 2700 on the KT400 and KT333 chipset, the KT333 board I currently have (MSI KT3 ULTRA ARU) would not play nice with the 2700+ (Guess that's why MSI does not 'officially' support the 2700+ on the KT3). While I was able to run the 2700+ in the KT3 under normal usage, any benchmarking/stressing of the system ended in BSOD. On the KT400 chipset (ABIT AT7 MAX2), the results were taken at default speeds (13x166), and at the highest stable overclock (13x185) that would complete ALL testing.

SYSMARK2002

SYSMARK2002 incorporates the following Internet Content Creation and Office Productivity applications:

1. Internet Content Generation: Adobe Photoshop® 6.01, Adobe Premiere® 6.0, Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 7.1, Macromedia Dreamweaver 4, and Macromedia Flash 5

2. Office Productivity: Microsoft Word 2002, Microsoft Excel 2002, Microsoft PowerPoint 2002, Microsoft Outlook 2002, Microsoft Access 2002, Netscape Communicator® 6.0, Dragon NaturallySpeaking Preferred v.5, WinZip 8.0, and McAfee VirusScan 5.13.

That's a respectable score for the 2700+. SYSMARK really puts a hurtin' on any system, but it is actually pretty fun to watch.

PCMARK2002

PCMARK2002 was ran using the default settings for testing, and consists of a series of tests that represent common tasks in home and office programs.

Next: Conclusion >>
 

More Computer Processors Articles
More By Cygnus_X_1

Comments On: AMD AthlonXP 2700+ 333FSB CPU

>>> Be the FIRST to comment on this article!

Recommended by Dev Hardware