AMD K6 233, AMD K6-2 333, Cyrix 6x86MX PR200+, Cyrix M-II 300, Intel Pentium MMX 233
FIC VA-503+ Motherboard
64MB PC100 SDRAM
Western Digital Caviar AC35100 - UltraATA
Matrox Millennium II AGP Video Card (4MB)
Diamond Monster 3D-2 Voodoo2 Graphics Accelerator (12MB)
The Pentium II comparison system differed only in terms of the processor and motherboard in which case the following components were used:
Intel Celeron 300A, Intel Pentium II 450
ABIT BH6 Pentium II BX Motherboard
The following drivers were common to both test systems:
MGA Millennium II Drivers v4.07.00.700
DirectX 6
Quake 2 v3.17
Windows 98
All tests were run at 800 x 600 x 16-bit color
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A 0.3 fps difference under Quake 2, and this trend continues on a clock for clock basis. When overclocked, the Celeron A becomes a Pentium II under the games and applications we're used to running. |
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Hulk - Thursday, April 26, 2012 - link
I remember this review fondly. This was the review that prompted me to build my first computer. My 300a went to 450 just like almost every one.dananski - Tuesday, February 24, 2015 - link
This was sort of before my time (the day after my 11th birthday) but I wish I had known these things in such detail when I first came to buying and building computers. And I do miss Anand's excellent writing now he has left.Kepe - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Hehe, the WR overclock for this processor was broken yesterday: 721 MHz. Amazing! :Dhttp://hwbot.org/hardware/processor/pentium_2_cele...
StrangerGuy - Monday, April 1, 2019 - link
I wasn't into PCs in 1998/99, but looking back there were countless people I know who got ripped off by buying the somewhat-to-insanely overpriced P2/P3s, or the cheap-but-slow K6 variants after the incredible Celly 300A hit the streets. I guess the Internet wasn't that mainstream then, let alone PC review websites like AT.It's funny now people spend big bucks elking out a mere 10% OC out of their i7/i9s, while 20 years ago overclocking the 300A by 50% on a 440BX is free in the truest sense of the word.
PandaBear - Monday, July 6, 2020 - link
Back then people expect performance doubling about every 18-24 months. These days you get 10% improvement every 18-24 months because of monopoly.Also other than GPU, SSD, and maybe up to 16GB of DDR4, there really isn't anything worth upgrading anymore.
bunnyfubbles - Tuesday, March 30, 2021 - link
these days we get 10% not because of monopoly (you could have made that argument after Sandy Bridge launch, but not now with AMD producing viable competition thanks to Zen) but because we're running into the physical limits of silicon. Hell, we knew even as far back as ~2006 that clock rate ramping would be unsustainable.