There's no noticeable performance difference between a Socket A Athlon and Duron at the same clockspeed, IMO. So the Duron 1200 should be a lot faster than the Athlon 900 anyway. SSE didn't really matter at the time these processors were out.

Yes, that Duron has Morgan core (essentially same as Athlon XP) with SSE. In general Durons at same clock are 10% slower than Athlon counterparts, so go with the Duron.

Here are benchmarks, where you have example values for Duron 1300, Duron 900, Athlon "B" 1000 and Athlon "B" 800.

(http://www.tomshardware.de/benchmark-marathon … hte-550-25.html)

For example, when you take 3D Mark 2001 SE, and you assume that it scales ~ nearly linearly with these selected CPU's, then the Duron 1200 and Athlon 900 should have these 3D Mark 2001 SE value's:

Duron 1300: 7707 points
Duron 1200: ~7408 points
Duron 900: 6510 points

Athlon 1000: 7427 points
Athlon 900: ~ 7065 points
Athlon 800: 6703 points

melbar wrote:

Here are benchmarks, where you have example values for Duron 1300, Duron 900, Athlon "B" 1000 and Athlon "B" 800. […]
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Here are benchmarks, where you have example values for Duron 1300, Duron 900, Athlon "B" 1000 and Athlon "B" 800.

(http://www.tomshardware.de/benchmark-marathon … hte-550-25.html)

For example, when you take 3D Mark 2001 SE, and you assume that it scales ~ nearly linearly with these selected CPU's, then the Duron 1200 and Athlon 900 should have these 3D Mark 2001 SE value's:

Duron 1300: 7707 points
Duron 1200: ~7408 points
Duron 900: 6510 points

Athlon 1000: 7427 points
Athlon 900: ~ 7065 points
Athlon 800: 6703 points

I tried some Sisoft sandra benchmarks on the reference Athlon 900/1000 values and the difference is quiet big! On real usage differences may probably be variable but anyway I didn't expect they changed the core.
Anyway 50W of tdp... sounds quiet high.

This is the reason why i prefer a PIII myself for a CPU with a speed compareable to your selected CPU's.
The Athlon 900 is listed with 60W TDP (with Pluto/Orion core) or with 50W TDP (with Thunderbird core).
The Duron 1200 (Morgan core) has 55W TDP.

For example the PIII 866 (~23W TDP), i've tested some days ago, has almost half the TDP.

oerk wrote:

SSE didn't really matter at the time these processors were out.

But it's no longer "the time", and SSE support would give you compatibility with more (later) software.

PIII is even better because it has SSE2, which has much wider use than SSE.

PIII does not have SSE2, that came later with P4. It only supports SSE.

vladstamate wrote:

PIII does not have SSE2, that came later with P4. It only supports SSE.

Which is one reason why anything earlier than P4 is pretty much useless for web browsing on the modern web.

vladstamate wrote:

PIII does not have SSE2, that came later with P4. It only supports SSE.

It seems you're right, I don't know why I thought it had SSE2.