All in all AMD most certainly managed to put an extremely fast CPU at the market. The step towards a 400 MHz bus was a clever one. It will boost memory bandwidth if the mainboard supports it and if you have the memory for it. If you just bought an Athlon 3000+ hey .. just check and see if your CPU is multiplier unlocked. If it is .. lower the multiplier and raise the FSB. Perhaps you are in luck, it's the exact same CPU ;)

The big disadvantage is that if you wish to buy this processor you will likely need a new mainboard also, you could be in luck if you bought an nVIDIA nFORCE2 based mainboard in the past few months.

Overclocking wise I'd say don't expect miracles from the Athlon XP 3200+, we tried several configurations but increasing the multiplier towards 12 was about as much as we could get from it while only a 100 MHz increase remained stable. We also  tried tweaking the FSB a bit, it maxed out at about 215 MHz, so you see .. there isn't much room in this generation anymore. Will we ever see an Athlon XP 3400+ ? I seriously don't know, I hope so though. These Barton core based CPU's are extremely fast, flexible and stable.

Yep definitely recommended. There are two things I do not like about this product, the price tag, our own pricewatch database reports this product in it's cheapest form for 444 USD which is a lot of money for a processor. Click here btw. But hey, if you want the best you got to pay like the rest right, that's how the high-end deal works.

Now the hard part, the second thing I do not like about the Athlon XP 3200+ ... sending it back to AMD.

Check the best price on AMD Athlon XP products here.