Two of our standard CPU benchmarks, CPUMark99 for integer performance and FPUMark99 for floating point performance, again offer views of the CPU as an isolated component. The weakness of both of these tests is that they can fit mostly within L2 cache, unlike the vast majority of real world operations. Let's first take a look at CPU Mark 99.
The CPUMark 99 section of Winbench 99 serves to stress the integer performance of the tested processor. Since the floating-point unit (FPU) has been taken out of the mix, higher CPUMark 99 scores will mostly show up with business applications or standard 2D games. Here the Duron 700 lives up to its value market position and is simply outclassed by its Athlon counterpart at 700MHz (no surprises there). However, it does seem to fair well against the Pentium III up to the 650MHz mark. The Celeron 600MHz CPUMark 99 score points to the importance of the 100 MHz FSB in basic Windows integer performance. The 66MHz FSB is the bottleneck for the new breed of Celerons.
With 3D games dominating the retail shelves, the importance of floating-point calculations cannot be stressed enough. FPUMark 99 tests the CPU's FPU and scores usually correspond closely to the core speed of the processor. Keeping to this trend, the Duron and its full-speed cache (being the key factor here) actually pips its Athlon cousin at the same frequency. Neither the Celeron 600's 128K L2 cache nor its 66 MHz FSB seem to hamper it in this test. We suspect that the Celeron 700 will keep up the pace well with the Duron.