AMD Duron 750

As a gaming platform, the Duron is another success. While it does not provide performance equal to that of its two older brothers, for its intended market segment, the Duron helps to redefine the phrase "the most bang for your buck."

Intel's Celeron is also in this category of a value processor that has no problem providing a decent level of performance, and prior to the introduction of the Duron it was clearly the best choice for those that didn't have the budget to spend on one of the faster CPUs. Unfortunately for Intel, the Duron has the Celeron beat in almost all categories.

The only advantage the Celeron currently holds over the Duron is that it has a very affordable motherboard platform with integrated video that OEMs and system integrators can use in very low-cost systems.

For hard core gamers the last thing you want is a platform with an integrated video solution, but if gaming isn't your forté then the Duron's lack of a low-cost integrated platform is a major downside.

As we've said time and time again, before considering a new CPU you always have to first take into account any other bottlenecks that may be present in your system. In this case, the video card is obviously limiting the performance of the system as a whole.

The GeForce2 GTS used in our test system is exhibiting signs of a memory bandwidth limitation thus making AMD's newly released Duron 750 perform just as well as a Pentium III 800 or even an AMD Athlon (Thunderbird) running at 1.1GHz.

Testing Quake III at 640 x 480 is an ideal way to examine the power of a CPU using the game as a benchmark, however running it at 1024 x 768 x 32 is much more of a real world test of overall system power for use in games.