AMD doesn't sell a gigihertz PIII. They sell their semi-broken x86 clone chip. It's fine for running open source code that you're willing to debug and custom tune when it won't work. It's a really bad choice when you need a reliable machine to run commercial apps. There's a reason Athlon machines are only selling to the game kiddies in the 'consumer' home computer channels.
I've been using an AMD K6-2 based system for nearly two years, with Win98 and linux (first Red Hat 5.2 and now Debian 2.2), and have experienced no compatibility problems whatsoever. Funny, I've never seen a reputable source complain about compatibility issues with AMD CPUs; it just seems to be trolls with no way to backup the statement.
Um, it was just released. Since the ILL Clan site seems slashdotted, here's the Google cached version. On July 12, 2000, ILL Robinson made an update saying that "Hardly Workin' is finally complete."
I don't think Sharky's review mentioned this, but according to Tom's article, Asus will soon be releasing a Socket-A board with jumpers and dipswitches for changing the multiplier! This is the board Tom used for overclocking four Durons to 950MHz, all of which were stable he said. More motherboard manufacturers will most likely do the same as Asus.
This is very exciting, because with AMD's Slot-A CPUs you have to open the Athlon's case, and do some soldering (or you can buy special cards that attach to the Athlon for the purpose of changing the multiplier).
With a Socket-A motherboard like Asus', overclocking the Duron (and Socket-A Athlons) will be a piece of cake. Now we just need some SMP Socket-A boards...:)
If I can get a genuine Athlon 700 for ~$150 now, why would I want to buy a Duron?
You can't really compare the prices of a Duron 700 to an Athlon 700, because all 700MHz and below Athlons are not Thunderbirds (the newer Athlons with 256KB of on-die L2). The non-Thunderbirds are being phased out. BTW, according to PriceWatch, a Celeron 700 and PIII 700 are about the same in price aswell.
Not a winner on performance; not a winner on price; not a winner, period. Pity.
I just looked at AnandTech's Duron review, and on their benchmarks the Duron was far faster than the Celeron; IIRC, a Duron 700 beat a Celeron 850 in Quake3.
And as for it not being a winner on price, on PriceWatch a Celeron 700 is about $50-70 more than a Duron 700. It sure looks like a winner to me.
No, what he meant was that the Athlon doesn't have integrated L2 cache (which is quite a bottleneck), it has 512KB of external L2. I think AMD will also be releasing a new Athlon (code-name Thunderbird) about the same time as Duron (I've heard rumors that the Duron could actually be faster than the old Athlon, so it'd make sense to release Thunderbird and Duron at the same time). Thunderbird has 256KB of integrated L2.
Slashdot Mirror
Um, it was just released. Since the ILL Clan site seems slashdotted, here's the Google cached version. On July 12, 2000, ILL Robinson made an update saying that "Hardly Workin' is finally complete."
This is very exciting, because with AMD's Slot-A CPUs you have to open the Athlon's case, and do some soldering (or you can buy special cards that attach to the Athlon for the purpose of changing the multiplier).
With a Socket-A motherboard like Asus', overclocking the Duron (and Socket-A Athlons) will be a piece of cake. Now we just need some SMP Socket-A boards... :)
You can't really compare the prices of a Duron 700 to an Athlon 700, because all 700MHz and below Athlons are not Thunderbirds (the newer Athlons with 256KB of on-die L2). The non-Thunderbirds are being phased out. BTW, according to PriceWatch, a Celeron 700 and PIII 700 are about the same in price aswell.
Not a winner on performance; not a winner on price; not a winner, period. Pity.
I just looked at AnandTech's Duron review, and on their benchmarks the Duron was far faster than the Celeron; IIRC, a Duron 700 beat a Celeron 850 in Quake3.
And as for it not being a winner on price, on PriceWatch a Celeron 700 is about $50-70 more than a Duron 700. It sure looks like a winner to me.
No, what he meant was that the Athlon doesn't have integrated L2 cache (which is quite a bottleneck), it has 512KB of external L2. I think AMD will also be releasing a new Athlon (code-name Thunderbird) about the same time as Duron (I've heard rumors that the Duron could actually be faster than the old Athlon, so it'd make sense to release Thunderbird and Duron at the same time). Thunderbird has 256KB of integrated L2.