AMD's Athlon XP 1900+ (1.6GHz): Still #1

Less than a month has gone by since AMD introduced the world to the Athlon XP processor. Although architecturally the processor is no different than the Mobile Athlon 4 and Athlon MP that were launched several months ago, its higher clock speeds and new packaging technology make it worthy of a new name. '

Alongside that new name AMD released their plans for a "new" way of naming processors; instead of being referred to by their clock speeds, they would be branded with model numbers that would be indicative of their performance when compared to other higher clocked processors. In fact this new way of naming processors is not very original and was done numerous times in history with processors such as the Cyrix 6x86 and even AMD's own K5. The argument that this time around things are somehow different has been made by many supporters of the naming system, but after having dedicated the title of our last review to our displeasure with AMD's marketing strategy we'll give it a rest. The naming system is here to stay and whether it carries on to the Hammer line of processors has yet to be seen but what can be applauded is the excellent performance of the CPU, which is after all, what we care about the most.