Conclusion: Duron 1200 Stomps Celeron 1300

Even when its clock speed has been pumped up to 1300 MHz, the fastest Celeron can't hold a candle to AMD's Duron 1200. The main reason is that Intel limited the Celeron's FSB and memory clocks, which run at 100 MHz. The bottleneck caused by this low memory bandwidth really slows down this CPU. The 100 MHz specs were current in 1997, when the Intel Pentium II/350 was the first chip to work with a front-side bus of 100 MHz. Back then, PC100 memory modules were still hard to find - these days, such modules have become a rarity, with PC133 having almost totally replaced them. And with the way pricing mechanisms work, the PC100 now sells (to those who can still find it) at much higher prices than the PC133. But PC133 RAM can be used just as effectively with the Celeron.

The truth of the matter is that the AMD Duron 1200 stands to benefit from the developments made in chipsets for the AMD Athlon XP. In contrast, the Intel Celeron 1300 is a lost cause in this area. The obsolete Socket 370 platform has been relegated to Intel's back shelves to make room for the Socket 478 (Pentium 4). State-of-the-art features such as Ultra-DMA/133 or USB 2.0 are well beyond the reach of the Intel Celeron.

It's a different story with the AMD Duron: since it's based on the same platform - Socket 462 or Socket A - as the AMD Athlon XP, it can still make use of any new features. It's only a question of time until chipset manufacturers begin offering new features for this platform as well. Our bottom line in all this is that purchasing a Celeron CPU is really only worthwhile for OEM manufacturers who want to sell large numbers of PCs for a specific price. For that purpose, the Socket 370 platform and the 815EPT chipset are more than sufficient.