VIA Apollo Pro 133A & VCSDRAM - Part 2: The Performance

Business Winstone 99 is a good test for measuring performance of different CPUs under business applications, but the test varies too greatly to provide accurate indications of performance differences among very similar configurations. By truncating the score down to two digits (tenths of a Winstone point are meaningless in terms of real world performance) we get the breakdown of scores, as seen above.

The improvement of the 133MHz FSB and newer memory types in business applications is less than 4% at most. Realistically, you won't notice the performance difference at all. The point that could be made here is that the Apollo Pro 133A is as fast as the Intel 820, but the BX is virtually as fast as either of those two options so discussing performance here is pretty much worthless.

If all you're going to be running are business applications then you don't need to be even considering a 133MHz FSB platform, the Celeron exists for a reason you know :)

In overall system performance the addition of Virtual Channel SDRAM brings the Apollo Pro 133A is slightly above the 820 + RDRAM combination. The performance advantage isn't huge but neither is the performance advantage the 820 + RDRAM offers over the good ol' BX. This brings us to point number two; even while factoring in content creation and office applications, overall system performance is left relatively unaffected by the 133MHz FSB and newer memory types. The greatest performance difference illustrated here is an amazing 3%, not worth your time nor your money.

If SYSMark 98 and Business Winstone 99 characterize your usage patterns, then don't even bother with either of the two 133MHz FSB platforms.