Overall Processor Comparison
Now it's about time to see how Coppermine sticks up against its archenemy Athlon. It should be a tight match between the two, as we could see from the results above. In office as well as some game applications Coppermine is a lot faster than the old Pentium III and then there is Coppermine's clock speed advantage. AMD sells its fastest Athlon at 700 MHz, the fastest Coppermine runs at 733 MHz.
Office Application Performance Under Windows98SE
| SYSmark98 - Windows98SE | Header Cell - Column 1 | Header Cell - Column 2 | Header Cell - Column 3 | Header Cell - Column 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPU | Score | Row 0 - Cell 2 | CPU | Score |
| Pentium III 500 | 211 | Row 1 - Cell 2 | Athlon 500 | 237 |
| Pentium III 500E | 226 | Row 2 - Cell 2 | Row 2 - Cell 3 | Row 2 - Cell 4 |
| Pentium III 533B | 217 | Row 3 - Cell 2 | Row 3 - Cell 3 | Row 3 - Cell 4 |
| Pentium III 533EB | 232 | Row 4 - Cell 2 | Row 4 - Cell 3 | Row 4 - Cell 4 |
| Pentium III 550 | 228 | Row 5 - Cell 2 | Athlon 550 | 253 |
| Pentium III 550E | 241 | Row 6 - Cell 2 | Row 6 - Cell 3 | Row 6 - Cell 4 |
| Pentium III 600 | 245 | Row 7 - Cell 2 | Athlon 600 | 270 |
| Pentium III 600B | 237 | Row 8 - Cell 2 | Row 8 - Cell 3 | Row 8 - Cell 4 |
| Pentium III 600E | 257 | Row 9 - Cell 2 | Row 9 - Cell 3 | Row 9 - Cell 4 |
| Pentium III 600EB | 251 | Row 10 - Cell 2 | Row 10 - Cell 3 | Row 10 - Cell 4 |
| Pentium III 650 | 272 | Row 11 - Cell 2 | Athlon 650 | 287 |
| Pentium III 667 | 271 | Row 12 - Cell 2 | Row 12 - Cell 3 | Row 12 - Cell 4 |
| Pentium III 700 | 288 | Row 13 - Cell 2 | Athlon 700 | 300 |
| Pentium III 733 | 290 | Row 14 - Cell 2 | Row 14 - Cell 3 | Row 14 - Cell 4 |
| Pentium III 750 (overclocked) | 303 | Row 15 - Cell 2 | Athlon 750 (overclocked) | 313 |
| Row 16 - Cell 0 | Row 16 - Cell 1 | Row 16 - Cell 2 | Kryotech Cool Athlon 800 | 328 |
| Row 17 - Cell 0 | Row 17 - Cell 1 | Row 17 - Cell 2 | Kryotech Cool Athlon 900 | 339 |
Under Windows 98 Athlon still rules SYSmark98, but the margin has shrunk. You may be surprised to see that Coppermine at 133 MHz FSB scores less than at 100 MHz FSB. The reason for this is that we ran Coppermine in a legally available Apollo Pro 133+-platform, that scores worse than an i820-platform would. If i820 was ready and available, Coppermine would get closer to Athlon. Let's face the facts though, Intel screwed it up and Coppermine is still behind Athlon.