Intel Pentium III 533B & 600B

In essence, we’ve already reviewed these two processors even before their release since they are no different than the Pentium IIIs we’re used to. The question is whether or not the 133MHz FSB (and in this case, on the i820 platform) helps performance any. Right now, the answer is no.

The Pentium III 533 and 600B are no more than a huge signal to wait before proceeding with your system purchase if you’re considering a Pentium III. If you’re looking at either the Celeron or an AMD CPU this doesn’t effect you at all, so go right ahead with your buying decisions. However, Iif you are considering a Pentium III, you’ve got a bit of thinking to do.

Intel is on the verge of releasing the world’s first desktop processor manufactured on the 0.18-micron process. Why mention the word desktop? Because for the past three months there has already been a 0.18-micron Intel chip among us in the market. Released on June 14, 1999, the Mobile Pentium II 400 was produced in two different versions, one a 0.25-micron version operating on a 1.55v core voltage and the other, a 0.18-micron version operating at a 1.5v core voltage. Both of these processors feature an on-die 256KB L2 cache which brings up their total transistor count to 27.4 million transistors. What’s so special about this 0.18-micron Pentium II? It’s just a mobile chip anyway, isn’t it?

Well, Intel’s upcoming Coppermine processor will be manufactured on the 0.18-micron process and will also feature 256KB of on-die L2 cache offering performance very similar to that of the mobile Pentium II (Dixon). This is the processor to look out for and until the Coppermine makes its release, do not even contemplate going after an Intel processor, especially the Pentium III B. It’s just not worth it, especially since the 133MHz FSB platform isn’t ready for release and you’re not going to be using your expensive Pentium III 600B on a low-cost i810E motherboard.

VIA does have an alternative 133MHz solution available, the Apollo Pro 133, but there is not enough performance improvement over the BX chipset to justify going after that platform.

With the current generation of video cards, AGP 4X doesn’t seem to provide that large of a performance improvement (unless you consider a 0.9% increase in Quake 3 to be significant) but we’ll see what advantages, if any, the standard has in store with the release of the first AGP 4X only card, NVIDIA’s GeForce 256.  One thing to keep in mind is that the more local graphics memory that is present on a card, the less likely it is to use AGP texturing and thus the less likely it is to experience any benefit from the AGP 4X transfer rates.   

So, here’s your buying recommendation from AnandTech: Stay away from the Pentium III 533/600B because there is no reason to pursue either of those avenues. Instead, wait for the release of the Coppermine if you’re set on an Intel CPU. Otherwise, at 500MHz, AMD’s Athlon still outperforms the fastest of Intel CPUs in most of the tests or, if you don’t feel like spending that much money, the Celeron is still the price/performance king of the hill.

The Coppermine and the i820 under Windows NT could be a very hard hitting combination able to provide the Athlon with much more competition than the current Pentium III has been able to.  The release of the Coppermine is the thing to wait for if you’re not interested in the Athlon but have the money to buy a Pentium III 600 today. And don’t worry, that release isn’t too far around the corner.

Click Here to learn more about the i820 Chipset in our Review