"Greg M. Johnson" wrote:
> 
> Anyone know the difference between a:
> 
> AMD Athlon
> Pentium III
> Intel Celeron
> 
> for similar speed?

Athlon (and its little brother, Duron) is probably best of the three, at least
in POV-Ray.
Pentium III should be similar in terms of performance, but costs quite a bit
more than an equivalent Athlon.
Celeron, while probably a reasonable performer in POV, is by now widely regarded
as overpriced and underpowered. It recently experienced a mild facelift
(migrating to a 100MHz bus speed), but in my opinion that's too little too late.

If you want a good machine for POV-Ray, I'd recommend the following:
Athlon "Thunderbird" for best performance (currently goes up to 1.2 GHz)
Athlon "Duron" for best value (currently up to 850 MHz)
The P III is also a solid processor if you've got money to burn. It reputedly
has less compatibility problems than Athlon (although I've had no trouble with
my Duron).
I don't recommend the Celeron; nor do I recommend the new Pentium 4, at least
until system prices drop and optimized software becomes available.

-- 
Margus Ramst

Personal e-mail: mar### [at] peakeduee
TAG (Team Assistance Group) e-mail: mar### [at] tagpovrayorg
Home page http://www.hot.ee/margusrt

Post a reply to this message