Performance-Showdown between Athlon and Pentium III

Gigabyte's Athlon Platform

I used the Gigabyte GA-7IX motherboard for Athlon, because Brent was using the MSI-board for graphics cards tests in the Kryotech Cool Athlon 800-system. It showed that the GA-7IX is well capable to supply the current needed by an Athlon 750 without any additional cooling, so that my concerns about the missing heat sinks on the GA-7IX have disappeared. Still, the MSI MS-6167 scores slightly higher in graphics-benchmarks, so that my Athlon-results in Quake2 and Expendable could be even a little bit better. You might find that the results scored in this benchmark are a bit higher than in previously published Athlon-articles. This is due to the fact that I tweaked the Gigabyte GA-7IX to the same settings used in the Athlon-motherboard article .

Asus P3B-F - The New Pentium III Reference-Platform

Intel's Pentium III was tested in the brand-new P3B-F from Asus. This board combines the stability and reliability of a typical Asus-motherboard with the overclocking-friendliness of Abit's BX6. Asus calls that feature 'jumperfree'. The P3B-F scores higher in benchmarks than a BX6 and it does not have power supply-issues with a Voodoo3 3500. You will see that several PIII-scores in this review are slightly higher than in the first Athlon-article we posted. This is due to using the P3B-F. Brent is currently working on a BX-motherboard review that will tell you more about the P3B-F.