Duron 800 vs PIII800EB

[Whir]

I've got a PIII800EB machine at work with 768MB of no name RAM and a VooDoo3 card. The hard drive is a Western Digital 20GB ATA66. Running this on some Asus MVP3 board. I've got a Duron 800 with 512MB of no name and a VooDoo3 3500 with 2 40GB 7200rpm 8.5ns 2MB Desktars on RAID 0, on a KT7A at home. Is there such a huge difference between the PIII and the Duron that I'm seeing so much better performance at work that I do at home? The PIII has better cache I'm sure, but I was led to believe that the Durons were as good at PIIIs anyway. Any thoughts on this?

-Whir

[storm2k]

the raid configuration might actually be dragging you down...

i mean there are a lot of things that can do it...

how much of a speed differerence are we talking?

[Richard Cranium]

First of all this is a totally unfair comparison.

PIII 800eb is a $130.00 CPU

The Duron 800 is $37.00

re; www.newegg.com today's prices

2nd

The "eb" series of P3's are 133mhz FSB
The Duron's are only 100mhz FSB

If you want a more fair comparison, try a system running an Athlon 800 @ 133mhz FSB

[storm2k]

well doc is right... you will definately see a huge diffrence given the kind of chips you're comparing. heck, even an 800 celeron to that p3 will seem like molasses...

[Whir]

I didn't realize that 100 - 133 could make that much of a difference. I haven't unlocked this Duron yet, so it's still runnin 8x100. Also didn't realize that the EBs were 133. Knew there was something better about them, thought it was just the onboard cache. Time for me to get an XP it looks like huh? :P

OOC, Storm, how would the RAID slow the system down? This is the first RAID I've set up and used. Doesn't the Highpoint controller take care of the striping so it doesn't affect the CPU or the overall level of CPU performance?

Thanks for the quick reply guys.

-Whir

[daveleau]

PIII 800 EB runs on 133 MHz fsb and is not overclockable (at least not very overclockable.

The Duron 800 is very close in performance to a PIII 800 E (not B) but the difference lies in the fsb difference. I would rather have the Duron for two reasons.
1- the Duron is about half the price and has been 1/4 of the price in the past.
2- the Duron can be overclocked and is probably capable of running over 1GHz and thus blowing the PIII 800EB away as the Duron gets closer to 133 MHz fsb.

The cache differences are there. I am not well versed enough to telly ou straight up what the differences are. But the true speed diff is in the fsb.

Good luck
Dave

The Highpoint controller does use some cpu cycles since it is not a true hardware RAID controller. It can slow systems down slightly and is not as drastic as a totally software RAID setup. There was an article a while back at ARS that benchmarked several true hardware RAID cards versus the Promise Fasttrak card (similar to Highpoint). The Fasttrak was just as fast in most of the tests and only lagged behind a small amount in other tests. The main difference was the price and the onboard controllers that did all of the work for the RAID process. They addressed the CPU utilization question and it was really minimal in real world tests.

[newbie~wan]

But I thought since the fsb of a duron is ddr, it is effectively a 200mhz fsb? I hate to open this discussion yet again - "what is the fsb or an athlon/duron actually?", but I am afraid it is inline here.

Even if your only using PC 133 memory, doesnt the fsb of the processory still operate at an "effective" 200 mhz - which is way beyond 133?

[Whir]

Here's a quick desc of the Duron CPUs from where I bought it.

Multiwave

High-Speed System Bus: The AMD Duron processor features a 200MHz front side system bus, offering three times more available bus bandwidth than that of Intel's Celeron processor (66MHz). This high-speed system bus delivers superior performance on data-rich applications, such as MP3 players and rippers, softDVD players, and video-editing packages. Moreover, it has the headroom to support high-bandwidth peripherals-as well as other emerging technologies-without a performance penalty.

Sophisticated Cache Architecture: The sophisticated cache architecture of the AMD Duron processor features 192KB of total on-chip cache-20% more than is available on Intel's Celeron. This larger on-chip cache combined with the sophisticated cache architecture, delivers superior performance on many applications including business and personal productivity suites, photo-editing packages, and web-design tools.

Superscalar Floating Point Unit with Enhanced 3DNow!™ Technology: The AMD Duron processor offers three floating point pipelines while Intel's Celeron offers only one. This outstanding number-crunching capability, in concert with AMD's enhanced 3DNow!™ multimedia technology, enables the AMD Duron processor to deliver superior performance on applications that feature multimedia and floating point content. Examples of these applications include web-design tools, as well as many of today's entertainment and edutainment products.

Runs at 200 according to this. But the P4 runs at 400 with four 100MHz buses so it's still running at 100. Not sure how this works for the Durons/Athlons.

-Whir

[Hellmund]

OK...we just went thru this but here we go again. Now, the FSB of the duron IS 200mhz or 266mhz. HOWEVER this is just the bus from teh cpu to the northbridge. The memory bus is the important thing, with SDRAM the memory bus is only running 100 when the FSB of the duron is 200, hence it isn't entirely used. With the EB PIII chip U have 133mhz FSB and the memory bus is running at 133mhz as well. Basically unless the duron is running DDR RAM and the memory bus is 200mhz as well then it's really just overkill, the FSB isn't used.

Also u gotta remember the duron doesn't have SSE, which could contribute and with integer heavy appz the cache seems to get used more and the larger cache of the PIII gives it an advantage. When people talk about how a duron can smoke a PIII it's usually in relation to floating point calculations which are heavily involved in 3d rendering....the duron DOES have a superior FPU.

For $47 you can get a Duron 1GHz with SSE and hardware data pre-fetch.

Most Durons will do 133FSB, mine has for about a year now. On many boards you can run the memory at 133 and the fsb at 100 if the cpu will not do 133.