Features And Benefits - AMD Athlon Manual

A Guide to Building a PC with an AMD Athlon™ Processor

Features and Benefits

Table 1 shows AMD Athlon processor features and benefits.
Table 1. AMD Athlon™ Processor Features and Benefits
Features
n PC Industry's First 200-MHz Bus
•
200 MHz versus 100 MHz in Pentium III
n Most Advanced x86 Architecture
•
Nine-Issue, superscalar microarchitecture
•
Initial debut includes 650, 600, 550, and
500 MHz
n Superscalar Floating-Point Unit
•
Issues three
floating-point or multimedia instructions
simultaneously
•
Fastest x87 floating-point unit today
n High-Performance Cache
•
Industry's largest L1 cache (128 Kbytes)
Four times the Pentium III
•
High-speed 64-bit backside L2 cache
(512 Kbytes)
n Enhanced
3DNow!
Capabilities
•
Five new 3DNow! instructions (not in
Pentium III
•
Nineteen new multimedia instructions that
augment the MMX™ instruction set.
8
superscalar, pipelined
Instruction Set
Benefits
•
Delivers twice the peak bandwidth of today's
100-MHz bus.
•
Enables users to better take advantage of
high-bandwidth Internet connectivity like
IEEE 1394, cable modem, etc.
•
Highest frequency and best performance
•
Investment in the future
•
Outstanding processing speed
intensive software programs like CAD and
scientific applications
•
The 650-MHz AMD Athlon processor has over
45% faster floating-point performance versus
the Pentium III 600.
•
Processor-level cache (L1) is faster than
system cache (L2), enhances overall system
performance.
•
Relieves the floating-point-intensive
bottlenecks in 3D graphics processing
•
Improved processing of audio, video, and
Internet content for a compelling visual
computing experience.
22914B/0—September 1999
for math-