We tested the Pentium III 550 with the most CPU intensive benchmarks we possess, including several from the gaming environment. For comparative reasons, we also included results on the same tests from Celeron 400 and 466 CPUs, as well as with a P3-500 CPU. We also overclocked the P3-550 to 5.5 x 112MHz (616MHz) in an effort to measure its overclocking prowess and have reported the results.

In order to ensure that the gaming results were limited only by CPU performance and not by the fill-rate limit of a particular video accelerator, we tested with Hercules' powerful Dynamite TNT2 Ultra AGP card.

Here's a more in-depth look at the test machines we utilized:

Test Systems (2):

ABIT BX6 R2.0 (Slot-1 - Intel 440BX)
Goldstar 256MB PC-133 SDRAM (Prototype)
Hercules Dynamite TNT2 Ultra 32MB AGP 2D/3D Accelerator
Adaptec 2490UW Ultra-Wide SCSI Controller
IBM Ultrastar 9 7200rpm 8.4GB UWSCSI HD
Diamond Monster Sound MX300 3D PCI Sound Card
Kenwood 52X IDE CD-ROM
Win98 OSR 1.0

Test Conditions and Specifications:
All tests were run a total of three times with the results averaged to determine final score. VSync was OFF for all video tests, allowing maximum frame rate performance. The Hercules Dynamite TNT2 Ultra video accelerator was set to operate at a core speed of 193MHz, to ensure that it was not the limiting factor in any of the tests.

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