AMD Athlon XP 2600/2400+ - Introducing Thoroughbred Revision B

No 333MHz FSB?

Rumors have been running rampant about the Athlon XP eventually moving to a 166MHz DDR (effectively 333MHz) FSB. The 25% increase over the current 266MHz FSB will provide a relatively non-existent performance improvement on today's Athlon XP, but as clock speeds increase it may become necessary.

The official word from AMD is that they are considering the move to a 333MHz FSB, but if you ask any of their chipset partners you will hear a slightly different story. The story they're telling is that the 333MHz FSB is definitely going to happen this year, possibly with the next launch of Athlon XP processors in the coming months.

The lack of 333MHz FSB support on the 2600+ and 2400+ parts isn't too disappointing because, as we mentioned before, there is not much performance to be gained by moving to a faster FSB at these clock speeds; the Athlon XP simply isn't starved by its 266MHz FSB, but as speeds do increase a faster FSB may become necessary.

Luckily DDR333 support is already present in all of today's Socket-A motherboards, so a move to a 333MHz FSB would still allow for a synchronous FSB/memory bus combination.

The Test