The PII is built on an older process than the PIII. The PIII-450 is the slowest member of the PIII family, while the PII-450 is the fastest. As a result yields on the PII450 are much smaller than that of the PIII450. This will explain why the PII-450 costs a little more than the PIII-450. The more modern (read smaller geometry) chips run cooler and use less power than the older ones. Also the PIII has the 'big brother' feature of the cpu-serial number id. Perhaps the fact that the PII does NOT have this makes it more desirable? (IMHO this is bullshit, since if you have a lan card in your system you ALREADY have a unique id in your computer, your mac address!)
Bottom line is that the PII is on the endangered species list, all of the 66mhz fsb versions are no longer being made, the 350,400, and 450 will be discontinued by the end of the year. The PIII will be the upper end for desktops, the celeron the lower end. Celeron cpus with a 100 mhz fsb will be out when the PIII switches to the 133 fsb later this year or early next. (This is the so called 'copper mine' chip, which may or may not abandon the slot 1 format and come in a new pga package. Coppermine will release in a 600 mhz version first, faster ones latter. The PIII 600 will be the last of the current PIII chips). The PIII streaming MMX instructions were designed for realtime video. Don't know if the gcc compiler supports them yet, or if any mpeg or x-driver software can use them yet. That's where the PIII will make a real difference. Is the PIII450 slower than the PII450? Maybe, but I would guess that the motherboard in use could make more of a difference. There are two flavors of BX chipset MB's. The BX-2 boards use a newer version of the chipset that is designed to support the PIII. The older bx boards will work with the PIII, but were designed for the PII. The result is that a PIII will run faster on a BX-2 MB than on a BX MB. You might not notice any difference except on the fastest PIII's though. === Amateur Radio, when all else fails! http://www.qsl.net/wa2mze Debian Gnu Linux, Live Free or ..... _____________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Free instant messaging and more at http://messenger.yahoo.com
