The Duron sports 64K of full speed 16-way set-associative L2 cache. Essentially, the purpose of associativity is to reduce cache conflicts in hardware rather than software, where a programmer would have to address these conflicts, which is ideal but not practical. For un-optimized programs, set-associative caches increase the cache "hit" rate and can reduce execution time, especially in multi-threaded applications. By adding various other features, such as redundant columns (ensures cache integrity) and more write back and fill buffers (reduces the chance of the processor waiting for data and stalling), AMD has ensured that the Athlon is well optimized for heavy bandwidth loads.

The Celeron uses 128K of 4-way set-associative L2 cache. That's twice the L2 cache of the Duron, which will likely significantly impact performance. For this reason, AMD brings up the fact that the Duron's total on-chip cache, including L1 cache, is 192K, compared to the Celeron's lower 160K of on-die cache. The AMD Thunderbird uses 256K of L2 cache, giving it a total of 384K of on-die cache.

Another major feature of the Duron's cache architecture is that its L1 and L2 cache are exclusive, just like the Thunderbird. According to AMD, it is not necessary for data to be duplicated in both L1 and L2 cache with the Duron's exclusive cache system like it is with the Intel Celeron's inclusive cache system. AMD says this increases the usable on-die cache size of the Duron from 64K to 192K, while the Celeron only has 128K of usable on-die cache.

The Duron uses the same 100MHz double-pumped (so call it 200MHz) front side bus that the Athlon has used since day one. The speedy FSB gives the processor plenty of bandwidth to communicate with the chipset, removing the FSB as a major bottleneck. As with the Athlon, memory speed will depend on the chipset in use, though AMD expects that most Duron systems will ship with PC100 memory for cost reasons.

The Duron's 200MHz FSB speed compares very favorably with the Celeron's now-100MHz FSB speed. Twice the FSB bandwidth is nothing to sneeze at. The Celeron's memory speed is dependent on the chipset though, so both systems are on the same level in that aspect. While FSB speed impacts performance, it's the final performance that matters.

One important point to remember is that while Intel's Celeron is limited to a 100MHz memory bus (due to there being no 133MHz chipset currently available for the Celeron), the Duron is able to take advantage of a 133MHz memory bus, averaging about 200MB/s more bandwidth than a Celeron system running on a 100MHz bus. Of course, this looks great on paper, but what is the real-world effect of the Duron's extra features? Let's take a look at some of our benchmark numbers.