[Keefe]

Hardware-Unlimited is blasting around the track with an Athlon XP 1800+ (1.53GHz) processor under the hood. So is this new core a worthy successor to the stalwart Thunderbird core? Read on to find out:

The Athlon XP offers better performance than the Pentium 4 in most cases, and thus proves to be the stronger processor. This had been the case with the Athlon 1.4 and continues even further with the new Athlon XP 1800+. In the Sandra testing, the Athlon 1.4 and the Athlon XP 1800+ consistently outperformed the Pentium 4 1800 with the exception of the memory benchmark with the Pentium 4 always dominates due to the use of RDRAM. Both processors have their merits, with the Athlon XP's strong point being its price/performance ratio. The Athlon XP 1800+ is selling for around $265 on the net, with the P4 1800 going for around $274. However, the flagship Pentium 4, the 2GHz, is selling for $583, a steep increase of the Athlon XP flagship the 1800+.

Athlon XP 1800 Review