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Verdict.The overall verdict on the new "Coppermine" Pentium III is in fact a rather complicated one, for a number of reasons. Firstly, although the enhancements of the "Coppermine" core bring with it a great performance boost, it still has not been able to totally re-claim it's crown of fastest x86 processor from AMD's Athlon. At best it has rescued Intel from being soundly beaten by AMD's new design, and it gives Intel valuable breathing space whilst it gets it's next generation "Willamette" design ready to do battle against AMD. What the "Coppermine" has done is to achieve parity with the Athlon. To achieve this with a 4 year old design is an achievement which Intel engineers should rightly be proud of. After all, you would expect a brand new design such as the Athlon to completely trounce a 4 year old design such as the P6. The 0.18 μm design allows Intel to scale "Coppermine" and to stay a credible rival to the Athlon for a while yet, although it is clear to see that P6 will never be able to scale to the speeds planned for Athlon solely due to it's age. Remember that P6 has scaled all the way from 133 MHz, whereas Athlon started at 500 MHz. This though is beside the point, and the fact that "Coppermine" is unable to beat the Athlon in Floating Point performance denies it the overall speed crown in the same way the K6 233 could never claim it in the summer of 1997. The BIG problem with "Coppermine" though is that Intel has been unable to release it's new i820 chipset in time to co-incide with it's launch. The i820 chipset with it's new Rambus memory technology was meant to be the final piece in Intel's jigsaw designed to demolish the challeng of the Athlon. Indeed if it had been there, things would have been a lot tougher for AMD's newcomer, but in the meantime, PC builder (this incldes OEM's and DIY enthusiats) will have to mate "Coppermines" to either Intel's low-end i810e chipset, the old BX chipset or rival chipset maker, VIA's Apollo Pro 133. Although the Apollo Pro 133 is a VERY good chipset, the absence of i820 does hurt Intel. Many OEM's are unhappy about this state of affairs, but there is very little that those outside of Intel can do regarding this.
To sum up, the "Coppermine" is a VERY good processor indeed. It allows Intel to claim back it's crown as a maker of high-end
processors as it's performance is very much the equal of AMD's Athlon. The "Coppermine" is a very clever update of the P6 design and
any user who buys this processor or a system based around it will surely not be disappointed by it's performance.
Pentium III E & EB specifications.
Other Intel Processors at:
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