What is Duron?
| PROCESSOR SPECIFICATIONS | ||
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| Manufacturer: | AMD | |
| Model: | Duron | |
| Year: | 2000 | |
| Transistors: | 25,000,000 | |
| Microns: | 0.18µ | |
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The Winstone 2001 tests are a good indicator of processor performance. It uses a combination of limited multitasking and front side bus / memory bus testing, but also relies somewhat on disk transfer speeds. Content Creation shows and increase for the Duron 950 of about 9.4% over the Duron 800, and is running at 92.2% of its big brother, the Athlon 1100. Not bad. Business Winstone 2001 is another benchmark that is a simulator of typical CPU usage. We see here that the Duron 950 is running at 84.7% of the Athlon 1100, and leaves both the Duron 800 and the PIII 750 behind as well. The Duron 950 is looking pretty good here as well, scoring about 86% of the Athlon 1100 in the both the Dhrystone and Whetstone tests. It also scores 16% better than the Duron 800, with a 15% increase in speed over its predecessor. 3D Mark 2001 continues to be a really tough test for those configurations running anything less than a GEForce3 chipset video card. Nevertheless, the Duron 950 is still holding its own against the Athlon 1100, while putting the screws to both the Duron 800 and the PIII-750 The Quake 3 Arena Demo scores are right where we would expect them to be. Notice that both the Athlon and Duron processors score quite well at low resolutions. When the resolution is increased, the PIII-750 starts to close in. Even more interesting, the AMD processors tend to suffer more when the GL functionality is disabled. This can really be seen in the high resolution test, where the PIII-750 overtakes the Duron 800. The Duron processor will continue to be the name for AMD's entry level processor, both for mobile and desktop configurations. However, as with all things, the Duron will undergo a few changes. The next of these changes will be the replacement of the current Spitfire core with the still-being-developed Morgan core. Here is a glimpse into the future of the Duron line for the next 12 months: The Morgan core will be a scaled down version of the Athlon Palomino core. This "new" Duron processor will continue to run at 100Mhz FSB (200MHz FSB internal), whereas the new Athlon Palomino processors (starting at 1.5GHz) will only run at the 133Mhz FSB (266MHz FSB internal) speed. The Morgan core will also have a smaller cache structure than the Athlon Palomino, similar to that of the current relationship between the Spitfire and Athlon Thunderbird cores. The next major change to the Duron after the Morgan core change will be the reduction of the core to the .13 micron die size core, called Appaloosa. This change will produce a processor that will consume only a portion of the power that the current Durons require and produce only a fraction of the heat. The net effect of this change is a better performing processor. AMD's latest addition to the Duron line of processors, the Duron 950, is certainly a good performer for an entry level processor. This processor, however, does not bring anything new to the table, except for a 50Mhz increase in clock speed. Of course, this is nothing to sneeze at, but must be mentioned nonetheless. Is the Duron 950 a good choice for that next upgrade ?? Possibly, depending on what the goal of your upgrade is. If you are looking to migrate from that old Socket-7 platfom, then a new motherboard and AMD Duron 950Mhz processor may just fill the bill. If you are thinking or upgrading from an existing Duron processor system, then I would suggest than an upgrade to one of the Athlon processors would be a better investment. All in all, the Duron 950MHz processor is a good performer, while at the same time not a heavy hitter when it comes to your budget. |
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