Maximum PC - Maximum BS (Celeron vs Duron)

[LXi]

Quote in italics, BS in bold


October 00 issue

Celeron vs Duron(D for Duron, C for Celeron)

Benchmarks:

Clock Speed
D-700Mhz
C-700MHz

Chipset
D-KT133
C-i815E

RAM
D-128MB PC133
C-128MB PC133

SYSmark2000
D-127
C-124

bootMark
D-218
C-165

QuakeIII
D-42.2fps
C-41.8fps

MP3 encoding
D-122sec
C-123sec

Photoshop 5.5
D-190sec
C-192sec

3DMark 2000
D-3726
C-3629

CPUMark(3DMark 2000)
D-328
C-283

SiSoft Sandra 2000
D-1947 MIPS/973MFLOPS
C-1883 MIPS/935MFLOPS

Expendable 640x480x16
D-61.4fps
C-59.4fps

Inspire3D
D-366sec
C-339sec


Ok, if that wasnt enough to make them BS, this probably will:

We declare AMD's Duron the performance winner, but only by an extremely small margin. Though it triumphed in our synthetic benchmarks, it barely edged out the Celeron in our real-world tests. However, if you're into overclocking, you may want to put your money on Celeron. Intel has been churning out a 0.18-micron core longer than AMD has, so your chances for overclocking success are likely to be higher with Intel silicon. That may change, however, as the months grind on and clock speeds increase.


Hehe... I dont know what you think now, but that is definitely some of the most stinky bullsh1ts I've ever heard in recent months. Seriously, I have never ever, since Celeron2 and Duron came out, seen a benchmark showing Celeron performing oh soo close to the Duron. I highly suspect that they just pulled these numbers out of their ars(they said they used a TNT2 M64 to pair w/ these welterweight CPUs, but still???). Ah... so thats how the Duron beating Celeron by an extremely small margine huh? And barely edging out Celeron in real world tests? Gee... never know the Celerons were this good. And better chances for overclocking.... my butt!!! That maybe true now but there is just no way an unlocked Duron can do any worse than a Celeron in overclocking.

This is an extremely common bias that many printed media practice today, and it just annoys the hell out of me when I see that happens. Maximum PC is one of the finest printed PC magazines I've read and even they cannot resist the Intel check. I'm tired of thinking about this BS, Im out. Please input any comments you wish.

 

[EMAN]

That is some crap...

I got my 600mhz duron to 980mhz with a retail heatsink. (Rock solid)

 

[jinsonxu]

I suspect the limit is the memory bandwidth and the speed of the TNT2 M64 itself although that shouldn't be the case at 640by480.

Maybe it's the regular edginess against new technologies. Those old coots have been worshipping their celerons for too long. Pity they can't see my chip though. I'd like to see their celerons do 1Ghz and above with only air cooling (and crappy one at that)

But i'm frustrated by the inability of my Duron to overclock using FSB. sigh. Although i believe that this is due to the limits of the chipset, essentially, the Northbridge.

Some people are announcing that AMD CPUs are Incapable of overclocking by FSB while others like me believe that it's chipset limitation. What're your opinions??

PS:Might be mistaken though, but I remember seeing some Jap overclockers using a device called a [*]null
TurboPLL
to raise the FSB to incredible levels.

 

[pdo]

i was reading that articles couple days ago and it bother the hell out of me. They used to be one fine magazines, but now I'm gonna have to cancel my subscription.

 

[Jonny]

What THE HECK is inspires these writers to keep saying the celeron is so good? Get the FSUCKING cerleron if you are into oc'ing? WTF!!!!! thATS BULlSh!T!! A CELERON 866 is STILL BEAT BY A Duron 700!!

THESE PEople are retarded!!!

 

[KarsinTheHutt]

Must be the TNT2 M64 thats the bottleneck. Hell, I've read that the M64 can hardly beat out my regular TNT.

 

[Adul]

We should demand a rematch and pair that celeron and duron with a geforce MX2.

 

[StarCropper]

I bet the small difference in Quake scores is related to the video card used. FiringSquad shows that with a Geforce 2 GTS, an oc'd Celeron performs close to an oc'd Duron at high resolutions (1280 by 1024 and above)in Quake 3. With a lesser video card the video card will probably limit the performance of the Duron at even lower resolutions. Maximum PC should definitely redo the test with a GTS.

sc

 

[DarkRipper]

Yeah...
[sarcasm]I think I'll cancel my subscription to one of the only magazines that really appeals to my hardware hobby, just because they had the temerity to say they liked the Celeron as much as the Duron[/sarcasm]

Egads!!!
The sheer lack of brains!

I think I'll go sell my pentium chips for K6-2s!! Everyone knows that Intel chips are inferior to AMD, right?
Yeah, let's all sell our P3s, and buy Athlons or Thunderbirds, because we all WANT to fiddle with settings on new chipsets, not to mention the expensive power supplies and ram that we need to run our inexpensive hot running AMD chips.

Call it a flame if you like, but I get tired of Intel bashing. I have owned a Athlon, and a K6-2. Neither one was worth the money. I am very happy with the stability of my p3 systems, and considering a Celeron2 is just a P3 with half the cache disabled, they should be just as good.

Good lord.
DR

 

[NesuD]

Whoever decides the hardware configuration of their testbeds is either an ignorant putz or getting paid off. why would you want to do a set of benchmarks and rate on "realworld" scores using an tnt2 m64 unless you wanted to intentionally bottleneck the systems. All those tests show me is that the tnt2 m64 video card sucks.

