Last year we were all witness to very intense competition between AMD and Intel.  However, most of this competition occurred on the performance PC and mainstream market segments, leaving the value market to be dominated by Intel. 

We have already explained the reasons behind the Celeron's continued success in spite of the Duron's performance superiority and lower price.  Without a value platform to run on, the Duron was crippled as a value solution in the retail market, paving the way for sustained dominance by Intel's Celeron.

Just recently we have seen the introduction of two chipsets in particular that could help change things for AMD's Duron, the SiS 730S and the VIA KM133.  As we illustrated in our individual reviews of the two, the SiS 730S is actually the faster overall solution in everything but 3D applications/games because of its more mature 2D drivers and core.  And when paired up with either of these solutions, the AMD's Duron is an instant contender for the value PC market. 

As of last week, the Celeron now features a 100MHz FSB, giving it a hefty performance boost over its older predecessors that used a 66MHz FSB.  Last week's release also brought the Celeron up to speed with the Duron, running at 800MHz.  Intel's most recent moves are intended to send a signal to AMD, that they are ready and willing to defend their grasp on the value PC market. 

We are on the brink of another price and clock speed war in the CPU market, this time between Intel's Celeron and AMD's Duron.

In response to Intel's most recent Celeron release, AMD is arming the streets with yet another speed upgrade for the Duron.  Now being released at 850MHz, at a price lower than Intel's Celeron 800 that we reviewed last week, AMD is ready and willing to do what it takes to gain a foothold in the value PC market once again.

The Chip

The Duron 850 remains unchanged from the past five Duron processor releases that we have seen.  The Socket-A processor is still given the benefit of the Athlon's 100MHz DDR EV6 FSB that offers bandwidth equivalent to that of a 200MHz bus. 

Combining a high bandwidth FSB that keeps the processor fed healthily with a very large L1 data cache (64KB data/64KB instruction) and a sizeable L2 cache (64KB), the Duron offers approximately 90% of the performance of the Athlon in most cases.

Currently all Durons are manufactured in AMD's Fab25 plant in Austin, Texas, using aluminum interconnects.  While the old trick of simply looking at the polishing used on the processor's die used to tell us whether an AMD CPU was produced at Fab25 or Fab30 in Dresden, variations in the polishing dyes have degraded the usefulness of that method.  The one thing to keep in mind though is that currently no Durons, regardless of the shade of the polishing dye used on the processor, are manufactured using copper interconnects.  The first Durons to come out of Fab30 in Dresden may end up being the upcoming parts based on the Morgan core, however depending on how quickly AMD needs to ramp the clock speed of the Duron this may not hold true.

For more information on the Duron's architecture, be sure to read our original review of AMD's Duron processor. 

In comparison to the Celeron, we have illustrated time and time again that the Duron is the faster solution on a clock for clock basis.  When combined with a UMA (unified memory architecture) platform (e.g. SiS 730S, VIA KM133) the Duron's performance lead over the Celeron is cut significantly.  A major reason behind this is that the Celeron's most popular UMA platform is the i810E, which is definitely much more mature than both of the Duron's UMA platforms. 

We have already compared the Duron to the Celeron on their respective UMA platforms; for a clock for clock comparison read our Celeron 800 Review. 

As an overclocker, the Duron 850 is no better and no worse than the Duron 800.  We have seen reports around the web of users hitting up to 1.2GHz with their Duron 800s, however the 950MHz - 1.1GHz range is more realistic for the average overclock with a processor like the Duron 850. 

Duron 850 Specifications

· 25 million transistor 0.18-micron Duron core with Aluminum interconnects
· 850MHz clock speed - 8.5x clock multiplier
· 128KB on-die L1 cache running at core speed
· 64-bit exclusive 64KB on-die L2 cache running at clock speed
· 462-pin Socket A EV6 CPU interface running at 100MHz DDR (effectively 200MHz)
· 1.60v core voltage

The Test

Click Here for an explanation of what these scores mean

The Duron 850 boasts a 6% higher clock speed than the 800 we reviewed not too long ago, with a 3% increase in performance under Business Winstone 2001. 

