Processor Speed

Windows 9x:

 

Windows machines run on a variety of processors.  Intel Corp, the most popular chip maker produces three major lines of processors:  The Pentium III, Pentium 4 and the Celeron.  Intel also makes mobile versions of the PIII, and Celeron. AMD makes the Athlon and Duron processors.

The Pentium 4 runs between 1.4 and 1.7 GHz with 256k full speed L2 cache. While the clock speed is really up there, and will continue to increase over the next few months, the architecture is somewhat lacking. Based on a new core, not the P3 core, the P4's architecture is fast in clock speed but slow in calculating power. The integer unit is weaker than the P3s, and the floating point unit is only slightly better, and still can't hold a candle to the Athlon. The P3 and Athlon are actually faster than the P4 at the same clock speed in almost all operations, but the Pentium 4's higher clock will (eventually) give it a performance edge. As it is now, the Athlon 1.33 GHz runs very close to the P4 1.7 GHz. The Pentium 4 runs on a 400MHz system bus.

   The Pentium III runs between  450 MHz and 1 GHz, with 512k half core speed L2 cache or 256K core speed L2 cache.  The Pentium III is basically a Pentium II with 70 new Single Instruction, Multiple Data (SIMD) instructions, designed to increase speed in 3D, sound, and multimedia applications.  The Pentium III runs on a 100MHz or 133 MHz system bus.  PIII Xeons, with full speed L2, are also available between 450 and 800MHz.

   The Celeron runs at clock speeds between 266MHz and 800MHz.  However, you can really only find 600MHz + nowadays. The Celeron has 128k integrated L2 cache, running at full core speed. All Celerons run on a 66MHz system bus, but have been shown to operate reliably when overclocked using a 100MHz system bus. (although not recommended)

   The AMD Athlon is AMD's high speed processor. Athlons running about even to their P3 (Coppermine) counterparts. The Athlon is available in clock speeds of 500 MHz - 1.33 GHz. The Athlon was the first chip to surpass 1 GHz (1000 MHz) using only standard air cooling. The Athlon has 128k L1 cache at full speed, and either 512k L2 cache at half or 1/3 core speed, or 256k L2 cache at full core speed (700-1330 MHz Thunderbird CPUs). It runs on an asynchronous system bus, which runs at 200MHz. The memory bus is 100MHz. Newer Athlons (up to the 1.33GHz chips) run on a 133MHz DDR bus, effectively 266MHz.

   The AMD Duron is AMD's value processor. The Duron processor runs between 600 and 850 MHz. The Duron is essentially an Athlon core with 128k L2 cache at full core speed. The Duron runs on a 100MHz front side bus, and is probably the best processor available for cost vs. performance. It is extremely cheap to buy, but provides outstanding performance, just slightly off the Athlon's performance clock for clock.
 

Macintosh:

Macintosh machines run on chips made by IBM and Motorola.  Practically every new Macintosh uses the PowerPC G4 processor.  The G4 essentially a G3 with an improved FPU. The FPU in the G4 is amazing, winning the clock for clock race between all chips quite easily. however, it still lags in the clock speed area, despite a recent speed boost. G4s run between 400-733 MHz, 600MHz below the fastest Athlon, and 766MHz below the fastest P4.

Advantage:Even
It's really hard to gague chip speed between platforms. However, in most benchmarks I've seen, both G4 and P4/Athlon systems are able to beat each other out about 50% of the time. Without a real good benchmark, it's hard to call. I'd give the slight edge to the Intel and AMD processors, but both platforms run differing applications very differently. G4s perform better in most (not all) Photoshop tests, while P4/Athlon systems kill the G4 in 3D modeling and video game scores. Too close to call.

 

<-- Prev Next -->