Desktop CPU Comparison - September 99

In office applications, as we've known for quite some time, it isn't difficult for the cheaper processors to score higher on the performance chain.  And in this case, they did just that.  The K6-2/3 and the Celeron get the price to performance ratio award here, as the performance advantage the faster (and more expensive) Pentium IIIs and Athlons offer definitely isn't worth it if all you're going to be doing is running Word or surfing the net.  Even a Celeron 500 is overkill if that's all you're going to be using your computer for.

An interesting note to make here is the relatively small performance difference between the Athlon 600 and the Pentium III 600, had we based this comparison entirely on Winstone numbers the conclusions we'd be left with would most likely be far from reality.  It just goes to show you that it can't hurt to test with a larger benchmarking sample.

The office application performance trend continues here as well except for one notable exception, the performance of the K6-III 450 under Paradox 8.0.  Paradox is a database application, and the K6-III 450 happens to be the third fastest processor out of the roundup in that test.  It even outpaced the Pentium III 600, and is third only to the two Athlon processors that were included in the benchmarks.  How's that for bang for your buck?   All of the processors generally held their ground in the PowerPoint test as well, you don't need a $1000 processor to prepare 2D presentations, it's a fact.