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AMD
Duron 1.3GHz - Mainstream Muscle
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Author :Wayne
Date : 21st January 2002
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3DVelocity would like to
thank AMD and
especially Theresa Zimmer for their help and courtesy in providing
this processor for review.
Processor details :
Before we get onto the benchmarking let's just
quickly summarize the features.
Sophisticated
Cache Architecture: The AMD Duron processor features 192K
of total on-chip cache. This large on-chip cache combined
with the sophisticated cache architecture delivers a high
level of performance on applications like business and personal
productivity suites, as well as basic 3D content creation
and photo editing packages.
Superscalar
Floating Point Unit with 3DNow! Professional Technology:
The AMD Duron processor offers three floating point pipelines.
This provides for outstanding number crunching capabilities.
In concert with AMD's 3DNow! Professional technology, this
enables the AMD Duron processor to deliver excellent performance
on multimedia applications like web design tools, 3D games,
and other entertainment and educational media products. Once
considered an AMD weakness, the AMD Duron's current floating
point unit is widely recognised as the most able in the business.
Compatible
with Microsoft® Windows® XP
The AMD Duron processor offers great performance for running
Microsoft Windows XP, as well as outstanding performance on
earlier versions of Windows. Microsoft optimized Windows XP's
DirectX 8.0 interface for AMD processors and also optimized
applications like Windows Media Encoder 8.0 for 3DNow!Professional
technology found in AMD Duron processors. The responsive computing
power of AMD processors enables users to take advantage of
the new features in Windows XP, like fast-user switching.
Hardware Data Pre-fetch
The AMD Duron processor streamlines
its data handling by intelligently and speculatively copying
data from system memory to faster internal data cache memory
so reducing waiting times as data is read. This offers significant
increases in performance and is entirely software independent.
3DNow! Professional
3DNow! has evolved into 3DNow! Professional with the introduction
of 52 new instructions which allow full SSE compatibility.
Nine-issue, superscalar, fully pipelined micro-architecture
To keep it simple, these pipelines are used to feed data
from the application to the execution engines. The depth of
these pipelines dictates not only the maximum core frequency
but also the IPC (amount of work done in a single clock cycle).
Deep pipelines allow for higher frequencies but result in a
lower IPC while shorter pipelines do exactly the opposite, pegging
frequencies to lower levels but allowing for more operations
to be carried out per clock cycle. By carefully balancing pipeline
depth, the AMD Duron is able to deliver a compromise between
IPC and frequency that offers the best all-round solution.
