How odd! Duron600 is 10% slower than classic Athlon500.

[zane]

Last week I bought duron600 from buy.com. When I test the float performance I find duron600 is 10% slower than classic Athlon500(running a program, duron600:1177s, Athlon500:1068s). This means duron is 27% slower than the Athlon at same frequency. How odd! Because many reviews said that FPU of duron is same as Tbird. How come there is 27% gap between them.

 

[Agar]

What program are you using for that test?
I'd say that the program you're using is a lill dependant on the amount of cache memory...

 

[zane]

It is a program for solving partial differential equations and use about 40MB memory. I used it to test PIII500, Athlon500 and Duron600. PIII500 is about 16% slower than Athlon500. I guess you are right, 2nd cache is important to my program.

 

[BurntKooshie]

with memory usage that high, and a small cache like the duron's, memory bandwidth (and latency) is extremely important. It would be interesting to pit a Thunderbird up against your program....

 

[zane]

Yes, memory bandwidth (and latency) is extremely important.When I oc my duron600 to 700, I only got 3% speed increase. Tomorrow I will install a Tbird 800 and see what I can get.

 

[DaddyG]

VIA chipset mobos need lots of BIOS tweaking to get the optimal performance.

 

[RobsTV]

Bios tweaking is the key, as well as the test used.
Since most are getting new motherboards with their Socket A, things are not equal.
My Duron 600@600 and default bios settings ran slower than my old K6-III 400@448 in Norton SI. Minor Bios adjustments, and it surpased the K6-III.

 

[Phuz]

How do you tweak your bios for performance?
I have an A7V...
never thought bios was more then features and preferences..

 

[Phuz]

^

 

[zane]

DaddyG and RobsTV, you are right.
Yesterday I adjusted BIOS and got 10% speed increase. I use KT7 and PC133. But it still slower than than it should be(for the float performance, now it equal to Athlon500).

 

[Phuz]

How do you tweak your bios people?