AMD 1.1GHz Duron turn-on

The world seems impressed

By James Watson • Get more from this author

Posted in Channel, 1st October 2001 17:12 GMT

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Answering Intel's 1.1 GHz Celeron arrival at the end of August, AMD has released its budget-range 1.1 GHz Duron processor. Like its 1 GHz predecessor, the chip is based on the Morgan core, which includes nifty gizmos like SSE instructions and data prefetch.

AMDZone, the biggest AMD fan site, gives it an impressive overall rating of 97 per cent, dropping to 90 per cent only on 'innovation', while awarding full marks on 'quality', 'performance' and 'stability'. Benchmark tests done by the site show it giving a 10 per cent increase in speed, which is expected when its speed goes from 1000MHz to 1100MHz (real rocket science here). See the full article here.

Elsewhere, The Tech Report is also clapping hands about the processor, and shows off a lengthy series of graphs proving its point quite conclusively. It concludes that the chip is "a killer performer for a value processor" amongst various other praises. Catch all the action here.

Chimpzilla's official commentary, to be found here, rather predictably show the processor streaking ahead (and with all rivals trailing miserably on nicely coloured graphs.)

AMD needs its chips to start selling again, although it ain't going to happen right now in the quantities previously anticipated, with the company already stating that it expects an operating loss this quarter. Last week we reported on Gateway dropping AMD processors from its line-up, following IBM and others earlier this year. ®

AMD shuts fabs, fires 2,300