AMD Duron 900 and Roadmap Update

Not everyone is a multitasking fiend, in which case SYSMark 2000 provides a better overall picture of system performance as the benchmark only runs one application at a time.  The benchmark itself consists of twelve applications that range in function from word processing to image editing and 3D rendering to video production.

The suite is evenly distributed between those applications that focus on integer performance and those that require a strong FPU for good performance.  There is a larger focus on having a high performance L2 cache, and the Pentium III commands a strong lead here partially because of its 4x wide L2 cache bus. 

The Duron 900 offers a 2.4% increase in performance over the 850MHz part, which is similar to the increase we saw in Content Creation Winstone 2001. 

Benchmark Studio has proved itself to be a truly powerful test that should be reserved for the most extreme of users.  CSA Research, the creators of the benchmark, refers to the type of load simulation the test creates as "constant computing," and without a doubt this test put our test bed under a constant load. 

There are no disk limitations here as less than 2% of the benchmark is spent waiting on the disk to respond.  The suite consists of a variable about of stress modules, for this particular test we simulated a total of 13 sources of load using these stress modules, and in combination with those modules running in the background the test executes and times performance doing various tasks in MS Word, Excel, Power Point and Internet Explorer.

The benchmark is very bandwidth intensive, which is why the 66MHz FSB Celerons do so poorly.  Even at 800MHz, the Celeron's 4-way set associative L2 cache holds it back although it is admittedly faster than the Duron 600. 

Even at 900MHz the Duron isn't close to its 1GHz Athlon brother that is able to complete the rigorous tasks in 70% of the time that the Duron takes.

If SYSMark is an example of "light use" and Winstone is an example of a power user's usage patterns, then Benchmark Studio is representative of what a truly high-end PC should be able of handling.  For those of you that already aren't using your PCs like this, with multiple video streams coming in, multiple database connections and connections to exchange servers open, this is more of an indication of how your systems will perform in the future as applications become more bandwidth intensive.