Better cache: Duron or old-school Athlon? Duron overclocking?

relyt

Member
Jul 1, 2000
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So, Duron has 64k on-die cache. Athlon has 256k 1/3 speed cache. Which cache ends up faster, the slow big one, or the fsast small one? Does 256k of cache end up faster due to the larger amount?
On a side note, has anyone here succesfully overclocked a Duron? How fast? How hot did it get?
 

BurntKooshie

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
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The athlon classic has 512 KB L2 cache, running anywhere from 1/2 to 1/3 (depends on the clock speed)

500 - 700mhz L2: 1/2
750 - 850mhz L2: 2/5
900+mhz LD: 1/3

On the Thunderbird version of the athlon, its 256kb L2 cache, running full speed (among other things).

As for the speed of a Duron, in most things, expect it to be within ~10% of a regular athlon (512kb L2) at teh same clock speed.

The duron gives off less heat than the equivalently clocked (and on the same process) Athlon Classic, as well as less than the Thunderbird (256kb L2).

For wattage of these CPU's, see http://www.sandpile.org/impl/k7.htm
 

cdrakejr

Senior member
Apr 13, 2000
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These are some of the more thorough reviews that have been done, where you can see comparisons between the different processors both AMD and Intel.

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1261
http://www.arstechnica.com/reviews/2q00/duron/duron-1.html
http://www.gamepc.com/reviews/hardware_review.asp?review=duron&page=1
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/00q2/000619/index.html

Overclocking review:

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/00q2/000623/index.html

Hope these help to answer some of your questions.:)

Just a footnote: many people have raised serious questions about the inconsistencies in the test platforms which have been used in the SharkyExtreme reviews and resulting validity of some results and conclusions.