Intel Pentium III 1GHz

AnandTech CPU Rating

Performance

Under content creation and gaming applications the 1GHz Pentium III performs quite well, even outperforming the 1GHz Athlon in some cases. Unfortunately the CPU loses points here because it doesn't perform nearly as well as the Athlon in the NT - OpenGL tests.

Features

Features aren't a problem here. The full speed on-die L2 cache helps performance quite a bit, and in cases where SSE is taken advantage of the Pentium III definitely excels.

One feature that is heavily in favor of the Pentium III is SMP motherboard and chipset support. While there will be a SMP Athlon chipset due out later this year/early next year, SMP support is something that professionals demand now, and the Pentium III delivers it.

Price

The price to performance ratio of the Pentium III 1GHz is less than that of the 1GHz Athlon simply based on the recent price conditions where the Athlon is, clock for clock, noticeably cheaper than the Pentium III.

Unless AMD or Intel experience a major change, don't expect things to turn around anytime soon.

Availability

While systems based on the 1GHz Pentium III are available now, Intel still states that you won't see 1GHz chips in the public channels until Q3 which is behind AMD's schedule for their 1GHz CPUs.