Battle at 500MHz: Athlon vs P3 vs Celeron

With a total of 6 known motherboards that are due out for release before the year's end for the Athlon processor (Gigabyte, MSI, and ASUS being the most popular brand names), you can't honestly say that the Athlon processor is receiving the industry support it needs to succeed. Hopefully with the introduction of the ASUS Athlon motherboard and the upcoming Tyan motherboard (which should be a very promising solution according to Tyan) things will change, but as of now the Athlon loses out in terms of industry support.

Granted, AMD just released the Athlon under two months ago and industry support can't be expected to be nearly as great as it is for the two contributions from Intel that have been available for quite some time, but the fact of the matter is that if you're in the market for a new computer today you aren't going to be too forgiving if you can't get the processor you want because there are no good motherboards available.

In terms of software optimization, the Athlon specifically isn't boasting much support from software manufacturers with programs that are already on the market, however there are quite a few titles that are in the works with Athlon specific optimizations. For example, Naturally Speaking 4.0, a voice dictation program, supposedly has specific optimizations for the Athlon processor.

On the other hand, AMD's 3DNow! instructions have been around since mid-1998 and have gained quite a bit of industry support. The Athlon's support for AMD's 3DNow! instructions give it a great deal of power in the industry in terms of support, but, the big question here is, when you go out to buy a piece of software, do you look to make sure it has 3DNow! support before buying it?

Although motherboard support for Socket-370 processors isn't nearly as great as the support for the Slot-1 platform (Slot-1 has been around for 2 years, Socket-370 has been around for less than one) the ability to use a Socket-370 CPU with a converter card in a Slot-1 motherboard opens up the Socket-370 platform to just about every motherboard you could possibly dream of. An added $15 card allows a Celeron 500 owner to go after an ABIT BE6-II or an AOpen AX6BC Pro instead of the limited Socket-370 motherboard choices he/she would normally have.

At the same time, if you're looking to construct a cheaper system, there are quite a few microATX Socket-370 boards based on the i810 chipset (including a few based on the BX) that offer a very low price tag. In essence, the Celeron supports your favorite Slot-1 boards, all Socket-370 boards, and offers a greater variety of choice for motherboards based on the i810 chipset. This is a definite plus for the OEMs and System Integrators looking to build low-cost systems as well as those of you that are looking for cheap entry-level systems.

Since Socket-370 motherboards don't really have any features to offer that the Slot-1 motherboard don't already support, the Slot-1 Pentium III isn't at a loss by not supporting the interface. The only factor which gives the Celeron the edge over the Pentium III here is the lack of cost effective i810 based Slot-1 motherboards. However, there are a few that are not nearly as popular as the Socket-370 i810 boards.

The Pentium III's SSE support is fairly laughable right now because it was made public after AMD's 3DNow! had already gained momentum and SSE doesn't offer that big of a real world improvement in most cases. This brings up the same question as before: When you go out to buy a piece of software, do you look to make sure it has SSE support before buying it?

Since both the Athlon and the Pentium III have added instructions that require special consideration from the programmers in order to gain any performance boost from them, and neither 3DNow! nor SSE offer a huge performance increase for either of those processors, the tangible benefits are limited.