December 2001

There have been no new chip introductions recently as both Intel and AMD are seeking to maximise sales of their existing chips. What has improved significantly are the supplies of both Pentium 4 and Athlon XP chips. From recent reports it appears that the Athlon XP is in high demand from both system integrators and the public.

December will be the last month where Intel's 0.18 micron "Willamette" Pentium 4 will be the only version of their mainstream chip. Early January will see the release of the new 0.13 micron "Northwood" Pentium 4 which features an expanded Level 2 cache of 512 KB. When paired with the new i845D chipset this should be an interesting combination.

The 0.13 micron "Tulatin" based Celeron chips are interesting players in the market as they offer probably the best price to performance ratio of the Intel range at this moment in time.

This chart does not include processors in ready built PC's, so to meet the criteria for the chart, the processor in question must for sale separately and in volume.

The criteria with which we rate the processors currently available is simply what we judge to be the best value for money. Raw power alone can not top the charts (unless we think that it is significantly good enough to warrant a high price tag), and other factors such as all round performance and availability (at time of writing in the UK) also influence our decisions. We do not use a chip's overclocking potential as a factor in this chart, thus giving a guide to those who do not wish to overclock their CPU. Plese note that this rating is purely the opinion of the authors.

So onto the chart...

No. 1

AMD Athlon XP 1500+. A new number 1 in the chart sees the entry level Athlon XP 1500+ take top spot. Whilst costing £117 as opposed to just over £100 for the 1.4 GHz Athlon "Thunderbird", we feel that the new Athlon XP offers excellent performance for its price. This chip certainly goes well for a clock speed of 1.33 GHz.

No. 2

AMD Athlon 1.4 GHz. Still holding a price of £104 the Athlon 1.4 GHz looks very good if you don't want to spend the extra required for an Athlon XP. Don't forget that the Athlon "Thunderbird" is almost as fast as the Athlon XP making this chip extremely good value.

No. 3

AMD Athlon XP 1600+. Just a few punds more than the XP 1500+, the Athlon XP 1600+ gives a few extra MHz (1.4 GHz clock speed). Very good for the price.

No. 4

AMD Duron 1 GHz. Recent weeks have seen the Duron be eclipsed by the extremely fast Athlon XP. In many ways this is a shame as the Duron is still the budget chip of choice in our opinion. The 1.1 GHz Duron is current priced at just over £60, which is excellent value considering that this was high-end speed only a year ago. Now that the 1 GHz Athlon "Thunderbird" has gone, the Duron is now the budget chip of choice.

No. 5

Intel Celeron 1.2 GHz. This is the chip Intel is not making too much noise about. Why? The answer is that it is basically a "Tulatin" Pentium III running on a 100 MHz Front Side Bus and badged as a Celeron. This chip gives performance similar to outgoing Pentium III chips and can give the Pentium 4 a fright. £104 for a Celeron with 256 KB cache and hardware data prefetch doesn't look bad.

No. 6

Intel Pentium 4 1.6 GHz. Finding Socket 478 Pentium 4 chips in quantity has been somewhat difficult in recent weeks as there are virtually no 1.5 GHz parts available (on the retail market). Thus the next Pentium 4 chip is the 1.6 GHz part at a fairly hefty £168. If you really want to pursue the Pentium 4 option, this chip is probably the most likely way to go (before "Northwood"). Anything above 1.6 GHz breaks the £200 barrier, and at that point an Athlon XP 1800+ looks a better bet.

No. 7

AMD Athlon XP 1800+. Fancy treating yourself at Christmas? If so the Athlon XP 1800+ is a nice chip at £193. If you want to go the whole way, you could spend a whopping £246 on the XP 1900+, but we feel that it is not worth the extra for only 66 MHz difference.

No. 8

AMD Athlon XP 1700+ (1.53 GHz). Probably the most overlooked Athlon XP to date, but at £149 the XP 1700+ looks nice.

No. 9

AMD Duron 850 MHz. Whilst there are many 800 MHz Duron's currently available, we feel spending the £4-10 extra needed for an 850 MHz chip is worthwhile. Currently priced at £44 this looks good.

No. 10

Intel Celeron 950 MHz. Whilst not the same value as the 800 or 850 MHz Duron (or 900 MHz Duron @ £58), £62 for the entry level Intel chip is not bad.

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