 

[Jonny]

DarkRipper, we are not in away way bashing Intel. They are a great company and have awesome processors.


What we are sick of is magazine companies favoring the Celeron when the Duron is clearly superiour. We just don't understand why, you even know the Duron is faster, just look at Anand's reviews.

 

[The Wildcard]

Hmm well as a Celeron 2 user, i would jump for joy for these results but even i have to admit, that is so BS. Everyone knows that the Duron is much much better than the Celeron 2 and the only reason why i did't get it was that I didn't want to change my motherboard.

Yes, MaximumPC is quite pathetic. I mean using a TNT2 M64???? WTF? WEll actaully, i think they were using that cuz they wanted to create a value system...BUT everyone knows that if you wanted to create a value system with either one of these chips, why not go for a Geforce 2 MX? It's perfect.

 

[Spence]

yeah that mag sucks, I saw that too and it didnt seem right, but the mag tries to be funny and it isnt and some of the stuff they list/say is just real stupid

 

[sciencewhiz]

Did any of you actually read the article?



<< The 700mhz Duron was tested in an AMD reference system intended to represent the typical sub-$1000 PC. As shipped this system featured a Gigabyte 72M motherboard with VIA'S KT133 chipset, 128MB of PC133 memory, and a pathetic TNT2 Vanta videocard. We chucked the Vanta in favor of Hurcules' 3D prophet II MX. Once our benchmarks were done, we moved the Hurcules to our Cellie rig. >>

Page 55, October 2000 issue of Maximum PC

As for the benchmarks:

The duron beath the cellie by 2.4% in sysmark, 1% in Quake, .8% in MP3, 1% in photoshop, 2.5% in 3Dmark, 3.3% in sandra, andd 3.3% in expendable.

Notice that I did not include the bootMark (because it fits entirely in the Duron's cache and doesn't have much, if any, bearing on real world performance. I also did not include the Cellie's huge lead in Inspire, because of the heavy intel optimizations.

The only Real World benchmark that there was anything more than a statistical dead-heat in was expendable.

The only place that I can see that Maximum PC got it wrong was in the overclocking section. If they had unlocked their duron, they could have overclocked it as much or more than the cellie.

edit: before people start flaming, let me tell you that I am planning on a duron to upgrade of my P166. Their benchamrks seem to be indicative of real-world performance, they just take a different slant to how they run their benchmarks than most of these hardware sites on the internet.

 

[veryape]

Those BM's are BS but I will testify to the crappiness of the M64 as I foolishly bought one when they came out mistaking it for a TNT2ULTRA. It will make the best system a slow system right quick.

 

[DarkRipper]

OK, I apologize for going off like that. You are right, the Duron is a better value.

Do you guys really think that poorly of Maximum PC though?

DR

 

[sandorski]

Maximum PC is destined to go the way of PCXL. There quality is going down the crapper, but I think their biggest problem lies elsewhere. The problem MaxPC has is the same as the rest of the print media, their articles are written a month or more before they get published. When they actualy wrote this review, the Asus A7V probably wasn't even available yet, so overclocking would have been a very difficult task.

I wish they wouldn't have abandoned the legacy of Boot, but I guess their corporate masters wanted a more mainstream mag.

 

[Ultima200]

They should have used a GeForce2 to get a more accurate test...

I agree with sandorski, over the past few months, close to a year, it seems that they have been concentrating more on the layout and design more than the actual content of the magazine. Their reviews are a month or 2 behind, and more and more are becoming biased to the big companies.....

 

[LXi]

From the way I see it, it's either they made all these scores up, or they intentionally used a M64 to create bottlenecks so the Duron wont seem as dominant as it should be. 'cause their numbers are no way parallel to what the numbers from Anand, FS, Tom etc. If they used a GeForce2 MX and still come up with similar results, it would've been even bigger BS. Some how, someway they found a way to cripple the Duron, noticed they never annouced the settings for Quake3? I seriously doubt that the Duron can only manage a 0.4fps lead over the Celeron.

 

[formulav8]

I read that article when i got it a week or so ago. I can't believe how much they are lieing. To think that I just ordered the mag a couple months ago. I'm already thinking about canceling. I can't believe the lies they are telling. They are definitley up intels you know what. My grandfather has a cel.2 566 or 600 or something and he said he noticed a 100% difference in power when he was on mine.

 

[403Forbidden]

you guys still read print mags?

 

[LXi]

<<you guys still read print mags? >>

Yea... to a certain extent, everyone should have some kind of print mags as a source. Web sites arent everything and print mags do have their advantage. But its sad that the audience of print mags will be brainwashed, considering that's large number of people, print mags can have huge influences.

 

[LXi]

^^^^

 

[DarkRipper]

That's why we print mag readers are also online, LXI, so that we aren't &quot;brainwashed.&quot;

Thanks for the heads up though!

DR

 

[Shudder]

I&quot;m just getting sick of print mags to some extent. Most of the good stuff is a month old and I've already heard about it online before. In the computer industry, they don't make a whole lot of sense. PCXL was just a damn good read because it was entertaining, but other than that, I haven't found anything of use.

Maxim's not bad once you get past the 36 pages of ads at the beginning Just like Playboy, there's usually a few good, um, articles in there.