Slot A Athlon 750MHz or Duron 950MHz, which would perform better?

[cablejuggaloz]

I want to build another computer super cheap and I only want to spend about $70 shipped on a new MB + CPU. I have seen on PriceWatch the Althon Slot A 750MHz and the Duron 950MHz bundles for $65 and was wondering which one would give me the best real world performance. I know there is 200MHz difference but wouldn't a real Athlon outperfrom a Duron or is MHz king?

[jagojago12]

Duron would probably be faster. The Duron's cache, while smaller, runs at full clock speed of the host CPU. The Athlon Slot A CPU runs at a fraction of the CPU, and in this case, the 750MHz Athlon Slot A's cache runs at 375MHz, exactly 1/2 of the CPU clock (if I remember right. The largest cache multiplier on the Athlon Slot A was 1/2. There were 1/3 multipliers as well).

Remember the Pentium 3 Katmai? It had 512KB of L2 cache running at 50% CPU clock speed. The Celeron 300A had 128KB of L2 cache running at 100% CPU clock speed. If you clock the Celeron to even grounds with the P3-450, meaning giving it a 100MHz FSB at 450MHz (Celeron 300A @ 450MHz is a common overclock 4.5x66MHz FSB = 300MHz. 4.5x100MHz = 450MHz) Which was faster generally? The Celeron is just as fast as the Pentium 3 450MHz, or faster.

Same applies here. Since the Duron has a clock speed advantage here in terms of both CPU clock speed and cache it will be very hard for the Athlon slot A to be faster with a clock speed deficiet and a cache speed deficient. More cache isn't always a good thing .

[Vengance_01]

and as a future benifit can be migrated to any DDR chipset. which offer more bang for buck and will offer better life than a slot A chip.

[jjyiz28]

Originally posted by jagojago12
Duron would probably be faster. The Duron's cache, while smaller, runs at full clock speed of the host CPU. The Athlon Slot A CPU runs at a fraction of the CPU, and in this case, the 750MHz Athlon Slot A's cache runs at 375MHz, exactly 1/2 of the CPU clock (if I remember right. The largest cache multiplier on the Athlon Slot A was 1/2. There were 1/3 multipliers as well).

Remember the Pentium 3 Katmai? It had 512KB of L2 cache running at 50% CPU clock speed. The Celeron 300A had 128KB of L2 cache running at 100% CPU clock speed. If you clock the Celeron to even grounds with the P3-450, meaning giving it a 100MHz FSB at 450MHz (Celeron 300A @ 450MHz is a common overclock 4.5x66MHz FSB = 300MHz. 4.5x100MHz = 450MHz) Which was faster generally? The Celeron is just as fast as the Pentium 3 450MHz, or faster.

Same applies here. Since the Duron has a clock speed advantage here in terms of both CPU clock speed and cache it will be very hard for the Athlon slot A to be faster with a clock speed deficiet and a cache speed deficient. More cache isn't always a good thing .

theretical question to jago, what if it was a socket a athlon 750 compared with a duron 950?? the athlon has 256KB of l2 cache while the duron has 64KB of l2 cache both running at core speeds.

what is the cutoff for having more cache where it doesn't become as beneficial?? is it 64KB 256KB, 512KB?? in my opinion, anything more than 64KB will drastically help as long as its running full speed, but beyond 256KB of cache perfomance will increase very little. what are your opinions?? was there a big performance increase going from the p4 willy (256KB cache 400 bus) to a p4 northwood (512KB cache 400 bus)??

[ayoung]

Originally posted by jjyiz28


theretical question to jago, what if it was a socket a athlon 750 compared with a duron 950?? the athlon has 256KB of l2 cache while the duron has 64KB of l2 cache both running at core speeds.

what is the cutoff for having more cache where it doesn't become as beneficial?? is it 64KB 256KB, 512KB?? in my opinion, anything more than 64KB will drastically help as long as its running full speed, but beyond 256KB of cache perfomance will increase very little. what are your opinions?? was there a big performance increase going from the p4 willy (256KB cache 400 bus) to a p4 northwood (512KB cache 400 bus)??

thats not true...... ever heard of a Xeon or that other one Compaq uses... the Itianum or whatever?

Some have ranging from 512K-2megs

[jjyiz28]

Originally posted by ayoung


thats not true...... ever heard of a Xeon or that other one Compaq uses... the Itianum or whatever?

Some have ranging from 512K-2megs

yea but those are for servers.. putting in gigabytes of ram and multiple cpus also helps tremendously where it wouldn't for the regular home gamer multitasking computer. will having 1-2MB of cache be as beneficial to a home user? thats what i meant

[Moridin]

Originally posted by ayoung


thats not true...... ever heard of a Xeon or that other one Compaq uses... the Itianum or whatever?

Some have ranging from 512K-2megs

Some have a lot more then that. IBM submitted a SPEC score for a Power 4 with 128 MB of L3 cache. There will still likely be a lot of benefits for going beyond 256KB, but it makes a much bigger difference on server chips. Xeon and Itanium use a shared bus architecture for up to 4 processors.

This means all the processors have to share the same FSB bandwidth, which can hurt performance. The large cache is there to cut down on the amount of FSB activity generated by the processors, limiting the performance hit from the FSB. 1 and 2 way systems don't benefit a lot from the really large cache chips, but up to 1 MB will still probably make a measurable difference, depending on the way the cache itself is set up.

[richardginn]

the Duron would win.

[bluesfusion]

The Duron would be faster. The difference between Athlon and Duron is about 100Mhz. That is a T-bird 850 would be about equal to a Duron 950. A Duron 950 will spank the Athlon 750 black n blue.

[gotmonopoly?]

Also to mention it, all Slot A boards suck. I'd much rather get a socket A board.