The latest GeForce 256 drivers from NVIDIA force the Athlon to operate in AGP 1X mode, thus making the Athlon suffer in the texture transfer tests. As the texture sizes increase, the Athlon's performance suffers in comparison to that of the Pentium III which runs at full AGP 2X/4X depending on the platform (BX/820).
One interesting thing to note is that the Athlon has no problem beating the Pentium III in the smaller texture tests where AGP texturing isn't being forced.
With full AGP 2X support with the TNT2 Ultra, the Athlon manages to beat out the Pentium III, clock for clock, in the texturing tests. The only setup that gives the Athlon competition here is the AGP 4X i820 platform running the Pentium III 800.
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xrror - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link
The thing to remember during this era is that coppermine P3's (or at least, any P3 with integrated cache) were pretty much stupid expensive, and unobtanium to get. While with the Athlon 800 you could actually buy one and not be on a wait list for 2 months.Also ugh, RAMBUS and 820 were just way too much money. BX @ 133 with a video card that could handle it - which Geforce 2 era cards started to be built for that was where it was at if you were Intel. Or you just waited like everyone else for the Athlon Thunderbird to come out... =)