Duron vs. Celeron

Company: Overclockerz Store
Product: AMD Duron 600 @ 1Ghz
OCZ Price: $69.99
Date Reviewed: December 28, 2000
Reviewed By: Sykotic

Duron & Celeron @ 900Mhz:

Using SiSoft Sandra 2001, CPU, multimedia, and memory benchmarks were run for both processors at 900Mhz, and the Duron at 1Ghz (since it could achieve that speed). The memory was run at 8/10ns @ CAS3 settings in the BIOS, however they can be much higher if a better quality memory is used that could handle the Turbo & CAS2 settings.

	Duron @ 900	Celeron @ 900	Duron @ 1Ghz
CPU
Multi- Media
Mem

Real World Benchmarks:

Synthetic benchmarks try to be as non-biased as possible, however, using real world applications for benchmarks seems to be a more accurate gauge of performance. The first benchmark used was Mad Onion's 3DMark 2000 which is a very popular graphics & cpu intensive synthetic benchmarking program. The other two benchmarks were Half Life: Counterstrike & Quake 3 Arena, very popular multi-player graphic & cpu intensive games. As expected the Duron beat the pants off the Celeron in overclocking for several reasons. First, the Duron's design is not simply a crippled Athlon, unlike the Celeron / P3 relationship. Second, the Duron shares the power of the Athlon's 100Mhz DDR (200Mhz effective) EV6 bus architecture, giving better overall performance, whereas the Celeron is hacked down to using a 66Mhz bus at stock speeds, and if you are lucky you hit 100Mhz when overclocking. The tests were run at default speed of 600Mhz and at overclocked speed of 900Mhz & 1Ghz.

Conclusion:

With the Duron 600 at a lower cost than the Celeron 600, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the Duron is a better deal if you are planning on building a new system. However if you are looking for a cheap upgrade for your old Intel, say a Celeron 300A system, then a newer Celeron might fit your needs better till you can spend the dough for a whole new system. Even though there is little difference between the two scores at 900Mhz, the Duron is much more overclocker friendly seeing that many Duron 600's run at 1GHz+ stable, and many Celerons struggle to hit 900Mhz.

I recommend buying a Duron unlocked and pre-tested from the Overclockerz Store because you are guaranteed a certain speed, and you are not just playing luck of the draw. The cost is very reasonable, for a Duron @ 1Ghz the price is only $69.99 (at the time this review was written).

Also I will recommend the ABIT KT7 and KT7-RAID motherboards for the Athlon / Duron because of the awesome SoftMenu III which gives you tons of choices for tweaking and overclocking, and because I haven't had any problems with it. ABIT makes rock-solid motherboards that are geared towards the hard core overclocker.

So if  you are planning on building a new system, or at least upgrading and need to replace your motherboard and CPU, don't waste the money on a Celeron 600, get a KT7-RAID and a pre-tested OCed Duron. The Overclockerz Store has 1Ghz combos for $219.99 (at the time this review was written), and that includes the OCZ Monster 2 cooler!

Rating: 9/10

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