AMD Duron

This is the second time we've included the RC5 benchmark in a CPU review. For those that don't know, the RC5 is a form of encryption. Distributed.net is holding a challenge to crack the RC5 encryption to show that it is weak and encourage the implementation of stronger security. Click here to learn more about the Distributed.net challenge and join Team AnandTech for the opportunity to win $1000.

L2 cache size and speed clearly does not matter in this purely CPU intensive benchmark as can be seen by the identical scores of the Duron and original Athlon at the same clock speed. It's also interesting to note that the platform used here makes absolutely no difference with regards to performance - raw CPU power is the key here as evidenced by the exact double performance of the 1GHz Athlon/Thunderbird compared to the Athlon 500.

Now that the Duron is available, it is definitely an attractive CPU for cracking RC5.

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