Duron/Athon TB Comparison

Detune wrote on 12/19/2000, 11:41 PM
From my readings on Tom's Hardware, Anandtech and other
sites, I have noticed that the Durons (800mhz for $85) and
the thunderbird Athlons (800mhz for over $220) have the
same floating point performance. The chips perform
identically in FPU benchmarks, and since Vegas (and
Soundforge for that matter) are FPU intensive, what would
the advantages be of using a thunderbird? I know the only
difference between the two is really L2 cache size, so why
shell out the extra cash? Better Direct-X plug in
performance? Any opinions would be greatly appreciated,
especially from Sounic Foundry Staff.

Regards,

Nigel Albertson

Comments

Rednroll wrote on 12/20/2000, 8:03 AM
The more onboard L1 and L2 Cache the better, this will give
your system an overall faster speed....unless you're just
running Vegas without an operation system? This is what
gave the Athlons faster performance over the Pentium III's,
and is why the Pentium 4's have more L2 cache than everyone
else....and the new AMD's will have more than that...and so
on..and so on.

Nigel Albertson wrote:
>>From my readings on Tom's Hardware, Anandtech and other
>>sites, I have noticed that the Durons (800mhz for $85)
and
>>the thunderbird Athlons (800mhz for over $220) have the
>>same floating point performance. The chips perform
>>identically in FPU benchmarks, and since Vegas (and
>>Soundforge for that matter) are FPU intensive, what would
>>the advantages be of using a thunderbird? I know the only
>>difference between the two is really L2 cache size, so
why
>>shell out the extra cash? Better Direct-X plug in
>>performance? Any opinions would be greatly appreciated,
>>especially from Sounic Foundry Staff.
>>
>>Regards,
>>
>>Nigel Albertson
>>
Detune wrote on 12/20/2000, 4:37 PM


Brian Franz wrote:
>>The more onboard L1 and L2 Cache the better, this will
give
>>your system an overall faster speed....unless you're just
>>running Vegas without an operation system? This is what
>>gave the Athlons faster performance over the Pentium
III's,
>>and is why the Pentium 4's have more L2 cache than
everyone
>>else....and the new AMD's will have more than that...and
so
>>on..and so on.

Yes, granted. However, the nature of the L2 cache on
thunderbirds and Durons is that they do not have redundant
data in L2 (which is a complete L1 shadow). That's why
durons run loops around Celerons. And since they share the
same core, they also perform as good or better than PIII's.
What I really need to know is whether or not soundforge and
vegas will run noticably slower or need hihger buffer/bad
latency with a Duron as opposed to a Thunderbird. Thanks!
Santa wrote on 12/21/2000, 8:28 AM
Ho ho ho...

From the way you write, Nigel, I think you should know the
answer to your own question. Or (like I suspect!) is it
that we are witnessing the magic of "copy and paste"?

Ho ho ho...

merry christmas!!!!



Santa






Nigel Albertson wrote:

>>Yes, granted. However, the nature of the L2 cache on
>>thunderbirds and Durons is that they do not have
redundant
>>data in L2 (which is a complete L1 shadow). That's why
>>durons run loops around Celerons. And since they share
the
>>same core, they also perform as good or better than
PIII's.
>>What I really need to know is whether or not soundforge
and
>>vegas will run noticably slower or need hihger buffer/bad
>>latency with a Duron as opposed to a Thunderbird. Thanks!
>>