Introduction

Update: Since a couple of you have asked for it, we've added Coppermine P3-600E numbers to our little 600MHz comparison. Is it unfair to compare a $70 Duron against a $160 Pentium 3? Yeah, maybe for the P3.

Poverty wars

The battle for economy class rages on. The introduction of the AMD Duron line of processors means great prospects for the average consumer and overclocker alike. After price drops and performance increases, could we ask for anything more? Probably not.

Seeing as both the Duron and the Intel Celeron processors are shooting for the value machine market, cost is a huge factor. Currently, the Celeron 600 weighs in at $100, while the Duron 600 floats in at around $70. Neither of these CPUs will set you back more than a few dinners.

Celeron II

The specs on the Celeron II are rather familiar. The 128KB of L2 cache, 66MHz bus, and 32 KB of L1 cache are all carry-overs from the older Celeron line. The only additions worth mentioning are the SSE instructions, and a decreased core voltage in comparison to its big brother, the P3.

Also keep in mind that the Celeron is a neutered version of a P3 Coppermine. In the end, the new Celeron is slower than its P3 counterpart mostly due to the halved L2 cache size. It is truly a shame that Intel couldn't make the same mistake of producing equally performing CPUs, as they did with the original Celeron and Pentium2.

In the near future we should soon see the Celeron II move to a 100MHz front side bus. Once the bus speed is raised, not only will the processor run faster, but the speed at which system memory runs will also be faster. For the regular consumers, this would be a great change; to the overclocker it merely means buy the cheaper processor and ramp up the speed.

CPU Comparison
Processor	Intel Celeron II	AMD Duron
Transistors	28 Million	25 Million
L1 Cache	32 KB	128 KB
L2 Cache	128 KB	64 KB
FSB	66 MHz	200 MHz(100x2)
Etching	.18 micron	.18 micron
Cost	$100/600MHz	$70/600MHz