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Pentium III v K6 IIIThe release of the Intel Pentium III and AMD K6 III in the same week was not just a pure co-incidence. Since the launch of the K6 around the same time as the Pentium II in 1997, Intel has taken AMD VERY seriuosly. The K6 line has slowly eaten into Intel's sales in the home market, especially with the growth of the sub £1000 PC market. This is something Intel would like to stop as it doesn't like losing sales in its own area. This has led to Intel's adoption of a segmented strategy where it has products for the sub £1000 market in the shape of the Celeron and the power market with the Pentium II / III lines. The Pentium III has also helped Intel to differentiate between its two product lines as the Celeron is a much cheaper alternative to the Pentium II and thus eliminated any incentive to buy it. The K6 III is AMD's strongest offering to date and poses a big challenge to the dominant position of Intel. Its raw speed is as impressive as its low cost, and to combat this, Intel has to really produce the goods. Just as the Celeron has managed to see off the K6-2, the Pentium III has to see off the K6 III. The initial results are somewhat mixed. Business performance falls at the feet of the K6 III 450, which manages to achieve benchmark scores faster than the PIII 500. It is only with the High End benchmarks does the PIII show any sort of dominance. It resoundingly beats the AMD K6 III here on account of its superior floating point capability (AMD really does need to improve this area of its chips). Also if there is an uptake of SSE, this should further enhance its capability.
The battle though has not been won by Intel, as AMD has one last card to play, price. The K6 line has always been cheaper than its Intel
counterpart and this I predict will still offer a significant incentive to anyone looking to buy a new PC. Pentium III, the verdictCompetition is a great for buyers in any market and once again it has proved to be so here. The pressure applied by AMD has forced Intel to pull out all the stops with its new chip. Here we have a processor which has incredible performance but is still selling at very high prices, with around £500 being charged for a 500 MHz example. The Processor Emporium (UK) can only recommend the Pentium III highly to anyone who wants the ultimate in current PC performance. Unfortunatly the Pentium III does not offer a large enough advantage over the Celeron 400 & 433 processors to justify its high price tag. A user can purchase a Celeron 433 & ZX chipset motherboard and still have change left over from the price of a PIII. SSE has not yet taken off (although it is still early days) so the PIII offers no advantage over the Celeron.
Unfortunatly for current Pentium III processors, it is about to be replaced by the 0.18 micron Coppermine chip (to be named Pentium III)
running in excess of 600 MHz on a 133 MHz bus with 256 Kb level 2 cache running at clock speed, which should make it an impressive
performer. Also there is the upcoming release of AMD's much hyped K7 processor. Bearing all this in mind, we would hesitate as regards the
Pentium III at the moment, favouring the current crop of Celeron chips instead.
Intel Pentium III, Technical Data
Other Intel Processors at:
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