The Grok

Both Intel and AMD managed to climb upto the magical gigahertz processors earlier this year, with AMD winning the race. However for now these processors will be serving purely the business community. For the home user and gamer who is looking to buy a new processor or computer, a choice has to be made between three excellent processors in the market currently.

The Pentium III
The PIII's from Intel are based on a new Coppermine core ( .18 micron ) which introduces the next generation processors capable of high speeds. The PIIIs have actually been floating around for a while but the PIII Coppermine can deliver high performance. You should note the special E (100MHz FSB) or EB (133MHz FSB) marking for these processors. Processors like the P600E and other E designated chips run on i810 chipsets but the newer EB marked chips will NOT run these and require special motherboards which supports RAMBUS (RDRAM - an expensive memory unit). Sticking to the normal PIII coppermine chips is a good idea since RDRAM not only requires a newer motherboard, but problems have also been encountered with its performance. The PIII packs some solid computing power inside it. It has a 512kb on die cache memory. Processors start from the 500MHz range.

The CeleMine/Celeron 2
The Celeron 2 is actually a new kid on the block. The Celeron 1 was an excellent choice for entry level users and even hard core gamers. The fact that the Celeron 2 is based upon the Coppermine core (same as the PIIIs) means that neglecting the cache, the PIII and Celeron 2 generally give comparable performance. The 66MHz FSB makes the "Celeron 2" an overclockers dream. Motherboards supporting FCPGA sockets should be able to handle the Celeron 2 and even if the motherboard doesn't have clock multipliers 8 or more, since the chips are multiplier fixed, there should be no problem in running them on older motherboards. Good performance overall in the multimedia department, especially because of the addition of the new SSE instructions. It has a 128kb on die cache memory. Processors start from the 500MHz range. (note there is a cacheless version, avoid that at all cost!)

The Athlon
AMD has been playing the catch up game with Intel for a long time. It is a pleasant surprise to note that AMD's Athlon can surpass the PIII head to head in performance and in price! The Athlon will not work on motherboard supporting Slot-1 processors (although the Athlon looks very much like a slot-1 processors, the pins are different.). The Athlon can run only on special motherboards based on an Irongate design laid out by AMD which support "Slot A" processors. Performance of the Athlon was very mediocre until the recent entry of an excellent motherboard, the Asus K7V. More Athlon high perfomance motherboards are in the production which would provide some good choices in the near future. It has a 512kb cache and supports AMD's 3D Now instructions. Its superior technology enables it to give a 5-10% better performance than the PIII.

SHOWDOWN
For most users the actual choice is made based upon several different factors. The Celeron 2 wins in the price department as it is expected to cost around $30-$60 as it saturates the market. The Athlon 600 is around $156 which is pretty competitive compared to the Pentium 3 600MHz which costs around $214.

The big surprise comes in the form of Athlon winning the performance race. The PIII follows with the Celeron 2 trailing with only a small difference.

As far as overclocking is concerned the Celeron 2 is yet again an excellent choice (with many 533A already running rock stable at 800MHz). The Athlon allows more overclocking options as both the clock multiplier and the bus speed can be manipulated using an additional overclocking card. The PIIIs running at high bus speeds can generally cause damage to the motherboard!

To conclude, I believe the Celeron 2 is "THE" choice for the home user. Its attractive performance and price make it a clear winner. The Athlon is also an excellent choice for the home user, even though the extra hidden price tag for buying a new motherboard may make it less attractive. It gives an unbeatable performance and costs much less than the PIII.