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 and 800MHz, bearing in mind as it's aimed at the value segment do not expect this to reach the GHz mark. This will only happen if the pricing of the processors fall below a certain level forcing the Duron to be manufactured at that speed, although, if this was to occur certain changes would have to be made to the core architecture to achieve the GHz fame.

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.

How we carried out our tests

Our objective was to test the performance, implementation, stability, and ease of use of the AMD Duron 800MHz processor, and a comparative performance benchmark using the AMD Duron 700 and 750MHz processors. To achieve our objective, we used 3DMARK 2000, Content Creation Winstone 2000 and BAPCo's SYSmark 2000.

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