Hi, Which of these cpus is the fastest? All caches are on-die (100% cpu clock speed). Pentium 3 - 1000mhz - 256kb - 133mhz + MMX/SSE Xeon - 1000mhz - 256kb - 133mhz + MMX/SSE Xeon - 900mhz - 2048kb - 133mhz + MMX/SSE Athlon - 1000mhz - 256kb - 200mhz + MMX/Enhanced 3DNOW Thanks. Regards.

I'm gonna say that the Xeon 900/2MB is the fastest, thanks to that fat ass cache. I remember the Tualatin P3 being a lot faster than the standard P3 clock-for-clock, thanks to its 512K L2. A Xeon P3 with 2MB should really fly. The other three tie for second place. But are you sure that Xeon is supposed to run at 900MHz? Or that it has a 133MHz bus? 900/133 = 6.77 multiplier, which isn't possible.

Ahhh Jackbomb, my favorite computing.net member =) Love your crazy old machines you pimp out =) My bad, yeah the xeon is on a 100mhz FSB. I just read about P6 vs K7 (P3 vs A) on a review: http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware... Looks like Athlon kicks arse =) So i guess this is an Athlon So basically i think this is a comparison of a Xeon at 900 with 2mb L2 on a 100mhz bus... versus a technically superior (just read through all the pages of that review) Athlon at 1000 with 256kb L2 on a 200mhz bus. Disregarding overclocking... can a fat arse cache really make up for 100mhz clockspeed and twice the fsb? I'm thinking of building a slot machine =) but it will be a dual slot machine... which gives athlon yet another advantage... a 200mhz bus per slota cartridge... where as the intel boards share the one FSB with all CPUs. Regards.

"Love your crazy old machines you pimp out =)" Haven't messed around with the old rigs in a while--I just don't have the time anymore. However, the next time I'm free (and extremely bored) on a rainy Sunday, I'd like to try Windows 7 on an underclocked 180MHz P2. :-) "I just read about P6 vs K7 (P3 vs A) on a review" That article compares a Katmai P3 to an Athlon. The Katmai P3 is basically a Pentium II with SSE tacked on. Its L2 cache is only 64-bits wide, external to the processor core, and runs at half the speed. The Coppermine P3s are A LOT faster, thanks to 256-bit, on-chip cache! All three of the Intel CPUs you listed are Coppermine-based. "can a fat arse cache really make up for 100mhz clockspeed and twice the fsb?" Depends on the application. Some apps prefer fast memory access and good floating point performance (Athlon), while others like having lots of L2 available and fast SIMD processing (P3 Xeon). "but it will be a dual slot machine... which gives athlon yet another advantage... a 200mhz bus per slota cartridge... where as the intel boards share the one FSB with all CPUs." Yep, for a dual-CPU rig, the Athlon's EV6 bus is definitely the way to go. But Slot A?? Is that a Thunderbird or an old K7/K75 Athlon?

I'll use thunderbirds if i go dual slot a =) Yes the review compared a katmai to an athlon... but the athlons were s---ty then too. It wasn't until coppermine/thunderbird that they dropped the slow 512kb L2 and went with full speed 256kb L2 =) So which rig i go with depends on the apps i'll use... hmm Well i'll definitely wanna go dual since i'm a multitasking man =) Get that win7 running on that p2 =P

Wait... are there any dual slot a boards...? Regards.

"the athlons were s---ty then too" Yeah, but the Katmai P3s were even s---tier. The Athlon had a huge 128K (total) L1 cache to help soften the blow of an off-chip L2. The P3's L1 was a measly 32K. The first-gen Athlons were much faster than first-gen P3s, but T-bird and Coppermine were pretty much even, clock-for-clock. I don't remember there being any dual Slot A boards, but I could be wrong. If they exist, they're certainly very rare. There are plenty of dual Socket A, Slot 1/2, and Socket 370 boards out there, though.