For consumers, ICH2's most important feature will likely be the addition of two more Universal Serial Bus ports, for a total of four ports. Current PCs based on the 810E chip set offer only two USB ports. ZDNet eWEEK Low-end Celeron PCs to get bus boost Recent tests conducted by PC Magazine showed that a system with a 700MHz Duron chip, AMD's value PC processor, bested a PC with a 700MHz Celeron chip by margins of as much as 34 percent on certain benchmarks. Part of the Duron's performance advantage comes from a much faster 200MHz bus. However, a chip's performance also comes from its cache.
Processor caches feed data or instructions into the processor's core.
The Celeron sports a 128KB Level 2 cache, compared with Duron's 64KB Level 2 cache. However, AMD points out that its chip has more total cache. The company provided Duron with a 128KB Level 1 cache, compared with the Celeron's 32KB Level 1 cache. AMD Chairman and CEO Jerry Sanders stated recently that it's his goal for the company to reach 1.5GHz with a desktop Athlon in January. To meet the goal, AMD will ship faster Athlons approximately every five to six weeks.