Intel's New Weapon: The Coppermine

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

Swipe to scroll horizontally
SYSmark98 - Windows98SEHeader Cell - Column 1 Header Cell - Column 2 Header Cell - Column 3 Header Cell - Column 4
CPUScoreRow 0 - Cell 2 CPUScore
Pentium III 500211Row 1 - Cell 2 Athlon 500237
Pentium III 500E226Row 2 - Cell 2 Row 2 - Cell 3 Row 2 - Cell 4
Pentium III 533B217Row 3 - Cell 2 Row 3 - Cell 3 Row 3 - Cell 4
Pentium III 533EB232Row 4 - Cell 2 Row 4 - Cell 3 Row 4 - Cell 4
Pentium III 550228Row 5 - Cell 2 Athlon 550253
Pentium III 550E241Row 6 - Cell 2 Row 6 - Cell 3 Row 6 - Cell 4
Pentium III 600245Row 7 - Cell 2 Athlon 600270
Pentium III 600B237Row 8 - Cell 2 Row 8 - Cell 3 Row 8 - Cell 4
Pentium III 600E257Row 9 - Cell 2 Row 9 - Cell 3 Row 9 - Cell 4
Pentium III 600EB251Row 10 - Cell 2 Row 10 - Cell 3 Row 10 - Cell 4
Pentium III 650272Row 11 - Cell 2 Athlon 650287
Pentium III 667271Row 12 - Cell 2 Row 12 - Cell 3 Row 12 - Cell 4
Pentium III 700288Row 13 - Cell 2 Athlon 700300
Pentium III 733290Row 14 - Cell 2 Row 14 - Cell 3 Row 14 - Cell 4
Pentium III 750 (overclocked)303Row 15 - Cell 2 Athlon 750 (overclocked)313
Row 16 - Cell 0 Row 16 - Cell 1 Row 16 - Cell 2 Kryotech Cool Athlon 800328
Row 17 - Cell 0 Row 17 - Cell 1 Row 17 - Cell 2 Kryotech Cool Athlon 900339

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.