Introduction

The Duron was launched for the home and demanding business users in the value PC market, characterised by the sub £1000 range. The latest addition to AMD's Duron range the 800MHz is merely an extension of the already popular Duron range. The market is awash with Duron offerings since it's launch with first, second and third tier, PC manufacturers offering at the least one Duron based system as part of their portfolio. It has only been a few months since AMD launched this value packed processor, and consumers have certainly warmed to the processor. Currently the Duron is available in four clock speeds 600,650,700,750, 800 and the newly released 850MHz, bearing in mind as it's aimed at the value segment do not expect this to reach the GHz mark (famous last words!). This may occur however, only if the price of the processors falls below a certain level thereby forcing AMD to manufacture the Duron for that frequency, although, if this was to transpire certain modifications will need to take place within the core architecture to achieve this.

Those of you that are considering purchasing an AMD based solution need to ensure clarity is sought when selecting between an Athlon and Duron based system. We would like to provide a little assistance making the choice simpler. An eager salesperson will gladly sell you an entry level Athlon based system, whilst for the same amount you could have walked away with a top of the range Duron system. The Duron based systems are designed for those who want to access the Internet, use-email, and manage personal finances, word processing, financial spreadsheets, and other productivity applications. The Athlon on the other hand is well suited for desktop publishing, productivity database application, streaming video, server and workstation environments, photo editing and a host of top end applications. The most important factor to consider when deciding to purchase is to first establish your specific requirements. Are they any other alternatives? Instead of an AMD Duron solution, normally Intel would have sprung to our mind instantly, sadly for Intel it's Celeron offering does not match the AMD Duron's technical prowess and pricing sophistication, even with the launch of the 100MHz FSB.

How we carried out our test

Our objective was to test the performance, implementation, stability, and ease of use of the AMD Duron 850MHz processor, and a comparative performance benchmark using the AMD Duron 700 750 and 800MHz processors. To achieve our objective, we used 3DMARK 2000, Content Creation Winstone 2000 and BAPCo's SYSmark 2000. AMD had supplied us with a complete system for review purposes, however we were not able to utilise the Motherboard supplied, as this would not have allowed us the luxury of providing a comparison to the other Duron processors featured in these tests.

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