Early Tests: Athlon-800 vs. PIII-750

Advanced Micro Devices won't officially announce its 800-MHz Athlon chip until early January, but we've already tested an upcoming Polywell PC running the new processor. The first word: The new system scored ever-so-slightly lower in our PC WorldBench 98 than a comparably configured 750-MHz Pentium III reference system.

The Polywell Poly 800K7-800 includes AMD's Athlon-800, 512KB of L2 cache, 128MB of SDRAM, a 27.3GB hard drive, a 6X DVD-ROM drive, a 4X AGP graphics with 32MB of video memory, a V.90 modem, a 100MB Zip drive, a 19-inch monitor, Windows 98 Second Edition, and Lotus SmartSuite.

Customers can configure the Polywell system to their taste; the PC we tested is priced at $2800. Polywell is already taking orders for the Athlon-800 PC on its Web site and by phone. Company executives say they expect to begin shipping the 800-MHz systems after January 10, and plan to offer a Pentium III-800 system soon after that.

Close Scores, Who'd Notice?

Intel beat AMD out of the gate with its Pentium III-800, announced on December 20, but we still haven't tested an 800-MHz PIII system (stay tuned). So we opted to compare the 800-MHz Polywell unit to a comparably configured PIII-750 reference system and the combined average of an AMD-built Athlon-750 reference box and a preproduction Compaq Presario running a Athlon-750.

The Intel-built PIII-750 reference PC came with 256KB of L2 cache, 128MB of Rambus memory, 32MB of video memory, and a 17GB hard drive. The AMD-built Athlon-750 system came with 512KB of L2 cache, 128MB of SDRAM memory, 32MB of video memory, and a 20GB hard drive. Both reference machines were running Windows 98, and neither is on the market.

The 750-MHz Presario 5900Z has 128MB of SDRAM, a 34GB hard drive, both DVD-ROM and CD-RW drives, 32MB of video memory, and a 19-inch monitor. Its street price is $3456. Compaq includes antivirus and support software that tend to slow down performance, and the Presario's numbers lowered the average of the two 750-MHz Athlon machines a bit.

That said, the PC WorldBench 98 results for all three processors were quite good, and very close. The PIII-750 posted the highest PC WorldBench 98 score of the three at 315; the 800-MHz Athlon landed a score of 309. That's a virtually imperceptible difference of less than 2 percent. Of the 750-MHz Athlon systems, the AMD reference system scored 305 and the Presario, 289. Those, too are barely noticeable differences: The reference system is 3 percent slower than the 750-MHz PIII and the Presario is 8 percent slower. All of these differences are slight, especially when based on such a small set of test machines.

So could most PC users tell the difference between a system with the PIII-750 and the Athlon-800? No. Does that matter to performance-minded buyers willing to pay top dollar for the "fastest" PC on the market, and the bragging rights (however short-lived) that accompany it? Probably not.