One area of the specifications that really did surprise us was the default 1.75V core voltage of the Duron 1 GHz. If you remember back to the Mobile Athlon 4 debut, AMD actually lowered the core voltage from 1.75V to 1.4V. Granted, this was for a mobile Athlon 4, but the Duron 950 easily ran at the standard 1.6V level, and even overclocked to 1 GHz at that same voltage.

Given that the Morgan core is based on the Athlon 4's Palomino core design, this higher core voltage is quite confusing. On a whim, we slapped in the Duron 1 GHz and lowered the core voltage down to 1.6V and rebooted. The system started up without a problem and progressed through all benchmark testing without a hitch. Moving up to 1.1 GHz resulted in the same smooth performance at 1.6V, but the problems really started at 1.15 GHz. At this speed, the system booted up but would not fully load Windows until we raised the core voltage to 1.7V.

With results like this we continued to be puzzled by the somewhat excessive core voltage if the processor was only intended for operation at 1 GHz. While it is purely conjecture, the only rational reason for instituting a 1.75V core voltage at the initial 1 GHz speed is to create some consistency within the Duron line, and maintain the same voltage levels throughout all speeds. This makes it easier on motherboard manufacturers and system BIOS updates alike. Using this logic (and the results of our specific processor) would entail that AMD is looking to continue the new Morgan core through to at least 1.15 GHz or even 1.2 GHz and beyond.

If there is one area we should all commend AMD on it is their commitment to the Socket A platform. On that note, there should be nothing short of a BIOS update needed to run these new Durons on most existing Socket A motherboards, and many motherboard manufacturers already have BIOS updates ready that can handle both the new Duron Morgan core, as well as the upcoming Athlon Palomino models. In fact, as we discovered in some impromptu testing, your current BIOS may already support it. The important factor in using an updated BIOS is to ensure that the new features of the Morgan (such as Data Prefetch and SSE) are supported and then identified to operating systems and relevant software.

Since the release of the Duron 1 GHz is rather significant, we decided to match it up against some comparable Athlon and Duron processors. In addition to our extensive Duron 1 GHz benchmarking, we have also included results for the Duron 950, Athlon 1 GHz, as well as an overclocked Duron running at a matching 1 GHz.

Each of these processors runs on the same 200 MHz FSB, so we can easily compare benchmarks based on purely on processor speed, rather than using a differing system or memory bus. The memory speed for each test configuration was set to 133 MHz (CL2) to match the standard setting for a VIA platform. In addition, to facilitate the additional 3DNow! instruction set of the Duron 1 GHz, a fresh install of both Win 98 and Win 2K was performed prior to testing, as well as a second refresh for the group of non-SSE Athlon and Duron processor tests.