AMD Duron Debuts to Much Acclaim

AMD today introduced its new 'Duron' processor for the low-end market, providing a fierce competitor to Intel's Celeron. Despite being marketed for sub-$1000 PCs, the Duron is already causing quite a stir around the Internet. Based on AMD's Athlon design, the Duron destroys the Celeron in benchmark tests and even goes head-to-head with equivalent Pentium IIIs. Touting 25% more performance than the Celeron, AMD will offer Duron-based systems with Compaq, Fujitsu-Siemens, Hewlett-Packard Company, IBM, NEC, Systemax and others. Duron processors will be avilable worldwide at speeds of 700, 650, and 600Mhz. For more information, read AMD's press release, or visit Tom's Hardware and AnandTech for some benchmarks.