The days of the Athlon platform and Socket A are without a doubt numbered. AMD will unveil the Athlon XP's successor, for example, September 23. But a complete switch to the new 64 bit Athlon processor won't happen overnight, so there remain market opportunities for Athlon XP coolers.

CPU cooling solution suppliers obviously agree. What else could explain the fact that many a manufacturer is presenting "new" cooling solutions for the "old" platform only days/weeks before the launch of the new platform? Totally unprecedented in the practice of presenting a cooler is the way Coolermaster has attached an NDA to any reporting on its latest model, the Jet 7. In other words: only after the embargo ends (as of September 17) can the Jet 7 be reported on.

Reason enough, then, to test a few of the latest cooling models and compare them to the boxed cooler of the latest Athlon XP (3200+/ 200 MHz FSB).

Before we deal more closely with the test candidates, we should take a look at the maximum thermal power of the top models of the various Athlon XP variations with Thoroughbred A, B and Barton cores (Source: AMD Processor Model 8 and Model 10 data sheets):