From...

December 29, 1999
Web posted at: 9:44 a.m. EST (1444 GMT)

by Tom Mainelli

(IDG) -- Advanced Micro Devices won't officially announce its 800-MHz Athlon chip until early January, but we've already tested an upcoming Polywell PC running the new processor. The first word: The new system scored ever-so-slightly lower in our PC WorldBench 98 than a comparably configured 750-MHz Pentium III reference system.

The Polywell Poly 800K7-800 includes AMD's Athlon-800, 512KB of L2 cache, 128MB of SDRAM, a 27.3GB hard drive, a 6X DVD-ROM drive, a 4X AGP graphics with 32MB of video memory, a V.90 modem, a 100MB Zip drive, a 19-inch monitor, Windows 98 Second Edition, and Lotus SmartSuite.

Customers can configure the Polywell system to their taste; the PC we tested is priced at $2800. Polywell is already taking orders for the Athlon-800 PC on its Web site and by phone. Company executives say they expect to begin shipping the 800-MHz systems after January 10, and plan to offer a Pentium III-800 system soon after that.

	MESSAGE BOARD
Hardware innovation The need for speed?

Close Scores, Who'd Notice?

Intel beat AMD out of the gate with its Pentium III-800, announced on December 20, but we still haven't tested an 800-MHz PIII system (stay tuned). So we opted to compare the 800-MHz Polywell unit to a comparably configured PIII-750 reference system and the combined average of an AMD-built Athlon-750 reference box and a preproduction Compaq Presario running a PIII-750.

MORE COMPUTING INTELLIGENCE

IDG.net home page

The fall and rise of the Celeron

Chip history at Intel museum

How to install a faster processor

E-BusinessWorld

Reviews & in-depth info at IDG.net

IDG.net's personal news page

Year 2000 World

Questions about computers? Let IDG.net's editors help you

Subscribe to IDG.net's free daily newsletter for computer geniuses (& newbies)

Search IDG.net in 12 languages

News Radio

Fusion audio primers

Computerworld Minute

The Intel-built PIII-750 reference PC came with 256KB of L2 cache, 128MB of Rambus memory, 32MB of video memory, and a 17GB hard drive. The AMD-built Athlon-750 system came with 512KB of L2 cache, 128MB of SDRAM memory, 32MB of video memory, and a 20GB hard drive. Both reference machines were running Windows 98, and neither is on the market.

The 750-MHz Presario 5900Z has 128MB of SDRAM, a 34GB hard drive, both DVD-ROM and CD-RW drives, 32MB of video memory, and a 19-inch monitor. Its street price is $3456. Compaq includes antivirus and support software that tend to slow down performance, and the Presario's numbers lowered the average of the two 750-MHz Athlon machines a bit.

That said, the PC WorldBench 98 results for all three processors were quite good, and very close. The PIII-750 posted the highest PC WorldBench 98 score of the three at 315; the 800-MHz Athlon landed a score of 309. That's a virtually imperceptible difference of less than 2 percent. Of the 750-MHz Athlon systems, the AMD reference system scored 305 and the Presario, 289. Those, too are barely noticeable differences: The reference system is 3 percent slower than the 750-MHz PIII and the Presario is 8 percent slower. All of these differences are slight, especially when based on such a small set of test machines.

So could most PC users tell the difference between a system with the PIII-750 and the Athlon-800? No. Does that matter to performance-minded buyers willing to pay top dollar for the "fastest" PC on the market, and the bragging rights (however short-lived) that accompany it? Probably not

Close Calls in the Fast Lane

That's not to say the new Athlon-800 Polywell PC performed poorly. It improved on the average scores of the Athlon-750 systems we've tested. But it slightly lagged behind the 750-MHz Intel box in application tests.

In our PC WorldBench 98 Microsoft Word benchmark, the Athlon-800 posted a time of 1 minute and 50 seconds, which is 3 seconds better than the Athlon-750's average time of 1:53, but slower than the PIII-750's time of 1:47. That means the top PIII ran the test less than 1 percent faster than the top Athlon.

The scores in most of our other application tests were about the same, with the PIII-750 besting the Athlon-800 by a few seconds. The one exception was our Picture Publish test, which the Athlon-800 completed in 5 minutes and 20 seconds; the PIII-750 came in at 5:22; and the average of the 750-MHz Athlons was 5:24. Again, that's a less than 1 percent difference from top to bottom.

Intel's overall performance lead in our tests is nearly imperceptible, but expect AMD to take a few critical lumps unless future systems with the Athlon-800 chip improve on the Polywell's score. Speed demons who want the newest CPU want it to be the fastest on the market.