Feb. '00 Headlines

As this story was published in late January, the current top-tier processors were running at 800 MHz. Those blazing-fast CPUs come in the form of either Intel's Pentium III or the AMD Athlon. The first question that should pop into many minds is, "Which processor is better at equal clock speed?"

In all reality, does it really matter who's processor is faster? Both the Athlon and the PIII have advantages to their architectures. True, both run at the the given speed of 800 MHz. However, the Athlon runs at a 200 MHz BUS, while the PIII runs at a 133 MHz rate. By reading these facts, its easy to assume the Athlon is the better processor. But that is half the story.

With the .18 micron die size of the PIII, it is possible to integrate a full speed L2 cache on the chip itself. Meanwhile, the Athlon is on the aging .25 micron process with a half speed L2 cache... The difference, the PIII with a Level 2 Cache running at 800 MHz, and the Athlon running its cache in the neighborhood of 400 MHz.

With all these facts stated, it really is a toss up which 800 MHz CPU to buy. But on the whole, you really won't notice the difference too much if you bought either. Both would most likely blow you away in performance anyhow... My advice would be to just buy the cheapest of the two wherever you shop, because it really doesn't matter which CPU you end up with.

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