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AMD Launches Low-Cost Duron Chips

New processors will compete with Celerons--as soon as PC makers offer Duron systems.

By James Niccolai, IDG News   

Duron is AMD's first processor for budget PCs that takes advantage of an advanced chip design, or "microarchitecture," that was unveiled last year for its higher-performance Athlon processor. AMD says the design brings several technical improvements over its existing processor for low-cost PCs, the K6-2.

AMD announced earlier this month that it had begun shipping the Duron in volume to PC makers. While Monday marks the official launch of the chip, none of the leading PC makers were ready to offer a Duron system yet. AMD says it expects Compaq Computer, Fujitsu-Siemens Computer (in Europe) and NEC (in Japan) to offer Duron systems shortly.

Among the improvements that the Duron offers is a speedier 200-MHz system bus. The system bus is a conduit that funnels data between the processor and other parts of a PC. The Duron also includes AMD's Enhanced 3DNow instructions, designed to boost multimedia performance, and a larger on-chip memory cache than the K6-2.

Perhaps most important, analysts say, the new architecture should allow AMD to keep boosting the clock speed of Duron to keep pace with--or even stay ahead of--Intel's Celeron.

"The K6 family has undergone a lot of competitive pressure against Celeron," says Mario Morales, director of semiconductor research with market researcher IDC. "Celeron has proved to be a very scalable product, while the K6-2 has topped off at 550 MHz."

The fastest version of Intel's Celeron available today runs at 600 MHz, but the chip giant later this month plans to release faster versions running at 633 MHz, 667 MHz and 700 MHz, according to a source close to Intel.

Clock speed is only one measure of processor performance, but it's one that PC buyers--especially consumers--tend to pay close attention to.

AMD also released the results of various benchmark tests on Monday designed to show that its Duron processor outperforms a Celeron running at the same clock speed by as much as 25 percent, depending on the application being tested. Analysts note that the actual performance of each processor will vary depending on the configuration of a user's PC.

Prices for the new Durons are $112 for the 600-MHz version, $154 for the 650-MHz version, and $192 for the 700-MHz version, in 1000-unit quantities, AMD says. And the competition between Intel and AMD could lead to lower PC prices for consumers, says one analyst.

"What we've seen with the Intel-AMD battle is a level of competition, both in the low-cost and the performance space, that we've really never seen before. As a result, pricing has been far more favorable [for PC buyers] than it would have been," says Dean McCarron, principal analyst with Mercury Research in Scottsdale, Ariz.