Conclusion
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The obligatory 2 month period is over and the 2100+ processor is with us. The first question you may be asking is whether or not this is the last processor we will see of the Palomino core processor? In short, I am not 100% sure. With the recent rumors of a March 20th release of the Thoroughbred all but dispelled, its never easy to gauge what AMD is going to do with new product releases on that scale. I would count on the new core being out by June.The Athlon XP 2100+ processor is a needed stepping upgrade from the Athlon line of processors. With all the talk of the Intel Northwood processors, AMD needed a new product to become the flagship item. But, will this be enough? True, the AMD 2100+ is still able to beat anything that Intel can throw at it in almost all the benchmarks, but how long will that last? AMD needs to get their Thoroughbred processor out in the lower process, so that it can begin to rack up some higher clock speed processors. How does a 2.2 GHz Athlon sound to you? What rating would that get? Something close the 3000+ I am sure! Intel wouldn’t be able to handle it for long.
There are a couple of bios issues that potential buyers of the Athlon XP 2100+ should look out for. On some boards, a bios flash was necessary BEFORE the processor could be installed as the bios miscalculated the clock ratio and it wouldn’t let the processor power up. I think the Asus and Epox boards had this problem, but their latest bios’ (available at this reading) should fix that problem without too much hassle.
If you are thinking about upgrading your system and are wondering if the Athlon XP 2100+ is right for you, just think of things in terms of your current processor. Do you own any of the current processors that are XP 1800+ or faster? If so, I don’t think the XP 2100+ is a necessary upgrade. Those with lower processor speeds, perhaps around 1 – 1.3 GHz will see very nice speed increase with the jump to a Palomino core 1.73 GHz processor with a new DDR333 or KT266A motherboard.
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