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AMD ATHLON XP USED WITH ATI RADEON X1950 PRO GAMING PERFORMANCE

"We are going to answer the question, can you get good game performance with a Athlon XP type processor when used with the current most powerful AGP video card which is the Sapphire Radeon x1950 Pro? We will be using various Athlon XP processors including the most powerful which is the AMD Athlon XP 3200, the mid-range AMD Athlon XP 2500 and the budget AMD Sempron 2200. The AMD Sempron 2200 is a budget processor designed for general use and not really for games but we will show that when paired with a powerful video card even the Sempron 2200 can deliver playable gaming performance. We have used the Asrock K7S8XE+ which uses the SIS748 chipset because it's a stable motherboard and it works perfectly with the Sapphire Radeon x1950 Pro AGP."



SYSTEM INFORMATION

PROCESSOR AMD ATHLON XP 3200
AMD ATHLON XP 2500
AMD SEMPRON 2200
VIDEO CARD SAPPHIRE RADEON X1950 PRO
ATI DRIVER CATALYST v8.3
MOTHERBOARD ASROCK K7S8XE+
MEMORY 2 x 512MB OCZ GOLD XTC PC3200 DDR
OPERATING SYSTEM WINDOWS XP SERVICE PACK 2
DIRECTX VERSION v9.0C

BENCHMARK SETTINGS:- We use three image quality and resolution settings for benchmarking hardware for review. Low quality setting uses a resolution of 1024x768 (unless otherwise stated) and all of the game settings are set to low, this setting will mostly test for processor rather than video performance. Medium quality setting uses a resolution of 1280x1024 (unless otherwise stated) and all of the game settings are set to medium, this setting will test both the processor and video performance. High quality setting uses a resolution of 1600x1200 (unless otherwise stated) and all of the game settings are set to high, this setting is a very demanding test for video rather processor performance!

GUN METAL 2

LOW QUALITY

AMD ATHLON XP 320060
AMD ATHLON XP 250051 (-15%)
AMD SEMPRON 220038 (-37%)

MEDIUM QUALITY

AMD ATHLON XP 320047
AMD ATHLON XP 250041 (-13%)
AMD SEMPRON 220030 (-37%)

HIGH QUALITY

AMD ATHLON XP 320043
AMD ATHLON XP 250037 (-13%)
AMD SEMPRON 220027 (-38%)

AMD ATHLON XP 3200 AMD ATHLON XP 2500 AMD SEMPRON 2200
COMMENT - "Gun Metal 2 is one of the older games in this review and mostly stresses the processor rather than the video card. The Athlon XP 3200 and Athlon XP 2500 both deliver good performance. The Sempron 2200 also appears to be able to offer good playable performance upto medium quality."

WORLD IN CONFLICT

LOW QUALITY

AMD ATHLON XP 320035
AMD ATHLON XP 250029 (-18%)
AMD SEMPRON 220023 (-35%)

MEDIUM QUALITY

AMD ATHLON XP 320017
AMD ATHLON XP 250013 (-24%)
AMD SEMPRON 22009 (-48%)

HIGH QUALITY

AMD ATHLON XP 32008
AMD ATHLON XP 25007 (-13%)
AMD SEMPRON 22005 (-38%)

AMD ATHLON XP 3200 AMD ATHLON XP 2500 AMD SEMPRON 2200
COMMENT - "World in Conflict is one of the more modern games featured in this review and is very demanding on the processor and video card. When using the low quality settings only the Athlon XP processors offer playable performance because World in Conflict was too much for the Sempron 2200. When increasing the image quality to medium or high quality things become unplayable for the Athlon XP 3200 and XP 2500."

SUPREME COMMANDER

LOW QUALITY

AMD ATHLON XP 320037
AMD ATHLON XP 250034 (-9%)
AMD SEMPRON 220027 (-28%)

MEDIUM QUALITY

AMD ATHLON XP 320020
AMD ATHLON XP 250014 (-30%)
AMD SEMPRON 22009 (-55%)

HIGH QUALITY

AMD ATHLON XP 320013
AMD ATHLON XP 250010 (-24%)
AMD SEMPRON 22009 (-31%)

AMD ATHLON XP 3200 AMD ATHLON XP 2500 AMD SEMPRON 2200
COMMENT - "Supreme Commander is a very demanding game which can crush even the most powerful Athlon64 computer. I was therefore very surprised to see the Athlon XP and Sempron processors delivering playable performance when using the cpu limited rather than video card limited low quality setting. When the image quality is increased to medium or high quality it would appear that the Athlon XP and Sempron are having a hard time pushing the Sapphire x1950 Pro to deliver playable performance."

CONCLUSION

"The problem with the Athlon XP and Sempron is that some modern games such as Lost Planet and Juiced 2 require SSE2 support which the Athlon XP and Sempron doesn't support. However with older games the Athlon XP and Sempron 2200 delivered some very playable game performances even at high quality settings thanks to the Sapphire Radeon x1950 Pro. A big surprise was the better than expected performance of the Sempron 2200, the Sempron 2200 runs at only 1.5Ghz using a 166mhz Front Side Bus and is further crippled by it's 256K Level 2 Cache. The Sempron 2200 was playable using all of the medium quality settings and even some high quality settings which is impressive for a budget processor. However modern games like World in Conflict and Supreme Commander proved too much for the Athlon XP 3200, XP 2500, Sempron 2200 and they were only playable using low quality settings. The Sapphire Radeon x1950 Pro AGP proves there is still life left in the Athlon XP!"


INDEX
PAGE 1 - INTRODUCTION
PAGE 2 - DOOM 3, QUAKE 4 AND PREY
PAGE 3 - GUN METAL 2, WORLD IN CONFLICT AND SUPREME COMMANDER

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