AMD Duron and Athalon

AMD has always been lurking in the background of the processor market. It was not until recently that they have come full force into the PC market. Needless to say, they are here to stay!

I have been buying AMD products since the early 300MHz K6 processor line was out. I believe they were much better in many ways than Intel, mainly on price.

Today they have their VERY successful Duron and Athalon line of processors, which are a direct competition with Intel’s Pentium 3 and Pentium 4 line of processors. The cool part is: they are in MOST cases FASTER and in ALL cases CHEAPER than Intel’s Pentium line!

The Duron processor is AMD’s answer to compete with Intel’s Celeron processor. The Duron is much cheaper, and has much more horsepower than the Celeron. The best bang for the buck processor you can buy today is the AMD Duron, followed by its faster big brother the mighty AMD Athalon.

The Athalon is AMD’s answer to compete with Intel’s Pentium 3 and the new Pentium 4 line of processors. From reading many of the un-biased underground computer sites that take these processors, run them into the ground, and live to tell about it, the AMD Athalon is King of the Hill! EVERY non-biased review has said hands down that the Athalon can out run the Pentium 3.

What about the Pentium 4? Well, EVERY non-biased review has said that the Athalon beats it in all but a few tests, mainly the “Internet tests”, which is one main point Intel is pushing for. In my opinion, the faster the Internet connection is, the faster you will be able to surf the internet. A processor helps, any faster speed of any brand than what you currently have will certainly speed things up a bit, but “special internet instructions” made into the processor is hardly worth buying a certain brand for. The average person with their 56K modem will get ZERO speed increase from the Pentium 4 processor over the Internet. Also, the “faster web sites” thing they advertise: the web site must be optimized and built using the new Intel “technology”. I know that I have, nor ever will use any Intel “technology” to build a web site! This is just ridiculous.

The other thing the Pentium 4 reviews all brag about is how fast Quake 3 is. Who cares! That is ONE game. They made a whole processor that will run fast for ONE game. That is the biggest joke I have ever heard. Most of the graphics performance for Quake 3 and any other game come from the Video Card, not the processor.

So other than “faster web pages” and “My Quake 3 game is faster than your Quake 3 game”, what do you have? Nothing that the AMD Athalon won’t do!

If you are a hardcore Intel fan, I URGE you to at least TRY and AMD Duron/Athalon system at least once. Most die hard Intel fans have made the switch when I built them an AMD equipped computer to replace their old Intel computer.

People scream about reliability. They say how their Intel computer is so much more reliable and does not crash. Well folks, the reason ANY computer crashes is one of three things –
1 – Bad hardware.
2 - Operating System was installed incorrectly (most common problem).
3 – Hardware incompatibility with other hardware in the system.

None of these issues have anything to do with the processor! I have seen just as many Intel, in fact MORE Intel (they have been in the mainstream longer) processor equipped computers with problems than AMD equipped computers. EVERY SINGLE TIME it is a problem with the fact that Windows was installed wrong, or is just corrupt, or any other number of things that goes wrong with Windows. It is never anything to do with the processor.

Finally I will mention price. If this does not convince you to buy an AMD processor, then you are just a hardheaded fool.

Let’s compare the Duron and Celeron:
AMD Duron 800MHz - $50
Intel Celeron 800MHz - $80
Guess what? The Duron runs CIRCLES around the Celeron. So why do you want to pay $30 more for a slower processor?

Let’s compare the Athalon and the Pentium 4
AMD Athalon 1200MHz - $100
Intel Pentium 4 1300MHz - $170
Guess what? The AMD processor is STILL faster than the Intel processor, even though the clock speed is slower! Why do you want to pay $70 more for the privilege of letting Intel brand you as “Sucker”?

I am not totally stuck on AMD, and I don’t totally hate Intel. I have been a system builder for about 10 years now and I have seen all the processors and what they can do first hand.

All my money will be spent on AMD from now on.



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