The usual suspects
There used to be a time when buying a computer was a fairly simple affair all you had to do was choose a rig that suited your needs as well as your budget. This usually entailed taking the latest, fas
There used to be a time when buying a computer was a fairly simple affair all you had to do was choose a rig that suited your needs as well as your budget. This usually entailed taking the latest, fastest Intel Pentium processor and fitting it into your machine for the least amount of cash you were willing to fork out.
Not long after the release of the Pentium II, starting at 266MHz, Intel introduced the Celeron as the budget CPU option. Without a level 2 (L2) cache, however, the Celeron got off to a bad start with the market reacting negatively to it. This changed when the Celeron 300A, equipped with a full 128KB of L2 cache, captured the attention of both the budget market and the performance user market in one fell swoop. This was the beginning of the end as far as ease of choice was concerned.
Of course, there was also the AMD-K6 and K6-2 as well as a range of Cyrix 6x86 processors available at the time, though, for the general consumer market at least, they remained at the extreme ends of the computer buying spectrum. But not for long. As Intel went full steam ahead with the Pentium III, AMD started to emerge with the K6-3 and its 3DNow! extensions, effectively stealing some of Intels thunder. But it wasnt until 1999 when the 500MHz Athlon was released that AMD began to make significant inroads into the desktop PC market, emerging as a serious threat to Intels dominant position. Having beaten Intel to the highly coveted 1GHz mark, AMD truly established itself as a force to be reckoned with.
The legacy that this history has left in its wake is a computer marketplace chock-full of various combinations and permutations of CPUs, chipsets, motherboards, socket and slot types, RAM types, form factors, power requirements, and so on.
This month the Labs team endeavoured to provide a little clarity and assist you in your buying decision, by lining up a range of CPUs and the compatible combinations available for each - and running them through our benchmarks to determine which would stand out as the best configuration. So, read on to find out more about the likely suspects.
Editor: Tim Dean
Labs Manager: Ashok Zaman
Staff Writer: David Kidd
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