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AMD Duron leaves Celery stuffed

Dr Tom and the rest love it

There is only one topic up for discussion in Hardware Land today: the release of AMD's budget CPU, the Duron.

Benchmarking tests from AMD look encouraging with the Duron beating the Celeron by as much as 25 per cent at the same clock speed.

The processor is available in 600MHz, 650MHz and 700MHz speeds with 128KB of level one, and 64KB level two on-chip cache, and a 200MHz FSB. In batches of 1000, the 600MHz, 650MHz and 700MHz chips have a per processor price of $112, $154 and $192 respectively.

Compaq, Fujitsu, HP and IBM are among the industry players who are planning Duron-based systems, but what does the rest of the world think of the Thunderbird's kid brother? The answers are just a few clicks away.

CPUreview has published AMD's benchmarks tests for lack of a processor of its own see here for details, as well as a Q&A session with AMD. It seems the new CPU will be multiplier locked so you can't overclock it. But I imagine it is only a matter of time before someone does something about that.

The good Dr Tom says that the new beast "wipes the floor" with the Celeron, and even approaches the performance of the Athlon and PIII. He reckons it is the best low-cost x86 processor that money can buy. High praise indeed, plus loads of pics, for your viewing pleasure.

More positive feedback as value does not have to mean slow, according to Anand. The performance of the Duron at 700MHz is apparantly comparable to the Athlon 650 or the PIII 600, but for less of your earth "money". He also gets deeply involved in some colour issues, blue or green green or blue, it's hard to tell.

But if you want a more concise look at the Spitfire, AMDZone has a review of the Duron 700 on one page. Sounds too good to be true? Well, what about if the page is really REALLY big?

One for the road? There is an English review at Tecchannel.de which also reckons that this one is an Intel Killer. RIP. ®

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