In comparison to the Celeron 800, AMD's 850 is pushing on a 16% performance advantage here as well. 

Unfortunately, as we've seen with our UMA performance benchmarks, this advantage quickly disappears as memory bandwidth limitations (since the system memory is shared with the video memory) and 2D performance come into play.

Click Here for an explanation of what these scores mean

Content Creation Winstone 2001 shows a much more linear scale in performance with clock speed for the Duron.  The 6% increase in clock speed results in a 4.5% increase in performance for the Duron 850, which isn't shabby at all.  It looks like the Duron's scalability isn't being hampered too much at all.

The Celeron 800's 100MHz FSB helps it out tremendously here as it's only 11% slower than the Duron 850.  But for being a higher priced, lower clocked alternative to the Duron, it isn't too attractive.

The only time that the Celeron 800 would potentially be a better choice than the Duron 850 would be in a retail box that happened to use a UMA platform.  As we mentioned at the start of this review, the i810E/E2 is much more mature than either of the Duron's UMA platforms.

Rounding out our Home/Office performance benchmarks, SYSMark 2000 provides a combination of the types of applications seen in Business and Content Creation Winstone 2001. 

Again we notice that the Duron 850 is 3% faster than its predecessor while boasting a 6% higher clock speed.  And again, the Duron 850 is over 13% faster than the new Celeron 800.

As a gaming CPU, the Duron 850 drops below a 3% advantage over the 800.  This indicates that there are other factors that are limiting performance before a faster CPU is necessarily needed.  Among the possibilities, especially under Quake III Arena, are more memory bandwidth and a faster FSB. 

The Celeron's inferior cache subsystem helps to hold it back, giving the Duron 850 close to a 20% performance advantage here.

Even with the resolution increased to 1024 x 768 x 32, the Duron 850 is able to distance itself from the Celeron 800 by over 8%.  Comparing the Celeron 800 to its predecessors you realize, once again, how much the Celeron needed the 100MHz FSB boost the 800 received just recently.

Performance standings under MDK2 usually greatly reflect those seen under Quake III Arena.  With MDK2 being slightly less stressing than Quake III Arena, we see a 4% performance improvement courtesy of the 6% higher clock speed of the Duron 850. 

The Duron 850 is also able to outperform the Celeron 800 by approximately 19% here as well.

The standings under UnrealTournament are similar to what we've seen before, the only difference being that the numbers are much closer because of the nature of UT as a benchmark and a game engine. 

There are a number of performance limitations that are coming into play here which limit the effects of adding a faster processor to our test system. 

In our final gaming benchmark the Duron 850 isn't scaling as well as it has been throughout the earlier half of this review.  This can be attributed to Expendable's nature as a benchmark, one that is more memory bandwidth intensive than it is dependent on raw CPU power. 

Believe it or not, but there are some cases in which a faster CPU won't result in a tremendous increase in performance.  It's all about identifying performance bottlenecks in your system and doing your best to upgrade as to eliminate them.

The Duron remains untouchable as the value processor of choice for all professional OpenGL applications.  For the price, the Duron is unbeatable, however those that are able to budget for it will want to go with the Athlon since the added L2 cache can definitely come in handy. 

Final Words

The Duron 850 is nothing special, it's more of the same performance and value we have seen from AMD's Duron line since its introduction in June 2000.  The only difference this time around being SiS 730S and VIA KM133 based motherboards should be finding their way into the hands of OEMs and system integrators, making the Duron an attractive alternative to the Celeron. 

You can expect the Duron to ramp very quickly in clock speed over the course of the next twelve months, even more so than what we saw last year.  And while the Duron is still not producing as much heat as the Athlon, what we are really waiting for is the new Duron based on the Morgan core that should promise much cooler operation.

Until then, let's sit back and watch AMD and Intel engage in yet another round of CPU price and clock speed wars.