Unfortunately, unlike a lot of guys on the net that do previews/reviews, I am not a student with lots of time to work on benchmarks. I'm 32, work and have an 8 week old baby that won't stop crying.
Does that mean I shouldn't do them at all? Notice how our site has no advertisements... We do this because computers are not only our job, it's our hobby. Even if nobody liked my previews, reviews or rants, I'd still do them.
Now... enough of the excuses.
I admit that my benchmarks are limited and I did intend on adding Q3A with the rest of the benchmarks (if you look at some of my other benchmarks, you'll see that I often use Q3A), but I could not get my Q3A to work on the test rig. Turns out that my registry got hosed when I stuck a bad stick of RAM in the rig. After the baby fell asleep after a feeding, I zapped the drive and reinstalled Windows. Now Q3A works and I've already run the 2500+ @ default and the overclocked speed. I'm now working on the 2400+ and will do the 2600+ in the afternoon. I'll chart them up in Excel tonight and will have them uploaded by the weekend.
To answer your questions... The Barton 2500+ isn't supposed to be ANYTHING special. Nobody said it would be. It falls right between the 2400+ and 2600+, just like it should. Unlike the 2800+ and 3000+ Bartons that are slated to be the "next generation" Athlon XP, the 2500+ will simply be "slipped into" the product line, just as the Thoroughbred B0's and 333 MHz FSB Athlon XP's were. Don't be surprised if you just see 2500+ retail box CPU's popping up on the shelves wven before you see a 2800+ or 3000+.
Mine did overclock well, yes. But look at the clock speed I started with. AMD is already yielding higher clock speed chips with the Thoroughbred core, so this CPU has a pretty high ceiling. Think of last year when the AXIA 1000's were pretty much all running at 1330. At the time, AMD was cranking out 1400 MHz CPU's faster than Willy Wonka can make Gobstoppers. This is why the Barton is important to AMD. AMD is capable of reasonable yields at an even higher clock speed and with the 512K L2 cache can justify a higher PR for the CPU (obviously the performance of the CPU is enhanced with the additional cache) and "keep up" with Intel despite the lower clock speeds. And.... high yields = more profit for AMD. Overclockability? Well, it depends on the CPU, but I wouldn't expect much higher than what AMD is already putting out on the market.
If anyone has any suggestions (benchmark programs you think I should use, good place to buy formula, winning lottery numbers), please feel free to run them by me in a PM, or better yet.... join up TTB and post a message. That site isn't up for just our health. I often think of TTB as a "joint effort". I have access to the hardware, and the readers have the ideas. Let's work together to make a better hardware site. You all know I don't bite.