There are lots of processors to choose
from, and these processors come from three different
manufacturers. Now of course there are lots manufacturers
making CPU's but only about 3 that make CPU's that are
Windows 98/95 or NT compatible and are also compatible with most of the software on the market. So we will
concentrate on these three manufacturers.
The three manufacturers are:
AMD or Advanced Micro
Devices
Cyrix
Intel
The limiting factor when ever buying processors is
money, in fact that is really the main factor when buying
any piece of technology. So realizing everyone has a
different budget and different needs in a processor we
will try to describe the reasons for getting any
particular processor.
CYRIX
Lets start with Cyrix, I have owned Cyrix
processors in the past and I can't say that I am
really impressed with their performance. They have kind of have dropped out of competition in the
processor market they seem to be concentrating on
bottom-of-the-market computers. At one time they
could actually be considered an alternative, but at
this point I don't think anyone should take them
seriously, hopefully that will change now that they
have been bought by VIA.
AMD
 I happen to be a huge AMD fan, but until
recently they always had slower chips than the leader
of the market, Intel. AMD's new chips the Athlons or
K7s are much faster than even the fastest Intel
Pentium III available. In the past the great
advantage to buying AMD was great performance but at
a significantly lower price than Intel. This has all
changed now, but it still benefits everyone, because
the prices of Pentium III chips have dropped
dramatically now that AMD has released their K7s.
There are 3 types of AMD chips currently on the
market that are worth taking a look at.
These three are:
K6-2
K6-III
Athlon
or K7
The clock speeds of these chips range anywhere
from 366Mhz to 650Mhz. Each of these types have
support for Intel's MMX instructions set (which is a
extension for multimedia instructions within the
chip). The chips also have AMD's 3DNOW! (TM)
technology, which when supported by software
increases performance significantly. The K6-2s are
very inexpensive for the power that you get. You can
build quite a fast computer with a K6-2 and it
wouldn't cost much at all. The K6-IIIs are the next
step up for someone who has a little bit more money,
but the performance is about the same level as most
Intel Celeron chips and for about the same price. The
Athlon however is a different story. Currently
these chips are the fastest on the market and
slightly more expensive than the newly released
Pentium IIIs.
INTEL
 Intel has long been the
leader in the CPU market and is also the setter of
the standards. Intel chips until recently have always
been faster than everything else on the market, this
is especially true for floating point operations (mathematical operations with decimal numbers). As I
have mentioned this has changed, but Intel chips are
still the most compatible chips on the market. Why is
this you might ask? Well its because everything is
written first to work on Intel chips, and then if it
can be fixed a little to work on other brands of processors than all the better.
There are three types of Intel chips on the market
to take a close look at.
These three types are:
Celerons
Pentium
IIs
Pentium
IIIs
Celerons are Intel's answer to low cost computers.
Intel was facing so much competition from AMD's low
cost chips that they had to invent a slower chip to
compete at a lower price. The newer Celerons are very
good chips and tend to run quite fast. Pentium IIs
are fast chips as well and are faster than even some
K6-III chips, especially in floating point
operations. Pentium IIIs were until very recently the
fastest chips on the market and the most expensive as
well. But now Pentium IIIs have dropped in price and
are a great choice for a processor. Pentium IIIs now
have Intel's SSE which is another instruction set
added to the Intel processors to allow them to run
very fast in graphical applications. As with MMX and
3DNOW! the software needs to be written for SSE to
take advantage of the instruction set and the
increased speed it provides.
RESEARCH
This is where lots of research begins to enter in
the equation if you want to get the fastest processor
for your particular use at the lowest price.
The best thing to do is look at 3rd parties that are
doing comparisons on chip performances. The best
places to do this is at:
anandtech.com
tomshardware.com
These sites do comparisons continuously on
processors speeds. In general they will tell you that
the fastest Celeron processors are faster than some
Pentium IIIs and IIs. Also they will tell you that
Intel chips tend to be faster for games than AMD
chips, until the Athlon. All numbers on the Athlon
say that these chips are faster than anything else
for business applications, graphics applications, or
gaming applications. AMD K6-IIIs in general score
quite well for business applications but suffered
under gaming application tests. AMD K6-IIIs are quite
fast though and usually do better than most Celerons
and Pentium IIs and even some Pentium IIIs in some
tests.
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