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AMD has cooked up the best value for PC buyers all year long--and its newest chip continues to do so. In our first tests, production-level systems from Polywell and Sys based on the 2.2-GHz Athlon XP 3200+ chip easily outran top Pentium 4-based PCs on business apps. And each saves you $100 to $400.

To find the sweet spot of power and price, though, consider an Athlon XP 3000+ PC. These models run many apps at much the same pace and save you another $150.

The Athlon XP 3200+ offers only minor design changes over the 3000+. AMD has, however, raised the frontside bus speed slightly, from 333 MHz to 400 MHz. (Intel's latest 3-GHz P4 chips sport an 800-MHz frontside bus, but it made little difference in our tests; see June's News & Trends .)

Polywell's Poly 880NF3-3200 (priced at $2255) turned in a scorching PC WorldBench 4 mark of 139, and Sys Technology's Sys Performance 3200+ ($2895) finished close behind at 134. These scores are comparable to the 136 average of three similarly configured Athlon XP 3000+ PCs. But the new Athlons widen their siblings' lead over three of the 3-GHz P4 systems carrying 800-MHz buses, which averaged a score of 126 on PC WorldBench 4.

Similarly, the 3200+ systems beat the 3-GHz P4 PCs on the AutoCAD test, which is one of only two PC World tests where the 800-MHz bus seemed to boost newer P4 units over older ones. On the other hand, Intel led on the Musicmatch test and the Return to Castle Wolfenstein game test.

Only on the Unreal Tournament 2002 game test, however, did the 3200+ PCs show significant improvement over older AMDs.

(Test results are reported on the accompanying chart--click on the lower right corner of the image to see a complete view; our test methodology is described on the next page.)

More to Come

Current Athlons will soon be eclipsed by AMD's Athlon 64 chip (formerly known as Clawhammer): Expected in September, the new chip will be compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit computing and will introduce a new memory interface that could seriously speed up applications. In addition, "Prescott," Intel's next chip, will also arrive this year, with double the Level 2 cache and better hyperthreading.

But if you want to buy an AMD-based power desktop now, go ahead--you'll get a good value with the top-of-the-line Athlon XP 3200+, and an even better deal if you go one step down to the 3000+.