AMD IS RELEASING its latest speed grade of the Athlon XP processor today, so it's time once again to run the latest Athlons and Pentium 4s through the benchmark wringer in order to see who's fastest. Last time around, we found the Athlon XP 2000+ and the Pentium 4 "Northwood" 2.2GHz in a virtual tie. Intel's beefed-up P4 made great strides in the performance race, and the Athlon XP 2000+ was just barely able to keep pace.

So the Athlon XP 2100+ is set to climb to the top of the heap for x86 performance, right? Well, perhaps, but it has a few strikes against it. For one, the Athlon XP remains on the same 266MHz front-side bus as ever, and it's made using AMD's now-familiar 180-nanometer fabrication process. There are questions about how well the Athlon XP will scale as AMD ratchets up the clock speed independent of other improvements.

Plus, I really need to find a way to make this review interesting, so why not bring it up? Anyhow, we'll benchmark this puppy and find out.