The Contenders

* The PII system has mixed RAM, one 32 MB pc100 stick and one 64 MB pc133 stick, and the CPU is
    overclocked to 400 MHz via the FSB (100 MHz)

To try and fill the gaps between 600 and 800, I declocked my system to 720 MHz just as a reference, and overclocked it to 872, to "compete" with the 866 PIII.

Just to give you a rundown of the machines in this test :

• The "fastest" processor clock wise, is the Pentium III Coppermine 866. The Coppermine name tells you that the system bus runs at 133 MHz, (the Pentium III 600 is also a Coppermine by the way.)
• The "best" video card in this round up is the NV11.
• The fastest machine according to the benchmarks though, is the AMD K7 800, this is the new version of the K7, the Thuderbird which is a socket CPU.
• The PIII 866 is also a socket CPU, along with the AMD K6-2, but the PII and PIII 600 are both SLOT CPU's
• The fastest video card, is the one connected to the fastest CPU ; )  , the Voodoo2 SLI combo rules supreme at the moment. We will see if this changes as we add more up to date benchmarks. (e.g. 3d mark 2000, quake 3, etc.)
• The Pentium II 266, which is overclocked for all the benchmarks in this test, unfortunately only has a 66 MHz FSB (front side bus), this puts him at a severe disadvantage, but even this does not stop him from beating some of the more powerful cpus in the test.
• There are 2 similar video cards in this round up. The TNT 2 M64 chipset with 32 MB of RAM. The only difference between the two, is the maker, the on e is made by Gigabyte (a respected name in the hardware market) and the other , Chronos (dubious in user circles)
• The AMD K6-2  does not feature in this round of benchmarking, but I hope to include it when I publish the Sandra SiSoft 2001 benchmark figures. He is severely debilitated due to the onboard video card. If you consider yourself a "gamer" and strive for those frame rates, stay WELL clear of the onboard video death trap ! The K6-2 also has a FSB of 66 MHz
• The idle temperatures, is just to give a gage of what the average temperature your CPU should be running at. This of coarse differs according to the temp of your surroundings, it could drop by 5 degrees on a rainy day ! or raise by 5 on a hot day (sometimes even more!)