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As always, we use the "Vase" Scene from Adam Trachtenberg. Rendering the vases is highly FPU intensive and has always been an application where the Athons excelled even though in our last review the P4 was the unambiguous winner. That was before the B-core of the Thoroughbred.

TrueSpace 5.1

Runtime in seconds, shorter is better. All XP2800+ results were done on the KT400 platform since the A7N8X had some problems with overclocking, details below. At default speed, the XP2800+ has to yield to the overclocked P4 but overclocking the XP2800+ brings it back to the top

Overclocking

Most of the benchmark results we showed in this review pit the XP2800+ at default speed against an overclocked P4 without showing overclocked results for the XP2800+. Does that mean that the XP 2800+ does not overclock at all? The answer is that we did not have any problems pushing the XP2800+ at default voltage (1.65Vre) and the standard Taisol cooler to 2400 MHz, however, only on the A7V8X. In most 3D applications, this meant that we were able to get similar performance than what we achieved at default settings with the A7N8X. The A7N8X, in turn still has a few bugs with respect to overclocking in that individual FSB frequencies worked (e.g. 175 MHz, 172 MHz), other frequencies like 173 MHz would not even POST. Keep in mind that this is a preproduction beta board and that even another BIOS may solve these problems. Fact is, though, that the XP2800 + does overclock, it is not huge but sizeable enough.

At 178 MHz FSB or 2400 MHz clock speed we started to see some stability problems that are most likely heat related since shutting off the system for a cool-off greatly improved the situation

Conclusion

There is not too much we can conclude from this review, the benchmark numbers speak for themselves and don't really require any leading of witnesses. In most workloads, the XP2800+ is on par or even beats the P4 2.8 even though there are a few exceptions. Granted, if we were to go through the entire gamut of benchmark, including Sysmark2002, the situation could be somewhat different but in all honesty, it doesn't matter too much, I don't know anybody who plays Sysmark. The same goes for Linpack and SiSoft Sandra Multimedia and Arithmetic CPU benches.

Being at the right place at the right moment is always a key to success and in this case, this is what we need to say about the nForce2 chipset and, by extension, about the ASUS A7N8X. Let's not forget that the launch of this new platform is the key to the overpowering performance that we experienced today and let's also not forget that even the arch-enemies nVidia and ATI were brought together for a moment of truce to make it all happen.

Did the XP2800+ win the crown of the fastest x86 processor back from Intel? I think we leave this kind of lapidary parlance to the marketing people and evangelists and stick with the numbers instead. Next week, the tables may turn again, the numbers won't

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