Intel Pentium III 533B & 600B

Here we get to see the performance "benefits" of the i820 platform truly shine as the Pentium III 600B outsteps the regular Pentium III 600. Keep in mind that the NVIDIA TNT2 card we used was operating in AGP 4X mode which contributes to some of the performance advantage. How much?

According to the 6 gaming benchmarks we ran, the performance difference between running our TNT2 in AGP 2X or AGP 4X mode was a whopping 0.9%. So subtract the 0.9% performance increase provided for by the simple move to AGP 4X and you get what the i820 platform is offering for gamers. Not too impressive, is it?

Here we see the Pentium III 533 outperforming the 550 as a result of the combination of AGP 4X, the 133MHz FSB, and RDRAM, but the latter is most likely slowing down the system due to its increased latency rather than improving the performance.

The same is true for the Pentium III 600B versus the Pentium III 600, but once again when the question of cost comes into play, the Pentium III 600B doesn’t really seem worth the added trouble considering the performance improvement the platform offers is next to nothing. That Athlon is looking quite appetizing right about now…