Desktop CPU Comparison - September 99

These next three benchmarks (the above benchmark included) are a part of the BAPCo SYSmark 98 suite.  The beauty of the SYSmark 98 suite is that it doesn't feature any versions of applications that have specific SSE or 3DNow! optimizations, therefore the only optimizations you get are those for MMX which can only help so much as we've seen in the past.  This is one of the first tests in which you can truly compare the entire spectrum of processors and start to see performance patterns emerging.  The Celeron, once again, falls a bit short as its smaller 128KB L2 cache loses out to the larger, albeit slower, 512KB L2 cache of the P2/3.   The Athlon's sheer power and large L1 cache keep it at the top of this food chain, and the weak FPU of the K6-2 as well as the limited L2 cache frequency keep the slower K6-2's much to far away from the competition. 

The K6-III 450 falls only 6 seconds, or 3%, short of out pacing the Celeron 500 which illustrates the benefit that 256KB of on-die L2 cache provides the K6-III family with, it's too bad that AMD didn't have the ability to integrate L2 earlier in the life of the K6-X processor line.