JSE-listed IT distribution group, Rectron, has released the latest low-to-mid range processor from AMD - the Duron - as well as a new motherboard model from Gigabyte Technology designed for use with the Duron chipset.
The new Duron processor is the latest workhorse in AMD`s processor portfolio and is aimed at price-sensitive consumers and business users. It`s Athlon inheritance makes it a very strong contender in the CPU market.
Although the new processor - dubbed the "Celeron killer" - is aimed at the lower end of the market, it still offers users a high level of flexibility and performance for mainstream business and home applications, according to Rectron Product Manager, Dean Prinsloo.
Duron is the close brother of `Thunderbird`, the new `Socket-Athlon`. As a matter of fact the architectures of Thunderbird and Duron are pretty much identical. The only two differences are the size of the second level cache and the core voltage. Thunderbird comes with 256 KB on-die, full speed L2 cache, while the Duron has 192KB L1 + L2 cache, 20% more than the Celeron. In both cases the L2-cache is connected to the core over a 64-bit wide interface.
The product features 200MHz front side system bus, compared to the 66MHz bus bandwidth from competitor Intel`s low-end processor, the Celeron. This high-speed system bus makes the processor particularly suitable for multimedia and data-rich applications such as MP3 players and rippers, softDVD players, and video-editing packages.
It also offers three floating point pipelines. This number crunching capability, coupled with the AMD 3D Now! multimedia technology delivers high performance for multimedia and floating point content.
Rectron is also currently shipping the Gigabyte GA-7ZM motherboard, for the VIA KT133 AGPset chipset and the AMD processor. This Socket A motherboard supports AMD Athlon and Duron processors running at speeds of 500MHz to 1GHz and beyond.
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