Intel Pentium III 866, 850

The Pentium III is now much more available than it was just a couple months ago, especially in the higher clock speed parts.  While it is still much easier and much cheaper to pick up an Athlon, the Pentium III is currently available at speeds of up to 800MHz from on-line vendors. 

You can expect the 850 and 866MHz parts to pop up over the next few weeks, but for the most part, most of them to be bought by the big OEMs, such as Dell, HP, and IBM, which are currently the only ones that offer 1GHz systems based on the Pentium III processor.  So for most AnandTech readers, don’t expect to be able to find 850 or 866MHz Pentium IIIs available from too many online vendors.

At the same time, the 900/950MHz Athlons aren’t really available outside of the major OEMs, so as of now, you don’t really have an alternative if you want something faster than 850MHz.  But for most AnandTech readers, overclocking to the 900MHz+ range is even better than purchasing a chip originally clocked at 900MHz+.

Overclocking

As we mentioned earlier, the 1GHz Pentium III actually uses a new stepping of the Coppermine core; that stepping isn’t present on the newer 850 or 866MHz Pentium IIIs, and thus, we can’t really expect these chips to hit the 1GHz mark with much ease. 

Because of this, you shouldn’t expect the 850 or 866MHz parts to be great overclockers, at least not at the start.  As the yields on these chips improve, you can expect them to become better overclockers, but until then, you’re better off buying a slower processor and overclocking it to 800 – 900MHz.