THE ATHLON XP HAD a great run. It was vying for the title of "fastest x86 processor" for most of its life, from its introduction right up until the time Intel introduced Pentium 4 processors running on a 533MHz bus at speeds up to 2.53GHz. Once Intel dropped those processors on an unsuspecting world, the x86 performance crown was squarely back in Intel's camp, and even AMD's die-shrunk "Thoroughbred" revision of the Athlon XP wasn't able to keep up. The writing was on the wall. The Pentium 4 design was ramping up like Evel Knievel, and only the forthcoming "Hammer" series of processors could save AMD from becoming a second-class citizen in the processor world once again.

Such was our thinking until recently, when AMD quietly shipped us an Athlon XP 2600+ processor for review. This baby runs at 2.13GHz, a full 333MHz faster than the previous top-of-the-line model, the 2200+. It seems AMD has done a little tweaking to the T-bred, and suddenly, they've found a little extra speed. Read on to see what the results are.