Tom's Hardware Guide heeft een artikel on-line gezet over de prestaties en schaalbaarheid van Intel's Pentium III processor, dit als vervolg op het eerdere artikel over AMD's Athlon processoren. Tom geeft een overzicht van de ontwikkeling van de Pentium III en gaat in op de upgrade-mogelijkheden die je hebt bij de diverse chipsets die voor de Pentium III op de markt zijn. Daarnaast gaat men ook in op de effecten van een upgrade van de videokaart op de totale prestaties van het systeem - en die is niet gering. Het hele verhaal wordt onderbouwd met een aantal benchmarks, en uiteindelijk komt men tot de volgende conclusies:
The Pentium III is not dead! I am not sure how long Intel will keep this processor alive, but right now it looks like we will still have the pleasure for many months. If we forget former problems (i.e. the fiasco with the 1.13 GHz version and persistent delivery delays of Pentium III models last year) we should be aware of the fact that the P3 Coppermine is still an excellent chip. Like most other Intel CPUs, it is highly overclockable (only by raising the FSB speed) and capable of running in multi-processor environments. Besides that, the variety of available platforms is quite impressive: There are chipsets with integrated graphics, with SDRAM or DDR support, RAID, dual CPU motherboards etc. [break]Last but not least geeft men nog de volgende aanbevelingen en overwegingen mee aan de lezer met upgrade-plannen:[/break]
RAM! At current SDRAM prices, 128 MB of additional memory is relatively inexpensive and will ensure that your system runs as fast as possible.
For which tasks do you normally use your computer? After studying the benchmark results (also see the Athlon scaling article) we should be happy that the product cycle for microprocessors is basically slowing down. There are only few applications available for home use which would require a processor at > 1 GHz.
Gamers - do not overrate the benefits of a GHz processor! Every model at 500-700 MHz will perform well for some time, and those between 700 and 1000 MHz should last you for at least 12 months. Remember, the key to more 3D-performance is a faster graphics card! Stay tuned for our final GeForce 3 review as well!
What about your hard drive? If you are using a model that is two years old or older, you might consider getting a new one, not only for larger capacity, but also for better performance.
Het hele verhaal is te checken op Tom's Hardware Guide.